PhD The Early Process, Application and Interview advice

Thanks for that the closing date is April 30th, so I've still got time.Leeds is local too.

It's good that they have clearly stated we are investing 10mil=101 scholarships, whereas Sheffield said on their homepage and made a big deal saying we've invested '5.5' million for PhDs students, so probably under 50 students, or less if they've put money into existing PhDs individual departments want to do.

What subject are you into? I'd get in touch with potential supervisors asap

Thanks, I'm pulling an all nighter today will research all the research groups and send out some emails.

I PM'ed you a long email about my background and what I did at Sheff.

Thanks for the Leeds link, I thought all funding ceased Feb 3rd.

I have applied at Leeds too... no reply back yet. Also applied to sheffield on an advertised project.... and i am waiting.

Do you know if there is a guide on how to do proposals on forum?

I have also noticed that not a lot of studentships are around for EU grads. Hopefully there will be new ones in May with funding... otherwise if i dont get any offer from those i ve applied for... i m screwed.


Red ferry, what do you mean they offered you a place after they turned you down? please provide some tips to some desperately passionate phd wannabes please... haha

Did you apply for a particular studentship at Leeds? Which funding was it?


So with Leeds I got an interview, was put on the reserves list. Then I got offered a place in London. Then all the people offered the PhDs at Leeds dropped out but by that time I had accepted my London place.

I haven't got any advice other than keep on applying and apply to the Unis with the most places going!

It was the general funding from the university for Biological Sciences... on the January deadline...

thats what i do... even though sometimes i send emails to ask if they have funding available.. today i got an email from Bristol saying that they do not have funding and anything available will be on jobs.ac.uk.

I will keep applying anyway though... thanks

I am not sure exactly what was it... by general funding i mean they were advertising studentships so I applied but I didn't have a specific supervisor. Are you in biology as well?

Ah, no mines were not DTPs.

No, in my cover letter I mentioned my research interests only.

All of what I applied, were advertised projects, where i contacted the supervisors... the only general i did was in manchester... the one in leeds i contacted the supervisor which he never replied back, and i mentioned his name in the application... but it was under the funded studentships that leeds uni offered. I don't remember exactly what studentships those were... its been since january though for leeds..

now the next funded places are end of march... I don't know if there will be other ones end of may... probably... we ll see. fingers crossed

I applied for a graduate teaching assistantship at the department and got shortlisted for the interviews! so excited, but also quite scared, as there's just one GTA and I have no idea how many applied/are interviewed.
I have to do a 5 minutes presentation on my research proposal, followed by a formal interview. the presentation is quite tricky, because my proposal has 1500 word, summarizing that in 5 minutes isn't easy. has anyone of you done such a presentation? Any suggestions?

I wanted to make the presentation more personal than the proposal, showing my enthusiasm for the topic and the reasons why I want to research it. In 5 minutes you can't go into detail anyway. It's mainly title, research questions, what I want to do, how and why. And it's a skype interview again, so I can't use power point

You can use Power point... Send them your presentation in advance, and tell them when you move from one slide to the next. Although a five minute presentation is perhaps two or three slides, max.

And a hot tip: say something about the research methods you would use. And make sure that 'something' is both short and good.

Remember that one of the main points of the presentation is to demonstrate that you would be good at teaching, so emphasise making points clearly rather than cramming it full of content. All the stuff about your personal enthusiasm can be communicated in the interview.

My supervisor knows I can't self fund, I even put I am applying for funding on the main application. So 8 weeks after submitting my proposal I received an 'unconditional offer' and was told funding outcomes will be realsed soon. I didn't even have an interview, which is normally mandatory, it may be because I've been supervised by the supervisor for my Masters.

Funding decisions are made in April/May I thought? Do you think I've been short listed for internal funding?

I'd just call them and ass because if you haven't you are going to have to start applying for grants now.