This is a post with some actionable tips on starting to look for PhD positions.
Firstly, ask yourself why you want to do a PhD. If the answer is something like, I need it for the career I want or I love doing research, then happy days you’re off to a good start. However, if you answer, I don’t know what else to do or I just want to be a Dr. then chances are you’re going to spend 4-6years (depending on the country) in misery earning pennies whilst your friends climb their respective career ladders.
If you’re not 100% sure that’s absolutely fine. Take some time out from education, travel the world, earn some money, do whatever makes you happy. PhD opportunities will still be there in a year or in 10 years. I personally took two years out after my undergraduate degree to try to save money to pay for a masters degree and I was still on the younger end of my cohort. In fact, I believe that time out allowed me to develop skills which made my PhD journey a lot easier, see future post on skills for PhD success.
Awesome! Here are some pro-tips. (Disclaimer: these tips are based on my own personal observations within the field of evolution/ecology, see Tip 1).
Speak to as many people as you possibly can about doing a PhD in your scientific area of interest. PhD experiences vary dramatically between scientific fields, countries, universities, departments and even within individual research groups. As well as being super variable in space, the PhD is also super variable in time. I highly recommend speaking to current PhD students to better understand what a PhD is like right now. If you’re not on Twitter already, then get on it, there are loads of PhD students willing to share their experiences.
If you already know exactly what you want to work on, then that makes this bit a little easier. You should start ‘googling’ labs which work in your interest area. The easiest way I’ve found to find research groups is by looking at the author’s university address on papers and then googling them, most labs now have their own websites. Usually in biology the last author on a paper is the research leader, or principal investigator (PI), this is the person you will want to look up.
If you don’t know exactly what you want to work on (this is most people). Then find a few areas that interest you and repeat the above.
Alternatively, if you want to do your PhD in the UK you can wait for the yearly lists of doctoral training partnership projects to come out and search through for something that interests you (www.findaphd.com). These projects usually come out November time and applications are usually needed by early January.
Now you have your list of labs or short list of advertised projects! Woo! The next best tip I can give is to informally reach out to the person advertising the project, the PI. If the lab isn’t advertising any specific PhD projects you can ask about the possibility of doing a PhD with them, this is particuarly useful if you are applying abroad, the PI will know how to get funding (extra tip: enthusiasm is everything!). If you’re contacting a PI who already has a project advertised, then you can email them asking something specific about the project or asking if you would be able to visit the lab before you apply (if you live close by).
Reaching out in this way shows you’re really serious/interested in working with this research group and when your application goes in you’re no longer an unknown random person.
Another extra tip: even if you are financially able, do not fund your own PhD, there are plenty of scholarships and funding routes out there. Securing a funded position looks excellent on your CV (you need every CV boost you can get in the post-PhD job market).
Most PhD applications (at least in the UK) require a cover letter and CV. Yes, it’s cringy to big yourself up in the cover letter but you must do it! The judging panel need a reason to pick you. You should also get as many people as you can to give you feedback on your application. Ideally lecturers who themselves take on PhD students each year and people who have successfully got onto a recent PhD program.
Every cover letter and CV should be specifically tailored for the position you’re applying for. The judging panel will immediately be able to tell if you send in a generic application and it shows you aren’t that interested in that particular position.
We all hate them but do your research (online/current PhD students) and find out what questions you might be asked. Then ask someone to give you a mock interview or three. A lot of PhDs (in the UK) are funded through doctoral training partnerships and so the interview panel will consist of people from a variety of fields. Therefore, you should make sure you prepare for non-technical questions. Believe it or not, I was genuinely asked “which famous scientist, dead or alive, would you go for tea with and what would you ask them?” … eyeroll I’m not even joking … (on a side note I actually gave a crap answer to this and it definitely went against me, a topic for another blog post).
Life is full of rejection, especially academic life! The truth is there are way more exceptionally talented people than there are PhD positions, this doesn’t mean you’re not good enough, it’s just that someone else was better on this occasion. If you end up in an academic career, resilience is essential, you will be rejected for jobs, awards, grants etc. and you can’t let it throw you every time, otherwise you will just live in misery.
These are my main tips that I may change as the PhD application landscape evolves. See below for my personal story from undergrad to PhD, warning: it’s a bit emosh.
True story: I applied for MANY PhDs straight out of undergrad and was rejected for all. I even got a couple of interviews, one of which I was down to the last two people and I didn’t get it as the other person had a masters degree and I didn’t, the interview panel had no other feedback, it was gutting as I couldn’t afford a masters degree at the time (no loans in the UK at this point and they were stupid-expensive). I would go to my car and cry each time I didn’t get a position, feeling like a failure and that I was going to be stuck in my crappy dead-end job forever. Then one day, after receiving the latest rejection from a funded MRes, I went to my car to cry and found that actually I just didn’t feel like crying. I realised all I was doing was feeling sorry for myself and that wouldn’t help me get a career.
So, I decided to work my butt off in my dead-end job, make manager, earn a tonne of money and go do a masters. I kept applying for PhDs during this time and even got offered a position! Which then went into a pool of competitive funding and wasn’t funded … urgh! After two years in my apparently ‘good’ managerial job I was barely making ends-meet and knew there was no way I would be able to save the money for a masters degree, I could barely afford to live in a shared house and run a car.
With the support of my, then, partner I took out a big-ass bank loan and got accepted to a masters degree. I turned down the next apparently good promotion at work and dropped my hours down to only 10 a week to focus on the masters. This was risky business for a first-generation student with no savings and you better believe it backfired big time! My ex-partner left me three months into my masters degree with no way to survive without increasing my hours at work again. So, I did, I worked ~30hrs per week, got up to my eyeballs in debt, completed my masters and applied for PhDs. It was the hardest year of my life (other things were also going on but I won’t go into detail). I got accepted onto a fully funded PhD position at the University of Leicester (from the reserve list, I should add) and I will remember that feeling for the rest of my life. My hard graft had paid off.
There will be people who read this who are in much more difficult situations with 100 more barriers, I am aware of how lucky and privileged I was to even be in a position of being able to apply for PhDs. I wanted to share this story to show it doesn’t matter how long something takes you or how many rejections you get, as long as you work hard and give it your all you can be proud of yourself!