Print This PostAlmost as big as the undertaking of a PhD is the application process towards one. In my view, the process doesn’t start when you begin the online form of your chosen institution, but months, possibly years earlier. Developing the kind of strong PhD application necessary not just to get into top institutions but also to get funding takes a lot of planning and a lot of forethought – it pays to start early. Having applied to a number of programmes when I started my own journey back in 2019, and having sat on the graduate studies committee overseeing the application process at Oxford, this article is my attempt to condense what I have come to understand makes for the most compelling PhD candidates, and the advice I typically give to aspiring students. This article is all about developing the qualities and qualifications you might need to even apply for a PhD in the first place – how to find a lab and a supervisor, and how to go through the actual application process will be topics for future articles.
First, Know Thy Self
This sounds clichéd, but ancient wisdom nevertheless bears weight. A PhD will take you at least three years, maybe four or more. You’re going to spend almost all of your time for these years reading about, writing about, talking about, thinking about, and working on one thing. You’re going to go in deeper than anyone ever has before. You’d best be doing it on something you actually enjoy and find interesting. It’s also, to be frank, a rare and cool opportunity in life to be able to spend so much time and go so into depth on a topic of your own choosing. It’s thus really important to take some time to actually think about what topics really resonate with you, what things you really care about.
This is important both for your own motivation but also because a clear sense of purpose will help clarify your application. It’s easy to tell when someone is deeply and truly passionate about something, which, to an examiner board, is a good sign that if they admit you into their program, you’re going to stick it out.
Beyond the broad topic area (if you’re reading this, you’re probably interested in dementia research), you need to find a good question. A good question isn’t just novel and scientifically interesting – it’s one that kind of annoys you. One that you keep coming back to, that keeps nagging in the back of your mind and has you always going ‘but why’. A mixture of curiosity about the question and frustration at the current lack of answers is a good indication that you’ve struck gold. It tells you that the question is important, it will matter to other people if you can shed some light on it, but also tells you that you have the drive to go and figure it out.
This is all stuff you would figure out in the obvious ways. Read widely – books, papers, blogs, journal articles and op eds, review papers etc. all typically discuss open questions in the field at some point.
Go to talks. In person is great but there are also plenty on YouTube and some online conferences are free for students.
Talking to people in person is also super helpful – ask speakers, lecturers, tutors, family, friends, anyone really, to get a sense of what they think the big questions are and what questions you might find interesting. You can also look at university websites and PhD postings to get a sense of what’s out there, what research people are doing, and see what resonates.
It’s also useful in this process, to volunteer for different things related to your interest. This not only helps you explore your interests and get to know yourself, but it also gives you extra curriculars that you can use to demonstrate your interest for the topic beyond the academics. Maybe you can take part in a stall at a science fair, maybe you can write a blog or make videos, maybe you can volunteer at a hospital or care centre. All of these things help you to engage with and express your interests, learn more about yourself, and meet people who can help guide you through the process too, while demonstrating your broader passion and commitment to the topic. This is sometimes just as important as the academic aspects of your application, so don’t overlook it.
It probably goes without saying that this thought process needs to start well before you actually begin applying, though helpfully this is likely a useful process even if you’re not planning to do a PhD. Nevertheless, when it comes to applying for a PhD, the first question at every stage will be “Why do you want to do this”, so it’s worth having a clear sense of an answer.
Experience Is Invaluable
It’s another unfair cliché that to get a job, you need experience, but to get experience, you need to get a job. You don’t need to have done a PhD to get a PhD, but having some research experience under your belt is extremely useful, I would argue essential (and not just because many PhD programmes require it).
Firstly, this is essential for you. You should know what you’re getting into when you apply for a PhD. It’s going to be a long slog and it’s better to find out if research is something you actually enjoy or if you’d rather do something else before you go through the whole rigamarole of applying and attempting a PhD. Think of it as a try before you buy.
There are many possibilities here: consider volunteering for a research group (asking a lecturer or tutor if they have anything you can assist on or know of any openings is a good place to start), undertaking research projects as part of your undergraduate degree if possible, doing an Honours research program or diploma or Master’s programme that includes research, an internship in a research position, or getting a job as a research assistant are just some ideas. Some are obviously more involved than others, but all amount to the same useful outcomes, beyond just proving to yourself that research is something you might actually want to do for three or more years.
The hardest thing about a PhD isn’t the research, it’s the lifestyle. But the lifestyle also comes with amazing benefits such as choosing your own working hours and indulging in your personal passions. There’s a lot of freedom involved which can be both a benefit and a drawback.
Experience is essential for skill development. When it comes to applying for PhD’s obviously your grades matter and they need to be decent. Most candidates however, will have a good academic track record, and while indicative of persistence and learning, academic grades don’t necessarily reflect all of the practical research skills needed for a PhD. These include time and project management, designing and planning experiments, troubleshooting and problem solving, searching for and synthesising literature information, working independently and in teams, writing and presenting ideas, managing disappointment and failure, and technical skills around performing experiments (cell culture, pipetting, data analysis, performing interviews, statistics, etc.).
Sure, you could argue that you many of these skills can be learned to some extent in an undergraduate degree, but it’s far easier and more convincing to demonstrate these skills through research experience. Moreover, it shows you have an enduring interest in actually doing research, and something of a proven track record. You don’t have to be an expert at all these skills – indeed, you’re not expected be, these are the things you’ll learn in a PhD itself. But having some basis in these rather than starting from scratch makes you a far more compelling candidate for someone deciding if they want to take you on or not. I suspect that if you had a spottier academic track record, having a strong set of research experiences you could attest to could make up for this and would count for far more.
Hands on experience will also help to give you a better understanding of what techniques you enjoy, what you want to learn more about, what gaps in the research exist, what models need to be developed to better answer questions, what direction the field is heading in and what topics are of interest. This ‘on the ground’ knowledge can be particularly helpful when coming to develop a project proposal, where you need a clear rationale for the question you’re asking, a justification for its novelty and importance, and an achievable plan for answering it. It can also give you a better sense of who is doing research in your area, whose research you have respect for, whom you might want to work for, and who has a bad reputation and is better to avoid.
Further Benefits of Research Experience – Mentorship
Another outcome of research experience is mentors (who can write references for you). Mentors don’t have to just be your boss / supervisor / PI. They can be other senior students, current PhD students, Post docs, and other people in general whom you’ll meet in the process of getting research experience who are further along the path than you and can offer guidance. Not only will you get to see something of their own experience and journey and the day-to-day realities of research (and get a sense of whether it’s something you want for yourself), but they will also come to know you better too. From this position, such mentors can give you advice on skills you should consider developing that would make you a more compelling candidate, areas you need to improve on (and how to do so), how to develop your interests and work out what questions are interesting and worth asking, and advocate for you and help you get opportunities to present or publish your work. They can also help with networking, pointing out opportunities, and broadly help you orient yourself in the world of research and figure out how you might best fit in.
Beyond general guidance that mentors can give though, referee statements are a crucial, make or break part of any application, but often overlooked, especially because they need to come from someone who knows you well and can speak to your interests, skills, personality, and motivation from a position of authority.
This means that you must have known them for a long time and had a working relationship with them, minimum several months and ideally a year or more – the longer the better. This of course means you should be thinking about this far in advance.
There is a big difference between a reference statement from a lecturer or tutor who can write a paragraph or two on what a good student you were and how exemplary your grades were, with maybe an anecdote about an interaction you had in class, versus a reference statement from a mentor who fully believes in you and supports you, and can write several pages attesting to your achievements, your soft skills, anecdotes about your persistence and ability to independently problem solve, what you’re like to work with, and more. It’s undeniably helpful if your referee is an authority figure in the field, known and respected, or someone who can put your name out directly. However, it’s vastly more important that they know you. What you’re like to work with as a person is one of the most important soft factors that a future supervisor will want to know about you, and is one of the hardest things to read into in a CV and application letter. Will you be a good fit for their research group? The reference statement is an important way of demonstrating this.
Bonus Benefits of Research Experience
Beyond exposure to the research environment, development of practical skills, and mentorship, spending some time getting research experience can bring more benefits that help to round out a strong PhD application. Notably, these are embellishments such as presentations, prizes, or papers, which are not essential, but nonetheless extremely helpful and help you stand out among candidate especially in competitions for funding.
Giving a talk as a junior researcher would be cool but unusual, though even being able to attest to giving presentations of your work at lab meetings would be useful experience. You should hopefully, however, still have opportunities to present things like posters, even if its only for a local or student run meeting. Getting your name on a paper, especially as a first author, is substantially more effort, and means you need to have made significant and/or original contributions to the work, which if nothing else, takes time. Given this, having publications as part of your application, while not essential, is looked upon extremely highly, and again speaks to a track record of achievements and competence in research that can be expected to continue as part of a PhD.
Prizes are, of course, hard to come across by design, but giving yourself as many opportunities to win awards, be they academic awards, scholarships, research prizes, awards for best poster or image or talk at a meeting, or essay prizes, by putting yourself into the running for them, can yield valuable experience and a track record that is a testament in itself. Other elements of the academic lifestyle such as successful grant applications or teaching experience are also nice-to-haves in demonstrating broad interest, career aspirations, and a record of success.
These aspects of an application are not all essential. Many people get onto PhD programmes without having publications, and few would have significant prizes. However, without any of these embellishments to round out an application and make it stand out, it may be harder to get into more competitive programmes and may be harder to win funding.
Conclusions
This point of this article has been to try and discuss things you should consider thinking about and doing well before getting to the stage of actually applying for a PhD. A typical application will involve a personal statement, a research proposal, and a CV, along with referee statements and interviews, should you reach that stage. In all these aspects, especially when applying for competitive places or funding schemes, it’s useful that you have the following:
- A clear sense of who you are and why you want to do this project / a project on this topic
- A good academic track record, as well as a good research track record
- Examples of you developing both academic knowledge and practical research skills
- Examples of your broad interest in and passion for science broadly, if not the topic you’ve chosen
- Mentors who can help advise you through this process, guide your career thoughts, and write a compelling reference statement for you
- CV-embellishments such as prizes or publications that demonstrate outstanding achievements and competence
Are all these essential? No. But they are all useful for demonstrating that you vhae what it takes to do a PhD, and may be more important depending on where you’re applying, especially if you want funding. You shouldn’t have to have done a PhD to be able to successfully apply for a PhD, but nonetheless, assessing boards and funding bodies are looking for candidates who will have the highest chance of success and the most potential. This means showing them that you have the passion and motivation to carry out the work, and the skills and experience necessary to achieve it. The groundwork for being able to do this successfully all happens in the years before you apply.
All that achieved, the next question is how you find and select a group and a supervisor to do a PhD with – more on that next time!
Ajantha Abey
Author
Ajantha Abey is a PhD student in the Kavli Institute at University of Oxford. He is interested in the cellular mechanisms of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other diseases of the ageing brain. Previously, having previoulsy explored neuropathology in dogs with dementia and potential stem cell replacement therapies. He now uses induced pluripotent stem cell derived neurons to try and model selective neuronal vulnerability: the phenomenon where some cells die but others remain resilient to neurodegenerative diseases.
Dr Emma Law
Dr Clíona Farrell
Dementia Researcher
Adam Smith
Rebecca Williams