It depends on the academic field. I've never met anyone self-fund a science PhD as the time commitments are not amenable/flexible enough for part time work on top and the cost of equipment/reagents means that it's just not possible to pay your own way.

The other question you should ask yourself is 'Is it wise to do a PhD without a scholarship?' You need to have a very honest understanding of the job prospects in your field and whether it is worth the financial and time sacrifices to pursue a qualification which might not enhance your job prospects. Get some good advice on this that is relevant to your field. Be very clear about where you hope to be in a few years time and whether or not the PhD will genuinely help you get there.

If you do self fund, then doing the PhD part time while working would probably be the best way to go. There are some people on here who do this and would be able to give you an insight into the challenges of that.

I have yet to submit my first own paper but I fully expect to get R&R when I do. Rightly or wrongly it's the way these things go in the majority of cases. And it's better than getting an outright rejection by your first choice journal. I've seen good papers by senior people undergo outright rejection for some petty reasons, so at least your work is still under consideration.

R&R in articles doesn't mean the same as in PhDs, and you shouldn't take this as reinforcement of anything negative. It's the norm really.

Hi Natalia. Welcome to the forum.

Firstly, the state of the job market might not be helping your case. A few years ago I think you would have found less competition but I gather there has been an increase in the number of applications for postgrad study these days.

I suspect that it’s not anything to do with your credentials that is holding you back, perhaps just how you are presenting them. Have you spoken to a uni careers department? They may be able to give guidance on how best to construct your CV. I would also seek advice from friends/classmates who have applied for academic jobs/PhDs. Also, get someone to proof read applications and make sure that everything makes sense – that can be a non-science person with a fresh pair of eyes.

Emphasise the most recent achievements and those most relevant to research. Really push your research experience – that is the thing that is going to show potential supervisors whether you’re cut out for a PhD. Though good A Levels, GCSEs and decent unis do give a certain academic pedigree, what will help you most is your understanding of how practical research differs from structured study.

Given the gaps in your CV it is worth acknowledging this briefly in a covering letter without going into extensive detail. That you have returned to study after personal difficulties show resilience and perseverance but without acknowledging why the timeline is how it is, a potential supervisor may be left wondering what happened. Again, get advice from a careers service as to how best to present this. You may also wish to list your course grades somewhere in your application if you feel that your BSc award undersells your achievements.

Be careful to make sure you tailor applications to the specific project – avoid generic covering letters. If there is a named supervisor in the advert, send them an email of enquiry before applying – use it as an opportunity to find out more about the project/department and also get yourself on their radar. Make sure you show an interest in the specifics of the project in the covering letter.

Finally, if some of your applications were very recent, contact the departments in question and ask for feedback as to why you were not successful – they may be able to tell you something useful.

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Hi Leergn

The main issue when trying to identify prevalence of anything from a cross sectional study, is working out how generalisable your sample is to a broader population. For example, if you want an estimate of national prevalence, studying practices just in one region could give you a biased result. But if you're only interested in a region, then a decent number of practices in that region might be enough to give you a good estimate. Some kind of sample size calculation would be a good idea once you have a clearly defined research question.

Are you collecting data yourself, or working with existing sources? Or both? Another issue with cross sectional studies is it is difficult to infer any kind of causal relationships if the outcome and exposure data were captured at the same time, unless there is some kind of clear temporal ordering of things.

If you're using existing primary care data, don't jump in straight away. Take time to 'get to know' your dataset as it is likely that you will need to do data cleaning. Talk to other users and find out what coding issues there are etc. Getting reliable case definition from primary care data can be challenging, particularly in conditions that may be comorbid, or where the condition may have been diagnosed/treated in secondary care and then referred back to primary care for follow up.

I would suggest contacting your subjects and asking them to suggest suitable local options they might know of.

I'm not quite sure why the necessity for a risk assessment prior to an interview. Is that something you could carry out on the day? Unless the subject matter is confidential and there is a possibility of being overheard, I can't imagine that any room you choose is likely to pose significant risks.

It's not the uni's responsibility, but I would have thought it was the responsibility of the company for whom you work.

I periodically do freelance for a company and I classify myself as self employed for tax purposes. In reality I only earn a small amount so don't have to pay tax on it, but it's good to be above board and go through the process.

Ask the company if they will take care of it for you, but if not then it's 'self employed'.

Hi Mashobana

That sounds like a very interesting topic. However, I wonder if it might require more work than in possible in a Masters dissertation. Do you have any existing data to work with? Is/will the data be quantitative or qualitative? Have you identified a supervisor who can help you to work out a way of answering the question.

As I said it's a good question but you could probably turn it into a PhD thesis! Therefore you must be careful to plan an aspect of that question which you could reasonably answer in the time span of a Masters.

Congrats Dr Smoobles!

I've come to realise that although it seems like everyone else's lives are more sorted than mine, scratch the surface and it isn't always the case. And even the people who have got it sussed will probably hit stagnant periods at times.

Are there short and medium term goals that you can focus on that don't involve comparison with anyone else?

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Agreed.