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No feedback - only 5 days left to submit
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Do you need his approval to submit your thesis? If not, I would suggest to stop worrying about it and do the final preparations for submission. He had enough time to give his comments and corrections and even though he promised to do so several times, he did not. No matter if there were personal circumstances that prevented him from corrections, it is obviously not your fault and you can't do more than reminding him of the nearing deadline. You did so and you can't do any major corrections in 5 days anyway so just "relax" and come to terms with the submission of a thesis that does not include his final comments. In my opinion it is already too late. If you start now with further corrections it will probably not improve the thesis, but make it worse. I imagine that last phase as incredibly stressful, so don't make it harder as it already is :) I can't believe that he would be mad at you for not including his comments if he waited till your 5 days out to submission.

Good luck!

Quit PhD
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I would also suggest you to ask for some kind of break. I would almost bet that you would regret the decision in the long run and I could imagine that a failed PhD is not beneficial for a new career, no matter what you are planning to do next. Do some thinking and don't rush into something. You managed the last year, so it is definitely possible to manage that tiny little bit left :) Would be a pity if all those years of hard work would have been for nothing.

Like the others already said, there is no way this could have consequences in terms of a lawsuit. People drop out all the time. There is nothing a supervisor could do about that, no matter how often you said or wrote that you will finish.

Is PhD studentship or scholarship possible with pass Master degree?
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How should anyone know that ? ;) It is probably possible to find a group leader who accepts you with a "pass" but it is rather unlikely as there is a lot of competition. I think the main problem is to explain why you want to pursue a PhD if you "only" passed your master. Either you were too lazy (not a good feature for a potential PhD student), not capable of the master (even worse feature) or there were other things that excuse the pass. I remember somebody who posted that he suffered from several family tragedies (and could prove it) during the master. That can happen to anyone and usually group leaders show some understanding.

I would suggest you to apply and see what happens. Good luck!

Dissertation writing, how many drafts?
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Quote From TreeofLife:
Many science PhDs are 25 when they graduate...


I wouldn't say many. Mostly in the UK or France ;) elsewhere the average is rather 30. Maybe 28 if you are female (no army service) and very fast.

Is PhD possible with pass Master Degree?
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Quote From maxyyy:
Quote From HazyJane:
I would strongly caution against anyone doing a full-time self-funded PhD if their motivation is to improve their employment prospects. Is that your aim?

As a student of economics, I would encourage you to consider whether your investment (time, money) and the opportunity costs (loss of earnings, loss of chance to gain experience that employers would value more highly than a PhD) is worth it. Taking into account all of the above I estimate the total cost as upwards of £90,000 for a home student. Is that a worthwhile investment for whatever your end goal is?

TreeofLife's position may sound cynical but I wouldn't disagree.


Improve employment prospect is only small part of my motivation. I really want to do development economic research in the future and contribute something. But with only a Master degree, it proves to be extreme difficult.
So I would rather say that PhD is a way fulfil my lifetime goal.


Just don't. Seriously. You will end up in high debt and you most likely won't work in economic research after all. There are only few positions after a PhD and they look for high performers. There is no situation where I would suggest a self funded PhD. You are basically paying an institution to work for them and this is just ridiculous. Nobody would pay a company to work for it. Yes, you are in some way still a student, but you contribute to the department in a completely different way as bachelor or master students do. There are enough funded positions and the people who can't secure a funded position are usually the people who would have only little chance in research. I don't want to paint it too black but give it some thought. We are talking about an incredible amount of money and an almost non existing chance to fulfill that lifetime goal. There has to be some compromise.

Going to industry and chance to return to academia
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I would say it depends on the subject. In engineering it is common to spent some time in industry and return later. In other subjects like biology or physics I never heard of it, but it probably depends where you want to work in academia. We also have these universities of applied sciences and there you usually find professors who worked in industry before. However, these are more teaching jobs and the amount of research they do is not comparable I think.

Can't you just ask permanent staff in your department? If there are people who managed to come back they should know some of them.

Anyone start their PhD 'straight from undergrad'?
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I didn't want to generalize it, but you can have a lot of lab experience and be capable of thinking things through, one does not exclude the other. On average, a master student will be more experienced in both ways compared to a bachelor graduate. Simply because of 2 years more experience (both life and academic). Of course you find bachelor students who perform well and even better than students with a master degree. On the other hand, Master students who perform worse than a bachelor student probably would have performed worse without the master degree too ;) You just have a problem if you hire a PhD student for e.g. molecular work and the person never did cloning, qPCR, enzyme assays and stuff like that for a longer period. Someone who did these methods a lot will trouble shoot much more efficiently. If you have to ask your lab mates for instructions everytime then you completely rely on a nice team that takes the time to introduce you. That's not always the case and especially many post docs are busy with their stuff and have the attitude that it is not their job to show you how to do your job ;)

I excluded bachelor graduates who worked for a while. That is of course a whole other story :)

Anyone start their PhD 'straight from undergrad'?
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Quote From s0phie:
I did a masters before my PhD and knew a couple of people who started PhDs straight from bachelors instead. At the time I felt it was unfair that others didn't do a masters beforehand but that was because I had always been under the impression (from members of academic staff!) that it was necessary to do a masters in order to start a PhD. Personally, now I am glad for the research experience from my masters and think it helped me more in the beginning of my PhD with knowledge and confidence. It sounds like the other person is feeling insecure about themselves and are taking it out on you. Even so there is no excuse for condescending comments etc. Stand your ground - I agree with PhDiddy - don't take their crap, otherwise their comments will probably just continue.


I believe there is a reason why most countries demand a completed master degree to start a PhD or offer long PhD studentships, where the first one or two years are more a orientation phase that is equivalent to a master (e.g. US). You read a lot of stories here from people who started in labs and basically lacked understanding of the methods they were supposed to work with. If so, you need a looot of guidance at the beginning and not every lab can spent the time to get a PhD student to a point that he/she can work independently. Most labs demand a repertoire of standard methods and also the experience to learn new methods by yourself, without a Post Doc or PhD studen who has to show you every step. It's of course highly dependent on the area you are working with but I think it is good that this option is limited to exceptionally "bright" students who performed really well during their bachelors. It's for your own good. However, I can understand that you might look at this differently if you have to pay for your master degree....that's of course another aspect.

Postdoc and 'flexitime'
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Quote From TreeofLife:
Has anyone ever been on 'flexitime' as a postdoc?

In my new job I have clock in and out and I find it really frustrating and an inefficient use of my time. For example, the clocking in machine is downstairs, so if I want lunch, which I eat in my office, I have to go downstairs to clock out, then back up to eat, then back down to clock in then back up again etc. I find it really disruptive. Also, if I find out my PCR hasn't worked that day and I need it for tomorrow and it's now after 5pm and I want to run it again before I go home, I can do this but I'm too tired to be thinking/reading/writing whilst it's running, so usually I would read some random websites or chat to friends, but now I feel like I should be working whilst it's running because they are paying me to be there.

Personally I prefer just being paid for a 9-5 and if I'm there til 7pm because I'm procrastinating/paying bills/chatting to friends during the day that's up to me. I'm well aware of when I'm being productive and when I'm not. I hate the feeling of being time pressured all the time and that I can't have a 10 minute conversation in the lab with others because I'm not 'working' and they don't pay me to stand around and chat.

Anyone else in a similar situation? I know the solution is to suck it up and deal with it, but I can't help being annoyed about it. The universities where I did my MSc and PhD previously weren't like this. Why are PhD students allow to do whatever they want but postdocs are subjected to this pettiness? Are all research institutes like this? I knew there was a reason I hated them.


Never heard of that before. I remember several Post Docs who worked from 3pm to 2am or other weird schedules. As long as the work is done nobody cared and the salary was fix. Sounds more like a company to me. On the other hand it is nice that you get paid for the additional hours :) I think you just have to get rid of the thought of being productive all the time. At least I see a lot of people in the company I work who are chatting over a coffee, checking facebook or sometimes answering some private emails. As long as you get the work done and work more than you chat... :D

PhD without a master in Europe
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I don't think that it will be a disadvantage. The PhD is valued higher as the Master. If you got your PhD, people will know that you would have easily finished the masters as well.

You should however consider that you could fail the PhD and then fall back to the bachelor level. The question is how hard it is to find a funded PhD in computer science. If it is easy, I would suggest to finish the master. You are half way through and it would be a pity if that was "all for nothing". No need to rush into a PhD if you won't have problems to find another nice position after your master. If it is hard to find something, you should maybe consider the offer.

I don't know if you can finish the master after a PhD. There might be a rule that it has to be completed in a certain time span.

salary policy for PhD candidate in Spain/Barcelona
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There are only a few countries where the salary increases over time (e.g. Netherlands). 1100 euro sounds like the typical 50% position many people get. I never heard of a settlement fee. If you were told that this is the monthly salary, I wouldn't expect any other benefits. Countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands or Switzerland generally pay much higher salaries to their PhD students.

No Job 5 months after graduating.
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Quote From AndrewPetelov:
Fellows I need advice. Once upon a time, when I was really upset (well I still am, but a little less), I submitted yet another 101st appi for one lab which I didn't even really read the description of.

Suddenly, I got an invitation to an interview. There have been already two informal interviews. This is a highly-ranked uni and the PI there has got a quite high h-index. I was a bit disappointed that the people I talked to, could barely speak English (even though the uni is in the US). The lab solely consists of people which come from one big and overpopulated country which I won't say the name of.

I am now being very confused. On one hand, I like the place where I work, I have an opportunity to have my own ideas realized, but I do understand that I need an appointment outside of my uni. And the position, which I applied for, seemingly has advantages (since the uni is higher ranked, the PI has a better record). But I am repelled by the national contents (this is not to offend someone, it is only my private and personal opinion and also rather negative experience), and the fact that my qualifications do not perfectly match the project. Also, my own projects would need to be suspended.

I'm at the very beginning of my path as an experienced researcher. Please support me, tell me what to do.


I think you can't answer a question like this.

It depends if you can publish something good. The odds are probably better if you are working with a PI that has a strong record but it does not necessarily have to be like this. I guess nobody will be impressed by a high ranked uni if your record is not high ranked too ;)

However, if you are prejudiced against a whole nation I would not recommend to work in a group full of people of that nationality.

Australian Uni PhD, got conflicted reports and ordered to r&r
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Quote From TreeofLife:
I'm a bit confused. Are you saying you got an R&R, but you have the option of accepting it or not? What do you mean you can defend it? What does your supervisor say?


As far as I understood it's now R&R and the question is if it is worth working another year on the thesis (probably no funding anymore and definitely fees) or if it is better to just quit and leave without the PhD, as it is likely that the examiner will fail the thesis after the resubmission anyway.

I would be also interested in your supervisor's opinion. Maybe you can work on the argumentation to prove that it has at least some new aspects. It is of course difficult as the examiner's view on the thesis will now be biased.

Unemployed :(
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Quote From KimWipes:


I am sure you'd been told education leads to lot of good things and they did! Just think about the alternatives if you did not listen to whoever told you about goodness of education. However, I bet you chose to do the PhD and pretty much we all know and (knew) that PhD is not about good jobs and salaries. So you yourself created this alter reality that a PhD leads to higher salaries and decided to go for it.


In fact, it is not that long ago that, depending on the subject, a PhD led to higher salaries. At least statistics often show that they earn more money on average. A lot of people are not aware of the situation of PhD students and automatically expect that you earn a lot of money after graduation. Maybe not the student who majored in history but several others.

Quote From kathryn15:
Quote From Eska:
Hi Kathryn, No one should feel reduced to a panic attack at the thought of socialising with colleagues.

It's just a sinking feeling... I can't go home at 5pm, instead I have to socialise with colleagues after work and it's just another chore. I have to put on my fake "social" face and pretend I'm interested in small talk, and think of things to say. It's exhausting. I'd prefer to be at home with my cat and family.


I think that is a bit strange. At some point in you life you met your husband. I assume that it was not an arranged marriage so there had to be some sort of socialising ;) You also like your family, so why do you expect that everyone else out there is horrible? I get that some people are simply not the going-out-type but some smalltalk in the office can't be that hard. There have to be some acceptable colleagues. Otherwise I would say that this is more than just being introvert and of course a handicap, because there are only a few jobs where you can completely shut yourself from everyone else. All company work needs communication. Academic work too. At least my supervisors told me that networking is half the job in terms of funding and collaborations.

Starting your own business might be a good idea if you think you are not capable of adapting to the work environment in a company. It's of course difficult to realize..

Unemployed :(
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Quote From TreeofLife:


It's not human to think like that at all. It's an option to think like that, but you don't have to. If I end up working for minimum wage for the rest of my life I will still never regret my PhD. Everyone is different. Personally I find it better to think of things as a positive experience than get bitter about them. I would expect that makes for a happier life.


We sometimes do not choose how we feel about certain things. How great would it be if people could just tell themselves to be positive about a certain thing and then it is like that. That's not how it works. She obviously had different expectations for her PhD than you have and I'm pretty sure that many PhD students would regret a PhD in her situation. Not everyone did a PhD just for the PhD's sake, so what's all the fuzz about if she comes to the conclusion that she would have been better off without doing the PhD? I think it is a valid, personal, view on her PhD. This completely depends on your personality and maybe you are just of a more positive nature in general ;) Important is that she now finds a way back on track. No matter if you regret it or not, the situation is like it is and it is definitely not hopeless.

However, I also emphasized that the negative view is influenced by the current situation. I am absolutely sure that if she finds a job and does not have all this pressure she currently has, she will look differently on the PhD and see the brighter sides. Mackem_Beefy basically told the same story.