Overview of pm133 on PostgraduateForum.com

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Signup date: 08 Jan 2016 at 12:02am

Last login: 30 Mar 2021 at 8:40pm

Post count: 1246

pm133 1246 posts
8 years ago

Quote From cjjohnson:
Hi, I’m looking for some advice that anyone may have with the troubles I am having with regards to enrolling onto a PhD and securing funding. I completed my BSc in psychology in 2015 only achieving a 2:2 and my MSc in 2016 achieving a Merit in psychological research methods. I know I could have done way better if I had just put some real effort in however my laziness and living the party life are starting to come back to haunt me. I’m in the process of trying to apply for a PhD of my own design which I believe has great potential in the field of evolutionary psychology and perception, however, I’m starting to see big barriers, especially with obtaining university funding/scholarships because of my 2:2 at bachelors level. My question is how much will this 2:2 hold me back in terms of getting a PhD and securing funding, either internally from a university or externally from charities and trusts? Is there anyone else in my situation or has been?

Thanks for reading.

The 2:2 is not great but you have fixed that with the Masters. I dont see any problem in principle but your lack of a distinction might be an issue depending on how many others apply tp the same position.

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pm133 1246 posts
8 years ago

[quote]Quote From naturalproduct:
Hi, I'm new here, and wanted to ask about the impact of grades (in certain years) on a PhD application (assuming that references are good).
I study an MSci Chemistry degree, and will be entering 4th year this coming September.
My 1st and 2nd year results were mid 2.1's (~65%), however, upon receiving my 3rd year result last month I am rather worried; I have unfortunately ended up with a 2.2 (59%).
The average across the first 3 years totals to approximately 62%; now my MSci year counts for 40% of the entire degree.
I believe the usual time for PhD applications are November/December onwards?
However, I am under the influence that my 3rd year result will greatly impact the application seeing as at the current time, the 3rd year mark will be the most influential seeing as it is the most recent result and so far the hardest out of the first 3 years (is this a correct assumption to make?).
Now what I wish to ask is if I manage to score a strong first in the MSci year, will that outweigh the results of the first 3 years and put me in a better position to successfully obtain a PhD place? (The project is worth 75% and exams are 25% weightings in the MSci year).
And in this regard, will it be more or less beneficial to apply for a PhD once my MSci year is complete?
I wish to undertake a PhD within one of the top 5 UK institutions (I will not name it) as some of the projects I am very interested in (still narrowing it down) have supervisors there.
Many Thanks in advance

If you are grading as low as 59% it doesnt matter what university you are at - you have a problem. Your grade average over all your years is not really any better. Having said that you could still be successful but remember one thing.....Getting onto a PhD is easy in comparison to actually successfully completing one without running out of funding. I would not recommend anyone taking on a PhD with such poor grades. Really you need to be getting a first. Having said that, people do manage to turn things around but you are making a very tough task much harder if you dont have a first.

You are talking about 80% being possible but speaking frankly, your grades are going in the opposite direction and you will definitely have trouble persuading anyone that you can miraculously turn this around. You have no evidence to suggest that is possible and in my opinion the fact that your university is seemingly highly rated, whatever that means, is probably not relevant in that respect. By all means apply, and you certainly should if that is what you want to do, but my strong advice is for you to make turning your poor grades around your top priority and consider the possibility that you might have to do a PhD elsewhere.

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pm133 1246 posts
8 years ago

Quote From alexandercarey1989:
I already submitted PhD thesis yesterday. I heard from the department that I will have to wait for at least 7 weeks before viva voce. I also heard from my seniors that sometimes they had to wait for more than a semester before they could undergo viva examination. Based on your previous experiences, how long did you have to wait for viva exam? What did you do in between?

My supervisor already had examiners to examine my thesis but I just don't know for how long I have to wait.

I had to wait about 7 weeks I think, which is disgraceful in my opinion. During the break I finished off my last two pieces of work ready for publishing. I then reread the entire thesis with a few weeks to go. Horrible time. Glad it is over,

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pm133 1246 posts
8 years ago

Quote From Coarvi:

Quote From helebon:
From my coaching session, one technique for being productive is the 10 Minute Rule. You do something for 10 minutes then move onto another task.
You have the paper work for the tasks in separate piles on the desk ready to start. Set yourself an alarm on your mobile phone for example.
It does work as the thought of just 10 minutes work is ok when you feel less motivated. Then have regular breaks. I ended up working more than 10 mins on each task.

Good ideas. Usually, when I first get started on something, I manage to stay productive for some hours (with small breaks of course). My issue is mainly to actually get started. It just feel so overwhelming. Usually my tasks are of the type "figure out why this code is not working" or "come up with new specifications since the ones I have suck". So it's difficult to think of specific tasks since it often requires me to go through a lot of code and think what to do. And I am SO SICK of codes! I feel more qualified for a job in IT than finance/economics after this, even though all my education so far is within finance...

I am no expert but I would have thougt that finance and economics both involve heavy amounts of programming.
Am I missing something here?

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pm133 1246 posts
8 years ago

Quote From TreeofLife:
Have attempted to job seek outside of academia, my take on it is that a PhD isn't worth a damn when it comes to "experience". Employers couldn't have cared less about those so-called transferable skills from my PhD. The reason I was getting interviews was based on job skills from 5 years ago. Every time I gave an example of something from my PhD in an interview, they were dismissive and asked for a work example. And to be fair, my work examples are far superior than anything my PhD could offer.

I think as PhD students, we are led to believe we are fantastic and there's so much opportunity out there for us. I don't believe this to be true. Employers either don't understand the true nature of a PhD ("it's just another degree") or don't value the skills it confers. I think it's a hindrance to getting many jobs outside of academia.

This is one of the main reasons I want to stick in academia: at least someone values my ability and wants to pay me well for it.

Could it be that you are not particularly good at selling yourself to industry?
I know its a cheeky question but I ask because you clearly dont believe your PhD skills are worth anything in industry. If that is your mindset I would pretty much guess an employer will see that in your body language.
The reality is that industry is full of PhD grads many of whom are going straight in at senior level. I personally know of dozens of them.

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pm133 1246 posts
8 years ago

Quote From cloudofash:

I agree. I often wonder how is it justifiable that we are researching first world illnesses but milions of people are dying because they have no access to clean water.

That is a good example but in fairness the problem you are describing is not down to a shortage of money. It is down to corruption in the affected countries. No amount of money will fix it without fundamental structural reform.

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pm133 1246 posts
8 years ago

Quote From Tusco:
Unfortunately, I believe that if you want to work outside academia, recruiters will always value more previous professional job experiences than a PhD.
Also consider that a PhD is a very specialized piece work, often with a narrow scope, therefore you might learn much less than you think; while the job market doesn't require you to know how to do perfectly something but to be able to handle many different things and projects.
Anyway in your field is a gamble that you can take without risking too much. If you were going to apply for a PhD in the humanities or social sciences (except economics perhaps) I would say stay very clear of a PhD.
I earned one through great pains and now I struggle badly in the job market but mine was in the social sciences.

The specialisation issue is really not relevant.
A PhD comes with an absolute mountain of transferrable skills a small list of which is detailed here:
http://www.jobs.ac.uk/careers-advice/studentships/1541/reflecting-on-the-value-of-your-phd-what-are-employers-looking-for

Your university should have a huge list of skills you should be able to gain.

It is really important to thnk outside the box here.

It's quite concerning to see so many people talk about having no experience seemingly unaware that they have demonstrated repeatedly for 4 years or more that they have an abundance of experience in applying these skills.

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pm133 1246 posts
8 years ago

Quote From tru:
okra, can you apply for R&D position in industry? I do agree with pm133 that networking will help u get d job. But I stand by that it is easier to get in with a master than Phd and that work experience is more valued than higher qualification. While my friends did get a good R&D positions in companies, many of their colleagues do not have a PhD. Companies will train and retain their good R & D staff. Could u work for the company first, then maybe ask them to sponsor your PhD if you really want to it later?

I am not talking about networking.
I am talking about treating finding a job as a full time job in itself.
Experience is not absolutely necessary either - I have changed career more than once without any experience by re-training myself.

What needs to be done to ease the process of finding a job is for people to consider a longer timescale. Target the jobs you want and the employers (of all sizes) who use those skills. Develop a solid understanding of the skills you need well in advance of applying. Then start finding employees of those companies on LinkedIn who are advertising that they work in a related area. Contact them or send them your CV and chances are they will pass it to a hiring manager. In some cases your CV will land on a hirers desk before a job is even advertised or considered. Many companies may even create a role specifically for you if they fear you will end up at their conpetitor.

The major probolem with today's job seekers is that they wait until they need or want a job before doing any of this and then they are in panic mode trying to secure a position before their current contract runs out. Learning to play the long game is the key to success.

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pm133 1246 posts
8 years ago

Quote From Pjlu:

I would think hard sciences and technology would be considered by many as still reliable. 'Medicine' would be another such rock, neuroscience, physics perhaps and engineering and the sciences behind space exploration and environmental science.

There is an ideal behind 'research' and 'scholarship' and that is the pursuit of 'truth' or 'truths' that explain who we are, how our world operates, and how we can extend and enhance knowledge through research and scholarship to benefit all (people, creatures, systems and environments). I would like to think-I hope- that most of us, more of us have these same values and ideals behind our work. I guess that is why it cuts so deeply when we learn about plagiarism, falsified results, and finally understand that luck and playing the political games can sometimes (not always) be behind success in academia-more so than merit on occasions.

I think this is turning into a very decent and interesting thread.

It would absolutely be a mistake to consider hard sciences and technology as reliable. Both worlds are crammed full of people doing utterly useless research with no credible pretence at even aiming at practical usage. Here is a very simple and obvious example. If academic science is so convinced of its worth, why does it insist on producing indecipherable papers written in deliberately archaic language and locking them away behind pay walls? Who are they writing these articles for? It certainly isn't the general public who are paying for all this nonsense.

The first sentence of your second paragraph is the core of the pack of lies which academic science spouts in order to justify its existence and secure funding. Almost nobody is involved in uncovering "truths" or producing any benefits whatsoever to society.

I understand that we need people doing genuinely out of the box stuff but right now, in the depths of our economic problems, academic science has a duty in my opinion to step up and start using scarce public money to start producing more useful outputs that could realistically help society. In short, science needs to get its finger out and start doing something to justify its vast budget.

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pm133 1246 posts
8 years ago

Quote From TreeofLife:
Agree with everything pm133 said... but there's still no job I would rather be doing :P

:-D
That is actually a little depressing though.

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pm133 1246 posts
8 years ago

Quote From helebon:
It's interesting about the bullying and abuse by supervisors. It puts me off considering staying in academia.

I've had some human rights training and I will be looking to get more of this, it also relates to some degree in my research area.

Supervisors who bully are they more likely to respect those (PhD students etc) that have had human rights training? and the supervisor is aware they have had this training.

My personal opinion is that whilst there are many exceptions, I still feel the majority of supervisors on the whole simply not interested in your or your career development. Students and postdocs are there as cheap labour to generate papers and further the career of the academic. Industry has cottoned onto this as well with the latest wheeze being to hire PhD students and temporary postdocs rather than actual staff. This is what happens when you have too many PhDs being awarded - a glut of supply, little demand and wages and conditions go down the pan.

The solution? Self employment. As PhD grads, we are perfect for this.

Too few PhD graduates in my opinion are attempting to establish their own companies to avoid all of this abuse. We have just spent 4 years learning how to wipe our own backsides. Why on earth are so many of us prepared to then deliberately shackle ourselves to employers who don't respect our achievements?

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pm133 1246 posts
8 years ago

My background is in science. My reasons for leaving academia behind are too long to put in one posts but here are some:-

1) Not interested in pissing away 5 to 10 years desperately trying to get a job I could already do today.

2) I am interested in research and therefore have no interest in a permanent academic post which would essentially be an administration job.

3) Between grade inflation for students, deliberately submitting articles to paywall journals in pursuit of impact factors (causing the funding tax payer to pay twice for the same research), research funding preferentially directed to big name groups and a huge percentage of research being fabricated, academia is totally and utterly corrupt from the ground up. I have absolutely no wish to spend my life in that environment and I certainly don't want to be part of enabling this current state of affairs.

4) Academia is reductivist in nature which means it is hard to get funded for a cross-disciplinary project unless you hire people to do the bits you can't do. I have no interest in this sort of environment because it means I can usually only ever work on stuff I can already demonstrate competence in.

5) Relatively few groups are attempting to solve real world problems with even the remotest pretence of practical applicability.

6) Bullying and other abuse of postdocs and phd students by supervisors.

7) Deliberate "sexing up" of research potential in order to get funding. I have no interest in competing in that sort of market.

8) Male, pale and stale staffing. No diversity. Who would possibly want to waste their career in that stultifying atmosphere?

9) Office politics. Just say no.

10) Lecturers hired not on their ability to teach but on their ability to bring in funding.

11) Absolutely no meaningful oversight for teaching standards or research standards.

12) New students left to fathom out lab safety on their own or via postdocs and other PhD students. I wonder how many deaths we need before proper professional lab training is provided.

Those are just a handful of the problems which leap to mind.

Academia is in an appalling state and needs urgently dragged into the 21st century. I am so angry about this I am tempted to start lobbying politicians about it to publicise what goes on.

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pm133 1246 posts
8 years ago

Quote From tru:
Trust me, a job search for industry positions without much work experience after PhD is a real pain (overqualified, underexperienced). If you take extended leave without pay, you lose a lot of your seniority.

I would disagree with this.
If you are only thinking about jobs which are advertised or are only targetting large companies then yes you can have problems.
In the UK we have more than 2 million companies out there and 90% of all jobs are never advertised. People need to get proactive nowadays. Target small companies and dont wait for job advert would be my advice.

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pm133 1246 posts
8 years ago

This supervisor sounds like he has many faults but so does this student.

Her initial chat with him was so appallingly bad that she needs to accept a fair degree of personal responsibility for pressing ahead and taking this PhD in the first place.

She is taking almost no blame for this and in doing so appears to have missed a valuable lesson. I would like to know why she persisted in taking a PhD with him when she knew what he was like.

It would also be interesting to know why she "craves encouragement". That seems overly needy to me and needy people are not well disposed to doing well as independent researchers.

I can see why she is upset but her attitude in that article comes across as a little "entitled", lacking a bit in self awareness and lacking any serious attempt at critiquing her own decisions.

Maybe I am being a bit harsh though.

My advice to anyone undertaking a PhD is to ask better questions of your supervisor during the interview. Ask about how they like to work, their expectations of you, expected working hours and day, expected publication rates etc. If you can see a problem at this stage then walk away and go elsewhere.

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pm133 1246 posts
8 years ago

Quote From pm133:

Quote From Mackem_Beefy:
A couple of points worth adding.

Firstly, I was self-funded (i.e. received no funding) for my original Masters in 1994.

Secondly, it's now very clear that if I don't undertake retraining, it's going to be very difficult for me to find meaningful employment.

Regards,

Ian

Going by your "mackem" user name I am assuming you are living in England (Sunderland?) so I can't comment on the loan situation south of the border.

I would say though that I disagree with your second point where you said - "Secondly, it's now very clear that if I don't undertake retraining, it's going to be very difficult for me to find meaningful employment."
Obviously certain careers might be out of reach but it's not necessarily true that you won't find any meaningful employment whatsoever without going through a Masters or a PhD.
Don't assume your first Masters or PhD are either obsolete or too specialised either.
You can very quickly brush up on the Masters stuff and the PhD brings a whole heap of generic skills.
It is still the case that a lot of employers think a fresh graduate needs training almost from scratch. Graduates are like babies. They can't be trusted with anything. That was definitely the case 30 years ago and I am pretty certain it is more common now with rampant grade inflation brought on by league table obsession. It is well worth knowing this and adapting your CV accordingly.

Are you sure you have considered all the other options?

Overview of pm133

Recent Posts

PhD with a 2:2 (help!)

Has this ever been done to get a PhD before?

How long did you wait for PhD viva voce and what did you do in between?

No motivation, always procrastinating - is there any hope?

Is a PhD worth it for me?

Why did you leave/are considering leaving academia?

Is a PhD worth it for me?

Is a PhD worth it for me?

Why did you leave/are considering leaving academia?

Why did you leave/are considering leaving academia?

Why did you leave/are considering leaving academia?

Why did you leave/are considering leaving academia?

Is a PhD worth it for me?

Here's why your supervisor is terrible:

Funding for Masters when you already have a PhD