As regards how long universities will wait before you give them a yes or no answer, that depends on a lots of different factors. if the position you are applying for is a studentship on a very important project, they are likely to want an answer quite quickly if they offer it to you. There might not be much interest in some studentships, in which case you will probably have a lot of time to think about it. I was offered a PhD position a number of months ago and still havent given them an answer. I could probably contact them in a few months time to say yes and it would still be available.

I hope this helps

azad. that has to be the most random reply to a thread I have ever heard. explain to me how this answers the question posed by this thread? ( even though I think its a silly question in the first place)



how many offers should one have, and how long will universities wait?

my answer is:

I dont think it is a case that you should have to hold out for lots of offers before you accept one as long as you are offered a position you are sure is the right one for you. But i do think it is a good idea to apply to a number of positions and discuss projects with a number of supervisors before committing to a particular PhD program.

Sounds to me like golf pro doesnt have a high opinion of the profession at all. I can understand why some people have this view

But I wouldnt say secondary school teaching is an easy job by any stretch of the imagination. It's easy to become a teacher but difficult to be a great teacher.

I suppose the moral of the sory is, being nice gets you nowhere in academia. Had I said nothing and this girl was fired, we probably could of got a post doc on board with the right expertise for the project and who might have been interested in offering support and guidance to first year phd like myself.

another kind of funny story or call it a valuable lesson?

A post doc I worked with( well tried to work with) had a big row with my old supervisor. So she was in the process of writing this big long email to him at the end of which she said:

"If you are going to fire me, then go ahead I am already looking for a new job" ( clever girl )

what she really meant to say was "if you decide to fire me i will look for a new position"

Seen as I'm a nice guy I asked her to change this part and I reckon it saved here job.

I dont know why I ever did this seen as all this girl ever did was to make it her business to complain to my supervisor about me.

He has tried to fire her since then but was told by the univeristy it could take up to a year to get rid of her. Meanwhile she is still there and I am not ( without a PhD)

I know a guy in my old research group who went on to do second level teaching. I think having a PhD gives you a great advantage in teaching because you have studied science to the highest level and should have a wealth of knowledge on a lot of aspects of the subject

the bad thing that i can see is that initially, trainee teachers get paid very badly when thay start off. the guy i knew who went on to do teaching got paid less than my EPRSC stipend at the start and had a really hard time with students.

But best of luck with that. could be a very enjoyable career for you. its something im considering myself

Developing computer games is a long expensive process. It can up to three years and cost millions of dollars to develop a game. Games are getting more realistic and smarter, so there is a lot of scope for the development of techniques and technologies in AI, Graphics and lots of other areas...

I doubt you are likely to find degrees which emphasis specific patented technologies. I would say if you’re this interested in wii then go get a job with Nintendo

I don’t think he/she means a degree in playing video games (as much as i would have loved to have done something like that). I assume he means Msc and PhD. The only Masters I know of in Gaming software actually started this year at my old uni the University of Dublin, Trinity College

It’s a proper masters in computer science and the thesis is expected to be of publishable standard. I assumed they emphasise this point to weed out any people who think its going to be an easy course. It looks like a really good qualification to have for anyone who either wants to work in the industry or do related research.


Computer gaming at first hand doesn’t seem like a very academic subject, but it can be surprisingly technical. ive seen companies that develop computer games advertising positions for people with PhD qualifications in physics and computer science.....

a very useful tip which can also save time is to search amazon and wiley for relevant texts books which may be useful. they usually give a peek at table of contents and some passages from the book. so you can usually find out quicky enough what books are useful before you even step foot in the library.

im not really sure what you asking? if you already have your research questions in mind thats a good start. if you know exactly what information you need to look for then try searching text books first. they usually cite seminal papers. once you know what these papers/authors are then you should be able to find link to pretty much every paper ever written on the topic you are researching.

im not sure if you know this but web of knowledge has the facility whereby you can find what papers have cited a particular paper( seminal paper for example )

also when you input a search for a given key word you input into the web of knowledge search engine, you can find the most widely cited authors for that keyword

using these two features alone can give you access to a lot of very important papers in your feild.

How about searching on www.getalife.com ;-s

Seriously dude, show a little bit of common sense. You're wasting people's time by asking stupid questions like this. If you were looking for a post doc in a specific topic related to robotics then maybe someone would be able to help. You have a degree/masters in electronic engineering and are doing a PhD in robotics? So you have/ maybe will obtain qualifications valuable in many industies but sound like you have no idea of what kind of career opportunites are available to you and you have made no effort to find out what jobs are out there. Show some initiative and find out for yourself what jobs are out there.

I can tell you will go far.... best of luck with that

I always think its nice to hear funny academic related stories when I have had a bad day in the lab.

I heard of this one guy who wrote a note in the middle of his PhD thesis to the examiner saying: "if you read this I will buy you a bottle of whiskey " clearly the examiner hadnt read this line but the smart arse thought it would be a good idea to point this out to him in his viva. needless to say the examiner wasn't impressed and he failed the student.

Qtpie. Ive talked about my situation on a number of threads. I, like you hope my experiences can help other people avoid the Pitfalls which ultimateley doomed my PhD. I belive that had I been a little bit street smarter, so to speak, my PhD could have been a lot more successful

to sum things up. My Phd was a disaster and I dropped out after one year.but something inside still has a hunger for research and a belief that I can succeed with the right topic and a supervisor who doesnt make it his business to shaft his own students.

It suffices to say my (EX) supervisor is a nasty piece of work, who has been accused by members of his own research team of intellectual property theft ( not in public of course)

My hope is that someday he will get what is coming to him. What goes around comes around

Is there reasonable, logical justification for your supervisor to want you do do that project over the other ones? i.e is that line of enquiry likely to be more fruitful? Will the output result in more papers? are the potential results of greater interest to the academic community? or is it just a case that this is what he is interested in?


Have a word with someone other than your supervisor in confidence in the department and see what they say (maybe your advisor/tutor or head of department). They should be able to tell you straight off if you have to do your supervisors bidding or you actually have a say in the matter. If anything they should at least be able to arbitrate if push comes to shove.

Sounds like a tricky one. Where does your funding some from? Your funding must be attached to a grant which your supervisor got from one of the research councils, unless you secured funding yourself. If it explicitly says on the grant proposal that the stipend you have is for work to be done on the project you dont like, well then that should be a no brainer. But if its not explicit, I am not sure how to approach it.

The kind of PhD you are doing seems to be quite common in Biology and Chemistry feilds. Am I correct? These programs are generally advertised as four year programs where you spend your first year working on maybe three mini projects, one of which you write up as a masters thesis. After this you choose the PhD topic " in consultation with your supervisor " It seems to defeat the purpose of doing exploratory cases if you have no say in what your PhD topic is going to be.