======= Date Modified 03 Mar 2009 14:38:50 =======
Well the thing is most university's have their own reference form (a number of which are pdf or have stupid unrespectable boxes in word). Should I ignore these?


4 applications?! Damn so far I have had 1 that I got a response from where the at the time (and 2nd time) of an arrange phone interview the person never phoned. Kind of worried I am doing this all wrong on how to apply properly.

Hi i have a few questsions.

Why do I have to submit 2 referance forms at the same time as my CV? What if my application is weak then pestering my refarees wouldnt have been needed. I would have thought it would make more sence to apply then the university says x CV is good so requests referances then good referances would get interviews.

It feels like I am pestering my referances every time I apply to a PhD. How many universitys is normal to apply to?

Also what do you do if you only have 1 good refaree. I have my MSc supervisor and a lecturer that I dont think remembers me (not even sure if he sent off the one i gave him). I had a tendancy to keep myself to myself so I dont really have another contact.

I am thinking of applying for some PhDs but I am concerned on selecting a topic that might not be right. The problem is because of this I have limited the scope of topics to search for. So what if I widen my topic choice and pick something unsuitable but only find out once I have started? How badly is it frowned upon to drop out and how much would this hurt further applications.

Just as an update i got an automated responce filled with a ton of general answers to questions i never asked and kind of missing the question i asked... but never mind. It did seem to hint at actually emailing specific supervisors to ask if they have anything so now i just have to think of what to say.

I am going to email some guy at Edinburgh since on his profile it says his interests are evolutionary computation just need to think of what to ask. kind of concerned it will just be ignored as spam or that he will see it as bothering him and pointless.

This post size limit is a bit frustrating. Surely it would make more sense to use something like phpbb which is free cheap and easy.

My background. I got BSc AI & Robotics but never did the honors, I moved to do a 2nd degree but ran out of money before I could finish (or really get going). I then looked for work and got a job for a year at a company that makes laser systems for boats. Wasnt that interesting so did a MSc Information systems and finished with distinction and got the class (or school not really sure but I seemed to be about the only person to get it) prize. Computing suits me more the BSc was way to electronics based which didnt suit me. Having read this site the not having honors concerns me although my masters supervisor said i should be able to get a PhD without too much problems (unless he meant a pizza theres a pizza place here called phd...pizza home delivery!)

The 2 on jobs.ac.uk in Scotland are actually just general adverts saying "we have projects" and I looked at all of them already.

Got a lovely standard crappy response from Edinburgh University that had next to nothing to do with my actual inquiry. They basically pointed me on to their website with various links.

I also have to say that is a pretty bold claim to go through every project in every university in a given field. I spent 6 hours going through the projects and sub departments and even some other departments looking for any information I could get about Edinburgh university. I checked what all their lecturers were interested in, their past projects, currant projects, proposed projects, research groups... I read as much as I could not just skimmed titles. Yes i could probably skim titles of a project but that wont give me much information into the project. Some bad titles may actually be interesting so i choose to look into what each project is about and try understand it before I make judgment. STILL I have yet to find one in the area of evolutionary computation despite finding many projects that have been done with them.

On a further note i dont have the luxury of being able to go to any university in the UK... Scotland is about as far as i can go due to personal reasons.

My frustration is the lack of computing projects on this site, on jobs.ac.uk and proposed on the university websites. You would also question if you are doing things right if you found no projects about the field you are interested in. I ran on the assumption it was just a bad time of year to be looking but now 2 months later Im actually questioning if Im even going about this the right way. I've emailed Edinburgh this past week and am waiting for a reply to see if they have any other projects not advertised.

Are you kidding me? I have been searching for hours a day for quite some time now. I began trying find out about PhDs and where to find them in December. I've been looking at this website and jobs.ac.uk for the past 2 months at least every 2nd day. There is a huge difference between not putting in effort and legitimately being unsure if I am even looking in the right places. For your information I've exactly ZERO people to ask about this other than here on the forums due to the people I was in contact with at university all leaving the university.

I have not used the times list I preferred the RAE ratings. I have looked through and yes you can cut out maybe 50-60 universitys that have something in the title suggesting arts or medicine. That however still leaves a large number of universities. Given that each University's website is structured in their own way finding all of the research projects they have to offer is a next to imposable task given the time frame. I have checked the top computing universitys but like I said Scottish ones were my focus. I was looking to find an easier way to browse computing projects on a website such as this. This one seems dominated by medical and biological research so i was running on the assumption there is passably another site that is heavy on computing.

I have been to www.jobs.ac.uk also but it does not seem to have much

firefox has some built in spell checker that kind of sucks.....

I have searched some of the Scottish University websites but not any of the English ones. I don't know what university's to look at. there is something like 160 university's and searching all of them would take a very long time. I searched for a long time on the Edinburgh website and found a few PhDs but it does not seem to be anything like the number they claim to have running at any one time so I am thinking they have others on another page.

At the moment I am just finding it rather frustrating that I feel I need a PhD in finding PhDs before i even start looking....

Oh and I am from the UK and am preferably looking for a Scotland based institute but I might have to go anywhere.

Why does this site mainly consist of research involved with biology and medicine?

I am interested in doing a PhD in artificial inelegance and more specifically evolutionary computation or mimicking/simulating the evolution and life. I cant find anything and this site seems to lack any projects within computing departments.

Any help would be appreciated as i feel I am running out of time to apply