Hello everyone,

I found out yesterday that I wasn't successful in obtaining a studentship. So, now it's back to the drawing board and finding more to apply to...

Anyway, I want to know when is the best time to search for PhDs? They are obviously pretty fairly thin on the ground at this time of year.

Thank you!

Have you only applied for 1 studentship?

I applied for about 20 studentships, interviewed for 5 (with 2 more interview offers after I'd accepted an offer), then got a studentship.

This time of year isn't the best time of year!

In the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities most studentships are advertised in Jan - April, usually for a September/October start in the same year. For this reason studentships will be very thin on the ground at this time of year, universities will be getting ready for the start of the new academic year and postgrauate admissions will be working on preparing for the new PhD students starting this month or next.

Best bet would be to use the next few months to work on improving/updating your research proposal and application, ready to apply for new studentships at the start of 2012. I assume that science type PhD studentships follow the same sort of cycle, but there might be a few more of them advertised throughout the year. However, with cutbacks in university funding studentships or funding of any kind at all is going to become less and less common, and those that are advertised will have even greater competition. Good luck!

I found that Cambridge, Oxford, UCL, (i.e. univerisities at the top of the tables) tend to advertise their programmes around October. My application to Cambridge had to be in for the 15th November last year with the interview before christmas. I personally found that there is no hard and fast rules in the science PhD field, a friend from QMUL knew she had an offer before Christmas whilst I wasn't interviewed until Easter!

Hi Joze

Sorry to hear that you were turned down this time round.  Whilst it isn't the busiest time of year for recruiting PhD students, anyone who is advertising now will probably be looking for somebody to start very quickly. PhD's starting October 2012 will begin to be advertised in October, but some may not be advertised until March or April.  Keep an eye on the New PhD Projects section of FindAPhD - even at this time of year new opportunities are added every day.