Had my first and only (so far) PhD interview yesterday and I'm so upset about it! It was for a well respected cancer centre and I had to give a 10min presentation on my undergraduate honours project (which is nowhere near completion!) and then had 3 individual interviews followed by a panel interview.

I was really worried about the presentation but think I did the best in that part. I had one interview with a really senior scientist and a panel interview which both went quite badly. They asked me lots of detailed mechanisms and I felt suddenly aware of how little I actually know! I can't work out what level of detail they expect you to know and what is speculative. I don't know if they expected me to know the answers to the technical questions and by not knowing I failed or if they were just trying to gage my understanding and honesty! So frustrating! I had 2 meetings with the supervisors which were really different, really informal and just nice chats.

I feel like I didn't do well but I really want to do research there :-(

Also, I'm not sure I want to face another panel interview again, ever! Lol. Is it usual to have a good cop bad cop format? Anyone with a similar experience?

In my exerience of a PhD interview, I was aware of the project subject area so did a bit of reading around prior to the interview. The interview comprised three interviewers (panel) and myself. I was asked about my previous studies, work and me to start with and then it moved on to the specific project with some much harder questions with depth to them. Some of the questions were too specialised for me to answer with my existing knowledge but I stated that 'whilst I did not have the knowledge to answer the question I would be very keen to learn this with their guidance'. I personally prefer to be honest about this than try to make a convincing but incorrect answer! After my interview I felt a bit deflated as I couldn't answer everything to my satisfaction but this is where the interview panel can gauge what you know and what you would need to learn. As I travelled home from the interview the panel phoned my home to offer me the funded PhD!

So don't feel demoralised by this experience, there are lots of candidates for few PhDs presently so competition is hard. You cannot be expected to know all about the PhD they have advertised otherwise it wouldn't be a valid project. They will take some time to decide the right candidate and even then the successful candidate may turn it down! As it was only yesterday, you don't know that you haven't been successful!