Hi everyone,

I am a 21 year old Chemistry student currently in his final year of his masters degree at the University of Strathclyde.

Part of my masters degree is a compulsory 1 year placement in industry in our fourth year of study. I decided to take this opportunity and go to France for the year, despite the fact I didn’t speak the language.

Now it’s time to start thinking about a potential PhD or to try and find a job after my final year of studies.

I have applied a lot of thought into a potential PhD and it is something I am about 75% sure (at the moment) I want to do. But PhD opportunities are always going to be limited.

This is of course completely understandable, but from my experience in France, I feel that I have the right frame of mind to undertake a PhD abroad. This would both increase the possibility of finding a program that will interest me, as well as allowing me to experience the culture of a different country. Something I have thoroughly enjoyed in my time over here in France.

Possible destinations are America, Canada, Australia, France and Germany.

But with all this ambition and desire it's hard to find someone that has done what I have in mind. There are multiple sites where people give their opinion about the good and the bad of studying abroad. But, it has been hard to find a real person to relate to.

So I have some questions if anyone is able to help:

- What country did you decide to do your PhD in?
- Funding varies depending on the program / country, but if you did do one at a foreign university, did you find it difficult?
- Would you recommend it?
- Has it been beneficial to you?
- Did you find more PhD programs available to you when you did decide to go abroad?
- Where are you now?
- Was applying to a different country hard?

Generally, what was it like? the more details the better.

Thanks for your response in advance.

Steven

Can anyone help stevelee?

Hi,

I'm doing a PhD in Helsinki, Finland. I did my masters and bachelors in Sheffield, UK. I had other offers from big engineering firms in the UK, Holland and Belgium, but the sense of adventure was too much to resist. Finland it was!

From beginning to end, the application period took 10 months. There were some rather complex funding requirements related to filling certain quotas. After initially being accepted for the position, they revoked the offer and gave me a 6 month trainee contract. I rejected that and they reinstalled their original offer. This was quite frustrating as I had turned down my offers in the UK, Holland and Belgium!

I've been out here for three years. I was promised full funding, interesting projects, the opportunity to work with Finnish companies and to work in English in a friendly, multicultural environment. None of those promises were kept. For the last 6months of my contract and the following 12 months, i have had/will have 50% funding and no projects. The Finnish companies I have worked with don't want to have foreign PhD students on their projects, so networking is rather difficult! I've had 4 meetings with my supervisor in the past 3 years. It seems that i was brought in to satisfy company directives that state that a certain number of persons employed should be non-Finnish. But rather contradictory to that, I'm the last foreigner in my team of 120 people after they sacked the other 6 non-Finnish persons due to corporate restructuring. I have a fixed term contract which can't be annulled, however i can be ignored until the contract ends.

But it's not all bad. I've become very independent and self-reliant. I've presented at 14 conferences across Europe and the US. I'm familiar with most tests in my research area. I made a lot of friends in other research centres and i hope to use that to my advantage when i leave this company.

My recommendations?

1) Go to a place that has a track record of success when integrating non-natives. Countries such as France, Germany, Sweden and Holland appear to be good for this, from the experiences of other students i've met at conferences.
2) Arrange a paid trial period first. Get a feel of the place
3) Don't come to Finland!

Hi,

I am also agree with saxwidby recommendations. I was pursuing my PhD in Norway from last four years and my supervisor never care about my project and department also don't care about international students/researchers . it is difficult to make any network inside and outside academia since local people not open to foreigners. At the end i have to leave Norway and now working in Germany as researcher. I found completely opposite environment here in Germany. I definitely recommend to go for PhD in sweden, denmark, germany, and holland as my most of friend have not face any problem while doing phd in these countries and they also enjoyed full support from supervisor, groups and local people. But I also suggest you to enquire about supervisor thoroughly before join any group for PhD.

Best Wishes

I realise this is an old post, but thought I'd post my experience in case it is helpful to anyone else. I don't have a PhD, but am in my final year of a 3-year MFA degree in the USA. Based on my experiences here, I would definitely recommend studying abroad.

FUNDING: A major reason to come here was the availability of funding/relative scarcity of funding in the UK. I was awarded a teaching assistantship and several scholarships by my university here, as well as outside scholarships by charitable bodies in the UK and the US. I was also able to add to this by winning prizes and conference funds. After I was offered a place here I deferred for a year which, although frustrating, put me in a better position to apply for outside funding, since I could put a guaranteed place down on my applications.

VISAS were a major source of stress, though in the end there was no problem (I suppose this is not an issue within the EU). I particularly hated having to ask my parents for their bank statements in case the visa officer asked to see evidence of more funds than I had attracted in scholarships. Be aware that the visa officer can potentially deny you a visa, even if you have a confirmed offer from a bona fide university.

LANGUAGE has not of course been so much of an issue here, though I was initially rather paranoid about cultural differences, and even minor differences like punctuation styles. Based on my brief experience working in France, I would be prepared to find the experience of speaking a foreign language very mentally tiring and potentially isolating.

OTHER CROSS-CULTURAL DIFFERENCES: I'm quite aware that I am in a small way an ambassador for my country, so I suppose this has been an extra spur for me to do well here. I'm now contemplating a return to the UK, so I am hoping that my time abroad will add something interesting to my CV.

Hello!
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