if I find my self unhappy in mid of my PhD 2nd year and wanted to switch university and supervisor, slightly change my Thesis, will I need to start at year 1 of a new PhD or can I gain from the 2 years in a graduate program and complete my 3rd year with a new supervisor at a new university, with presenting a thesis that is satisfactory to my new supervisor?

what is key
the supervisor -
the amount years registered in a PhD program
or the University.

the thesis has no lab work or stat. in it, it is mostly based on a review of existing literature to draw new insight in the field of cognitive psychology.

any help will be appreciated

Hu

pririties are different for diff people. If you are in a position to make a choice between intelelllectual and financial criteria, considering its a very very very hard choice to make, make that choice. If you have to follow the funds, go get the phd done and you can always change gear.

If its a UK univ from where you switch to another UK univ, many univs allow transfer without losing year. If its overseas univ, you may be told to start from scratch.

Ref your pririties, for me, it was my project and my supervisor. I had a hellish time till I even considered accepting a US fellowhsip and withdrawing 2 yrs later to work with this academic in the UK, and start phd from scratch again till she accepted me this yr itself, and i joined the UK.

Best

does the supervisor have that sort of discretion, ?? is there a concept of transferring universities, in a PhD program, do universities do so if the supervisor is willing to take me on with the merits of my thesis? and is advocating on my behalf? is each institution different? I am in European university, but would wish to go to a US or Canadian one.

Again, this is so highly variable from paper to case that one cant say. In my instance, I had declined the offer at my university for another place in the US, bcos I hadnt been assigned to the person I wanted to work with. I went ahead with admission at that place, and suddenly in June I withdrew the moment this scholar offered to supervise me. It was way way way beyond the deadline for new applications etc etc. In this case, i had worked with this scholar for 1.5 months and I loved my interactions which made this decision so easy tat I left all that money in 2 secs.

So u see, it totaly depends on what your equation is. In any case I think I am confident that UK schools wont allow you to transfer, if you are from a non UK Phd.

Oh I see you want to transfer to the US. The US has a strong coursework component which I dont think they are willing to forego, so i doubt whether they wil consider non US or non Canada transfers as Euro or UK phds have a different format in that there isnt any coursework...still, you should totally check this out with people in a US program, or better still why dont you right to some grad prog administrator of the schools you are interested in working at and maybe they will sort it out best for yoU!