I have just been told that i will be having my transfer talk and mini-viva soon, that along with my 1st year report need to be completed to allow me to progress properly into 2nd year. i was just wondering what sort of things i should expect from the mini-viva?
i havent done any proper lab work as such yet in that i havent got any viable results yet. the 1st year has just been really lit reviews, and collecting samples and extratcing the samples and preparing for future experiments. so i have no results to explain or discuss...
so any tips and help would be great as i am totaly unsure of what to expect!
Thanks. :-)

i'm in psychology, so it obviously might be different for your discipline, but otherwise I was in a similar position - when I did this recently I didn't have any data to show them or anything like that.

because of that, their focus was on finding out what I had done so far and what I planned to do in the future. Basically to see if what I planned to do was achievable and practical, and could realistically be completed within the 3 years.

one of the questions they ask in my discipline which I think they tend to ask most people is why is your project worthy of funding? It obviously is because you've got funding for it - but you just need to briefly describe why your area of research is important and relevant.

but my key tip is just to try and relax as much as possible - i found that nerves got the better of me a bit, and made me ramble a bit, and fill lots of gaps with eh...! so just be clear about what you've done, what you plan to do and why, and how it can be done in the timescales.

good luck!

I haven't done my transfer yet - probably will have to in the next couple of months. I did attend one recently though and the student was repeatedly asked "what's new about your work?", "what's your original contribution to the field?" etc. So I think it's important to stress that in your report and presentation it you can at all.