How long has it taken people to write there first year report?

I started writing it the day I started my PhD and handed it in on Monday (9 months) but I was also doing a whole host of other things in this time. If you have some background literature or the basis of your lit review and you know what you want to do you can do it quickly. I, however, was told I would be upgrading 6 months after starting. My supervisors realised pretty quickly that was HUGELY unrealistic. To be honest, writing the basic research plan took a couple of days, filling in the justification took about a month and the lit review a couple of months.

What is your deadline?

A

We're given a guideline of 3 weeks to write it in, as the emphasis is it being a report and not a mini-thesis. Therefore, it shouldn't take too much of your time to write. Saying this, I haven't actually written mine yet as my upgrade isn't until november- the basis of mine will be my literature review.

However, A116 I'm suprised that you were allowed to upgrade after only 9 months. At my institute we cannot upgrade before a year. And it has to be before 18 months.

Silly Billy - We upgrade "normally between 9 and 18 months". My supervisors seem pretty obsessive about getting this out of the way. I think it's because my funding literally cannot go a day over 3 years. And the main supervisor isn't allowed to be the main supervisor for another student on that funding until I complete. No pressure...It was a little bit of a nightmare, 10000 words, but now it's great. I have a folder called "thesis" and that document will be the basis of my thesis. Hoorah! Also, I think my department has different rules to the rest of the institution because, without giving too much away, they are kind of seperate.

A

It's crucial that you find out what the department want for the upgrade report. At my uni, each department has different requirements for the upgrading process. Unfortantely for me, my department does not have formal guidelines for the upgrade report, and as a result, I've struggled with finding out just what is required. In my case, it's a very detailed report (huge literature review, research questions, discussions on methodology, developed methodology etc etc) and an upgrade presentation) at other unis, it's a meeting.

The upgrade presentation I had was in December 07, and the submission of the report was due in Feb 08-within my current second year.

Am I the only person on the planet who never did a first year report?

mine is due... well now. I was told July, which I took to mean end of July! At present I've barely started but I plan to have it done in two weeks. Timing may be slightly unrealistic though!

hard to say, as it was done over several months, but always doing other stuff, too.
we had to submit our first year report at the beginning of May.

however, be careful when comparing these kind of things. at some places, a first year report is 15'000 words and constitutes the upgrade report. at mine, it was 5000 words and nothing like the upgrade, which is due between 18 and 36 months in and needs to comprise 3 finished chapters. other places again, it's just a few pages of "report" on what and how you have been doing. so not really comparable at all!

oo, just had another look. mine is my upgrade report. i don't have to do end of year reports as far as i know but i'm not funded by one of the big research councils.

sorry!

A