In the last few days I have been having a dialogue with the Research Admissions tutor in a very well known University. I was interested in pursuing a PhD in an area secondary to my original area of expertise. As it happens it would be secondary to nearly all students’ expertise as no undergrad teaching takes place in said field [quite specialised then].

Said Dept have been doing some serious advertising of these 1+3’s and after discussing it with them it is evident that they are concerned they will not fill their studentship allocation. They latched onto me rather like a drowning man and a lifebelt in this respect.

is this realistic [cont]...

The problem arose in that internal applications have to be in towards the end of next week so they encouraged me to rattle something off before then. After doing some initial reading it became apparent that to develop a meaningful and interesting proposal it would take a good bit longer than a few days [more like 3 weeks]. When I pointed this out to them [they are still adverting nationally with 4 working days to go] they dropped me like a hot potato. I personally think it unrealistic to advertise a studentship [in fact there are 9] the week before applications close, certainly where applicants are unlikely to have any previous scholastic background. Interested to see what others think

What amazed we was that the phrase 'rattle something off' is theirs word-for-word.

what is the phd in?

Education and computing technolgies.

how long does the proposal have to be?

I suppose the answer to that is as long as it needs to be. That said I’m sure 1000-1500 would have sufficed [probably]. As Mia said, we can all dash of 3 or 4 sides of crap in an afternoon. Creating a worthwhile and original research proposal that will be closely scrutinised is another matter altogether [it is for me anyway]. Certainly when you are not as au fait with the literature as you’d like to be.

Maybe I'm overcomplicating all this. Is there anyone out there that from start to finish completed a proposal [including any literature search] in a couple of days [successfully]?

are you applying for a general university studentship or one that has been advertised specifically in education and computing?

Latter.

attached to a specific project?