Hello guys and gals,

I am looking to apply for a PhD in Australia and have just recently started doing my research on the whole application process.

My background is the following: I have a Bachelor of Science in molecular biology from an Austrian (no Kangaroos in Austria) university - 3 years of studies. I did a 1 year internship in a neuroscience research group and currently I am a substitute lab technician in a synthetic physiology group contracted for 1 year, with my own research project.

I had initially started my Masters and was planing to finish it, but job opportunities came up and now, having experienced actual research, I do not want to go back to university exams and lab courses.

The catch is, that I still would like to do a PhD. My degree in and of itself is not equivalent to the Bachelor's with honors that is required by Australian universities and my grades for whatever reason do not really fall within the 10% percentile that are commonly suggested as a minimum for scholarships.

Now I hope that my work experience can compensate for my degree and a standardized test could compensate for my grades. However, as I have come to realize, in contrast to USA, Australian institutions do no require you to have a GRE or GMAT for admission or scholarship consideration. Not only that, but in my correspondence with administrative offices they avoided the subject of GRE like the plague.

So my question to you is, in your experience and opinion are standardized tests at all considered for admission and scholarship applications in Australia?

Any other advice is of course gladly appreciated.

Best regards,
Kris

Can anyone help raider?

There are no standardize tests that I am aware of for entrance into a PhD program in Australia and they may not accept standardize test results to boost your grades.

Research experience/publications (if you have any) teaching experience etc will be useful for getting into the program, from what you've written I don't think you'll have too much trouble getting into a PhD if based on research experience/employment.

Funding; however, is only awarded to international applicants that have demonstrated a First Class Honours/H1/HD average and is very competitive (other forms of funding such as government are reserved for locals).

In Australia, you don't necessarily have to have done a masters to get into a PhD program. I applied for a Masters by Research and then upgraded to the PhD. So you could do that. However, having not completed at Masters you enrolled in will go against you, it's a bit of a red flag.

http://www.postgraduateforum.com/thread-36156/ <--I commented here for you on the process for applying.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_Australia You will need to be in the top percentile for the school you apply for (I've attached the grading scheme here) to be considered.

I'll put it this way, I graduated from my undergraduate degree with a 92% average in my major, and an 89% overall. I've just finished my PhD at Monash. I only just got full funding, and by that I mean that the faculty of arts (FAIPRS) provided my tuition until I was granted tuition from MIGR. I had to keep applying each scholarship round to the MIGR until I was granted funding from them as a condition of my FAIPRS award. I did get the MGS which was really helpful, but you are not allowed to use it to pay tuition. So while you might be more likely to get a living stipend, it's the tuition scholarship that will be the most competitive and difficult to get.