Hi,

I have a PhD interview in a couple of weeks and I've been asked to give a "3 minute overview" of my BSc project.

3 minutes is quite short for anyone to present, but my project was very involved with a couple of hypotheses, a complicated design and three different experiments... I'll have to skip over a lot of it! So, as I'm not sure exactly what they will be looking for in my presentation, my question is what is important to include and what's not so important?

Should I focus on my rationale for choosing the topic, the methods I used, the skills I gained, the results and future directions, or something else?

If it makes any difference, this is a four-year PhD in neuroscience so I haven't submitted a research proposal or chosen a supervisor, which means they'll be looking for general research ability rather than my suitability for a particular project.

I would appreciate any advice you can give me!

Can anyone help me?

Just do very brief overview. Intro, so they know what you are doing and why. Methods you used and the results. Just the main ones. Not everything. Say one sentence at the end what is the ultimate goal.

Yeah I'd agree with cloudofash. They won't want the nitty-gritty of all your experiments. They will just want to see you can do research, so perhaps put focus on how you came up with your hypotheses, methods and results. And remember the rule is one slide per minute and not much text per slide, so don't try to put too much in your presentation, let your enthusiasm shine through that is probably the most important thing! =) Good luck.

This sounds like a task to test how well you can communicate your research. They won't be so much interested in the details as in your presentation and communication skills. 1 min motivation/research problem, 1 min methods, 1 min main findings. Make it clear and engaging and as Caro says, be enthusiastic! They can ask for details in the interview if they're interested.

Thanks for your advice, guys! I think I've got it down :) Going to focus on the research problem and my main hypothesis, followed by the main finding. Anything else they can just ask me about.