I had a successful Psychology PhD studentship interview last week and the process comprised a presentation (of my undergraduate project) followed by questions, and then a panel interview. At the interview, I was asked to explain the background of my PhD proposal and what the project was generally about, and then I was asked to give an example of a specific experiment I might do. As my studentship involves some undergraduate teaching, there were some brief questions about how comfortable I felt with areas of my subject, and then I was asked three very specific questions about statistics. I'd familiarise yourself as much as possible with your research proposal, and anticipate any questions about it (e.g. what experiments might you do, what problems might you encounter, etc). If you haven't already done so, try and learn as much as you can about the department and the people interviewing you, so you feel more comfortable and can anticipate the sorts of things they may want to discuss. The interview part of the process lasted only about 20 minutes, and a lot of it seemed to be to do with just seeing the sort of person I was and whether I would fit in with the department. I actually really enjoyed the interview (odd I know!) and it wasn't nearly as scary as I imagined. Best of luck next week!

Hi everyone, thank you so much for these replies and for reading my post - it's been tremendously helpful to hear of everyone's different experiences, I really appreciate you taking the time to respond. It's so great to have these forums to read for a taste of what a PhD is actually like, instead of just reading about it on university websites and relying on what they tell you!

Oops, the formatting for this post has gone horrible and it won't seem to let me edit it either - sorry! I couldn't work out how to get it to put spaces between paragraphs in. If you can still read it as a horrible blocky chunk of text, I commend you!

Hello,

I'm new to posting on this forum but have enjoyed reading posts here for some time. I thought I would sign up as I have some questions to ask!

I found out on Friday that I have just been accepted to do a PhD in Psychology and I am going to be fully funded (fees + maintenance stipend). I'm absolutely delighted and cannot wait to begin in October. I'm currently studying for a Masters, and have a number of questions for those of you here that are already studying for your PhDs. I'd really appreciate some different viewpoints and opinions on the questions below!

1. Do you tend to work from an office in your department, or do you work from home? Having never had a workspace for myself in a department before, I have usually worked from home whilst at university because I find the communal spaces (libraries and computer rooms) a bit noisy and distracting. What's it like to share an office with other PhD students, do you find it easier to work?

2. How many hours a day / week do you spend working on your PhD? I'm expecting it to be similar to a full-time job (and more hours a lot of the time!). I'm sure it depends on the stage of the PhD you are at, and the sort of work you are doing, but I'd be really interested to know your own experiences.

3. How do you find your teaching responsibilities (if you have any)? My scholarship comes with some teaching and teaching-related duties attached (mostly giving seminars, marking and personal supervision for undergrads). I gained some teaching experience when I worked in a secondary school for some time between my undergraduate degree and my Masters, but obviously, teaching a class of thirty 14-year-olds is going to be rather different! I'd really like to hear experiences and advice from PhD students with undergraduate teaching duties.

4. How much does your project change in scope over the first year? For my funding application, I had to write a fairly detailed proposal, but I'd like to know, in reality, how much the proposal is stuck to. Do you find the shape or content of your PhD changes much, or does it stick fairly closely to the original plan?

5. If you moved cities to do a PhD, when did you find somewhere to live, and what sources did you use to find housing? I'm going to move at the end of my Masters, and I was wondering when people arranged housing. I know as an undergraduate, everyone arranged housing very early on, do people do this when they move to study as a postgrad, or do they arrange it nearer the time? I'm not really looking for "student accommodation" of the sort I lived in as an undergraduate. I also wondered where people typically looked for housing in cities they don't live in - at the moment, I can think of RightMove, Gumtree, and the private sector housing list produced by the university. These are the places I have looked before when moving to a new city. Anyone else have any advice on house hunting?

Gosh, that's a lot of questions. If anyone can help by sharing their expe