Initial Conditions

I sometimes get questions as to what happens along the road to getting a PhD, and since I just started the long and arduous process of producing a thesis, I thought it might be worth explaining the process. So here it is (I’m afraid I’m a bit science-centric here):

GET A PhD IN THIRTEEN EASY (?) STEPS

1. Get a 2:1 or (better) a first in your undergraduate degree, thereby making your parents proud enough not to question why you’re taking another four years out of gainful employment.

2. Meet your supervisor. He’s there to give you advice on all sorts of issues, but mostly on where you are wrong. While you’re there, you might choose a topic. But you might not, it’s not essential that you do so in your first year.

3. Read, read and read some more about your general field. The good news is that you can borrow books for twelve weeks (as opposed to the four undergraduates get). It’s probably here that you realise the enormity of your task.

4. At the end of your first year, you might have been lucky enough to get to the stage of reading academic papers. That’s lucky, because they’ll be a great help when you write your end of first year report and give a half hour talk, which determines if you’re actually good enough to do a PhD. Most people get through this.

5. After passing, you keep up the momentum and hopefully gain enough knowledge to decide on a topic. Having done that, you can..

6. .. narrow the research. Hopefully (after many months of tearing your hair out and wondering why you chose this path) you will end up with a few nice results at which point you can..

7. .. plan your thesis, a document of varying length (but no more than 70 000 words please) which is supposed to contain original, relevant and publishable work.

8.  Write your thesis. 8 weeks before you submit (that is, hand it in for final examination), you submit an intention to submit for admin purposes.

9. Submit your thesis, the point of no return. It varies when this happens, it could be after two and a half years or after four. It is then sent to the examiners, who will then set a date for the dreaded..

10. VIVA. An oral examination, where you have an internal and an external examiner, who will grill you mercilessly about your thesis and ask you why you’ve made so many typos or got a minus sign wrong.

11. If you show sufficient knowledge and are full of win and awesome, you will pass, but may be asked to do some corrections on the thesis. You will be given a few weeks or months to do this, and when you do..

12. Submit a final version of your thesis to the college office. It is convention that at this point you are entitled to call yourself “Dr”.

13. Graduate and enter the real world because there’s no higher qualification to obtain. Become a Post-Doc (basically a fixed-term researcher at a University) until you get a lecturing position or sell out to industry. Or neither..

Anyway, I hope that was informative!