Advice for PhD applicants

my name is Amy Cunningham I'm a researcher that shoot of evolutionary biology at the University of Edinburgh I supervise PhD students but I'm also the interest in the Institute's a PhD advisor and so I'm involved in the PhD recruitment process as well I'm Professor Tom little I work in the Institute of evolutionary biology and I also supervise PhD students and do some undergraduate teaching well we have to look at your grades and they have to be high but then we also look at your experience in your research proposal or or at least your statement of research interest in what we're looking for there is a love of the science I think there's a few things that we sort of look for one of the things I think is really nice is if somebody's got in touch themselves right at the beginning and said perhaps I've seen some of your research and they've been interested by it they've been visited something that they could do that fits in with what you're doing and they've already got in touch and you've started that conversation if you don't have a lot of research experience you might be able to show us that you read around a lot that you understand the topic that you're applying for and you read around other topics as well so that you are loving the science and really deeply engaged with knowing everything you can about the biological world the CV I think is important it gives you the opportunity to to show what your strengths are in your academic work but we're also looking at more than just that because I'm a PhD often calls in quite different skills from perhaps getting good marks and exams be prepared I'd say so I think most interviews should go along too there's going to be a sort of standard set of of questions they might get asked in slightly different ways but it's the same sort of things that you're being asked for so the sorts of things you might get asked are to describe some of your previous research and how you've gone about doing that how you've tackled problems you've come across and why you're interested in the PhD you're doing if there's any point in it where you're not sure of what you're being asked then you know any sort of interviews a two-way conversation so ask for clarification if you're loving the science and they're enthusiastic about the insights and I've been reading around and have some experience all you need to do is be yourself and display that to us we want to see enthusiastic knowledgeable people and bear in mind also there's very little to get nervous about because we want the best out of you and you want to give us the best so everybody actually has the same goals research experience definitely helps so if you can have been doing something in the summer or have had a job or whatever that's great it's not always possible sometimes you might have to volunteer as a minimum you will have done an honours research project and you will have done very well in that and you will displayed during your work on that again the love of the science so get whatever experience you can because it certainly won't hurt but we understand we're realistic about how much experience everybody is possible can possibly have I think the more research experience you have the better not just because it gives you a set of skills and so on that you can talk about but just let you get familiar with the research processes but I think most people will get an opportunity to get some sort of research experience during their degree so you can use that research experience for example at interview to illustrate why you're interested in research and what it is about the research process that you enjoy yes it's definitely a man advantage but there are many different ways you can get that research experience both within your degree program and alongside your your degree program as well I don't think it is at all and it can be useful and that it gives you more research experience and more skills that you can pull on but I think equally useful would be going and gaining some research experience and other research groups or another project so I think there are different ways of getting the sort of things that are a masters would give you a masters is not necessary it can make you make you look good on paper but we do strive to identify potential in applicants who have only done an undergrad not at all in fact in the last drained of PhD applications we had social scientists people from other sciences particularly math and also an architect as well who had come back and was interested in planning in ecology and had got more into the sort of research side down that route doesn't matter if you're from a biology background no it doesn't we actually take an interest in people who might come from physics or chemistry and have become interested in biology because it shows a real curiosity and often we understand that these people from different backgrounds will bring something new to the field so we definitely take a close look at people from other backgrounds one of the things about biology is is a very multidisciplinary subject and if anything we're keen to encourage people in that serve different sets of skills that can use those to ask biological questions in different ways the key thing I think is to be prepared and you know for information you have to give so practice that the presentation we asked you to give is on some research that you've done so if you did that research if you were involved in that research if you were loving the research again and that's a theme that keeps coming up all we're asking you to do is talk to us about that research and explain what you did you might want to do a little bit of research on the supervisor see that they're productive see that they're funded and all those things but basically it's up to what it comes down to what interests you that's so important getting the right not just project not just supervisor but the whole research environment is really important where you're going to spend the next three or four intense years of your life I would say get in touch with potential supervisors early on way before the application process and start getting to know them another place to go to advice is to ask your lecturers who do you know that isn't just doing good science but also provides a supportive environment for the research group and PhD students I think doing a PhD really equips you with an awful lot of skills that are just generally applicable so and you're taking a project you're taking ownership of it you're working out how to set about being project planning edge if you come down Berg do a PhD you will be trained to be a scientist by top scientists in the world so you will become a scientist but that means a number of things and I'd like to be clear about that if you become a scientist of course you're a specialist in your area you will become an immunologist you will become a geneticist etc etc but there's a more important thing that you get out of it right you become somebody who can understand a question design an experiment analyze an experiment write a report on that experiment and bring some truth to the world you're learning skills by how to interact with people how to collaborate you're operating on an international scale so I think there's a whole set of skills that you get from doing a PhD alongside just learning the process of doing good research and becoming a good scientist that will prepare you whether you're interested in and staying in science and doing cutting-edge science yourself or or taking that knowledge out and using it in the right community for social good and how we use science in there in our day to day environment so even if you don't continue on to be the geneticist or the immunologist you become you have acquired designed analysis and project management skills that can be applied to almost any job and that's a really valuable commodity [Applause]

Channel: School of Biological Sciences, The University of Edinburgh

Views: 21,212

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: PZfky8KvI4w

Length: 7min 59sec (479 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 05 2018