Got my PhD recently (isotope geochemistry), and I went through the publication route. Strangely at my institution I still needed to produce a thesis, which to be fair was basically compiling my papers with an intro and conclusion. I found it quite funny that one of my four examiners wanted to fail me despite the fact I had four papers from that PhD published in various journals even before submitting the thesis.
I saw your parent in the comment section of another video by this dude, they ratio'd someone so hard, good stuff and good luck (very cool 100K salary you got there)
that's awesome, i got my BS in Geology and Geophysics, I'm working on my Masters in Geographic information science, and Hopefully will continue on to a Phd program in Geology, did you go into your program with an idea of what you wanted to study specifically or did you figure it out once you got in?
@@austinrush4545 I was always decent at chemistry and much of my previous work before the PhD (e.g., Honours and Masters) was high-precision U-Pb geochronology. So I had a good understanding of isotope geochemistry but wanted to expand my skills as an isotope geochemist. As such I had an idea of what I wanted to do (e.g., using isotope systems such as Nd, Hf and O isotopes to trace the source origin and petrogenesis of magmatic rocks, mostly granites in eastern Australia). At my university there was a world leading isotope geochemist who was ideally suited to supervise this work, so I went and saw him and told him what I wanted to do and we figured out a project in about an hour or two one afternoon. Since finishing I worked in industry as a mine geologist for about a year but thankfully managed to secure a postdoctoral position looking into the origin of LCT pegmatites in central Australia.
I have my master's degree and it was a lot of work already. I thought briefly about doing a PhD but the stress on my mind from continuously working my brain's muscle in research and paper writing at the graduate level was driving me a bit crazy. After eight years of education, I found it difficult to have conversations with people who didn't have any education background at all.
Extremely interested in your perspective as I was wanting to return to school and achieve a degree in Educational Leadership. I’d love to hear any advice or insight.
My master's drained me as well so I decided to take a break. It's been 1.5 years since I graduated from my master's and I really want to continue with my research so now I'm looking for PhD opportunities. So maybe a break could do you great.
This! I’m currently in my master’s degree just about wrapping it up and I’m most recently finding it hard to have a conversation with people who don’t have any higher Ed background. I guess it’s normal think 🤔
I am the other way round . I have a master degree and work in research hospital . Some colleagues tend to act like they are the most clever human in the world made me realise the uneducated people are very bearable and accommodating.
This might just be for some people. I’m the only person I know personally who has a graduate degree. But I never considered myself unable to communicate with people who never went to university. If anything, I always encourage people to find their own path; and if they wanted to get higher education then do it at your own pace. You don’t need to be that smart kid who gets it done on time right after high school. Go to community college, or apply to a university. Community college is very underrated. I am considering doing my PhD as well but not entirely sure yet… I have the motivation to continue onto higher education, but I really do want to start my professional career already 😂
I have a masters in physics, and I’m looking into maybe getting a PHD. But I’m just a little confused on how it works and what exactly I’m going to be doing. Thanks this video helps a lot.
This video is best to describe how a typical PhD program in Australia and UK works, not so much how it works with similar program in the US, Canada and other countries using a similar model of the American system where almost half of the program was dedicated to a significant component of coursework and comprehensive exams.
everyone: Follow your dreams, Study something in the pursuit of the knowledge it provides, not money. Run after excellence and money will run after you, begging and crying. follow your passion and live that fire of knowledge within you.
Original Research, novel research, filling gaps, done enough to satisfy phd qualification,supervisor should not allow sending thesis with major correction, pass without correction , novelty and well explained, presented well, you need to explain the fundamental.
That varies a lot by institution and what the budget is. In many institutions most of your examining committee will be from your department and other departments in your university with, maybe, one examiner from outside the university. Note that this is only for the oral defense. The examination of the thesis may be done by a different committee that includes more people from different institutions since it is cheap to mail out a thesis. Having been the director of graduate studies for my department for about 10 years I can tell you that it can be hard to find examiners for a thesis since going through a 300-500 page thesis takes a lot of time. In my university it was very hard to get the science profs to agree to be on an examining board, particularly since the graduate school allowed a maximum of 6 weeks to examine the thesis. However, since the university allowed an examining board to include any member of the graduate faculty, I once got a Philosophy prof to serve on a Chemistry examining board. He absolutely savaged that thesis based on logic and the quality of writing. That student ended up having to do a major rewrite.
I am starting my PhD this October and I have no masters course under my belt as I am just graduating from my undergrads this year. it is quite scary but my name was put forward by my final year project supervisor. I feel a bit reassured after watching this video as I am really passionate about synthetic and medicinal chemistry. Hopefully everything will go according to plan.
I think that monograph ("traditional" thesis) vs comprehensive summary (PhD by publications) is a field-specific thing. Our group (computer science/robotics) exclusively does comprehensive summaries. The group to our right (ethics and human-computer interaction) tends to do monographs whereas the group to our left (deep learning for medical images) is doing comprehensive summaries as well. For my girlfriend (biology) it depends on if (and how much) they manage to publish during their time.
I will begin pursuing my PhD in Applied Clinical Research in 2 months! I’m excited and nervous at the same time! My goal is to study neurological movement disorders in the context of clinical translational research.
I wish all Thesis from Undergraduate to PhD thesis should be donated to the National Library of their country (for free) so that students can easily access the recent researches being done around the world.
Your video, while interesting, is not a comprehensive guide for the Ph.D. in that your experience only applies to your efforts in Australia and possibly the UK. I earned my Ph.D. in Chemistry in America around 40 years ago. The school I went to offered the MS as well as the Ph.D., but all students entered graduate school as a Masters student. Your first year involved nothing more than taking 3 or so classes each semester while you figured out who you wanted as your advisor and which four other professors you wanted on your committee. In your second year you started your research while continuing to take more courses. Towards the end of your second or third year you would then take your qualifying examinations that would make you qualified to study for your Ph.D. There are five major divisions in Chemistry so you had to pass the exams in three of the five and you were allowed three attempts for each exam. While this sound easy, it wasn't. Sixteen students, for example, took the exam in Organic Chemistry and three passed. Overall, about a third of those wanting to pass their qualifiers eventually did. At some point after you finish your course work you would take your comprehensive exams with some taking them immediately and others putting this off until the the last minute while they were writing their dissertation. For your comprehensive exams each of your committee and your advisor would create a written exam tailored to you. To give you an example of what they were like, I started an exam in Biochemistry at 7:00AM, took twenty minutes for lunch, and, when the professor asked how I was doing around 6:30 that evening, I told him I needed another several hours to complete the exam. He took the exam right then despite my request after nearly 11 hours of nonstop writing. When you finish your five written exams, you are given your graded exams back and then appear in front of your committee for your oral exam. The first questions they ask in the oral exam are the ones you missed on the written exams and from there they get more complex and difficult. The oral exam can last anywhere from a few hours to an entire day. Once the oral exam is over your committee votes to determine if you pass or fail. The catch is that all the written exams and the oral exam together must be completed within thirty days. Once these are passed, the only remaining task is to finish your research, write your dissertation, and ensure that some part of your research gets published. Oh, I almost forgot that once your dissertation is finished, you must present on it and then answer all questions to anyone present for a final defense, but this effort is actually trivial compared to everything that occurred prior. The difference between Ph.D. preparation and requirements among various nations is due to how each nation views the purpose of the degree. Most nations view the degree as a research degree and see your preparation as nothing more than teaching a person how to perform research, publish, write grants, etc., so this is what they emphasize. In America, the Ph.D. is viewed as an academic exercise that confers advanced knowledge in your area of specialty. While you do learn the rudimentaries of research and such, the postdoctoral study position is where research, writing papers, writing grants, reviewing grants/papers, etc., are taught in a very intense atmosphere. It would be interesting to compare programs from other countries to see more of the differences and similarities among the various programs. As an aside, I see many people talking about quitting their Ph.D. program. Most of these people quitting are doing so because they entered the program for the wrong reason. If one enters a Ph.D. program for the express purpose of getting the degree, then their chances of failure are quite high. Those who enter the program because they love the subject and simply cannot learn enough about it are the ones who skate through with little problem. The reason why I earned my Ph.D. was because it never occurred to me that I could quit. It was all so fascinating that I simply could not stop and I ended up getting my MS (Organic Chemistry emphasis) and Ph.D. Biochemistry emphasis) in a bit under 5 years.
This is very much the same as how my Ph.D. program was structured with a couple of differences. We had to complete the comprehensive before we could submit a thesis proposal. After the thesis proposal was accepted following an oral exam of the proposal you started your actual research. At least that was how the program was structured. In practice many students started research before submitting their proposals. There was risk associated with that since you could fail your proposal and have to write a different one. I will note that this structure is typical of US universities, however there are lots of variations in the details between universities and sometimes between departments in a single university.
I just had an argument with someone over an honorary PhD...which was awarded for nothing academic. I'm against honorary degrees as they typically slap the faces of those who have spent years working on their research. Most honorary degrees I seen awarded are typically not for anything original either, although I'm sure there are occasions where some of those awarded have contributed original work over time.
Thank you. I've been mulling over the idea of a PhD, and I will probably start taking it seriously this year. I've been a creative person all my life, a creative director in advertising, a faculty at a design school, painter, musician, cook. I have already created a technique for conceptualization, so my question is: Can this theory become a thesis? Do respond.
I guess it really depends on what you do your PhD in. If it’s hard science related, being able to grasp the concepts and form good intuition is pretty dang important too. It’s not purely creative. There are objective measures of how well your ideas perform
I wish someone would do and talk all the same things you do from a non-scientific prospective. Your videos have been infinitely helpful for me and I’m so glad you’ve made them. Mine will be (is?) in literature so lab culture and stuff is probably just different. I’m glad your videos still do an excellent job of giving me a solid foundational understanding!
I've just started my PhD in Biophysics and I'm afraid about the "original research". My field of study is really specific and it's quite hard to do something new. Any advices? I'm trying to read as many books and articles as possible, so I can get "into it". However, when I think I have an idea about research, I usually find out that somebody already did that. Should I focus on something specific? Only on a single problem? Or should I try to "look around" more and then figure out what I could do?
Start reviewing all those works of the people who already did it. Draw patterns between them. Observe the patterns, identify gaps. Then fill gaps for the foreseeable future until you have your thesis/set of papers.
I'm not sure if it's the same in the sciences, but in my field (history) it can be the methodology used to approach a problem that can be the 'original' aspect - something worth considering.
In usa a PhD is 72 credits hours where 45 credits are courses et 15 credits are thesis and 12 credits for seminars. The thesis take a small part not like Europe where the thesis is the main focus of Phd
Don't let the number of credits required for the thesis misguide you. After you finish your course work, pass your comprehensive/candidacy exam and write your thesis proposal the real work of your Ph.D. program starts. You will register with the grad school for thesis every quarter/semester you are working on your thesis and may will always end up with a lot more than 15 credits, which would be the minimum requirement. In the USA the thesis research is by far the most important part of a Ph.D.
PubMed and google scholars are great sources where upon entering keywords operating to what you are currently doing you get multiple articles created to it. Skim through those that look similar and you can find whether someone is doing exactly what you are doing. Don't just go through the journal articles as presently preprints are becoming really common, so skipping those can lead to extra work.
Herm. American PhD basically requires both publications and a thesis. Don't remember how many were in my thesis. Five, I think? The defense has fallen out of style. How it worked at my R1 school: PhD candidates get their PI approval, then draft their thesis and sit on it while they job hunt. No-showing a defense still doesn't cancel the work performed or the prestige added to the university from quality research. In addition, if the research was published, it already went through peer review so the defense is redundant. I had a pre-defense style oral exam at the end of my second year, the second half of which was proving I could ace every test from my B.S. classes while being able to teach an undergrad class in my discipline (the rare Inorganic Chem. PhD). Own your research (no matter if it was directed) and become the expert on it that you should be if you are publishing, and the Orals/Defense stage should be pretty easy. Not all doctorates are created equal, and the quality of a PhD is strongly dependent upon the effort put into it. Once you have it, people care about three things: School prestige, your PI's prestige, and your publication history.
Hi Andy. I completed my master degree in Portugal, and must admit that the procedure was very close to your PhD “adventure”, especially the oral defence part, was exactly how you describe. Now I am planing to apply for PhD in Australia too, my field is Civil Engineering, and currently working like a Civil/Structural Engineer for several years, which university you could suggest for Engineers, and how to find supervisor? Thanks a lot for your content, it's endless helpful.
@@bluna3004 I applied to PhD, and currently doing research in Porto, Portugal. So my Portuguese trip continue. Australia was very expensive. All the best !
The PhD RU-vid space gives such a distorted view of a PhD with respect to my own experience. At my university in the Netherlands, almost nothing is as you describe it. I have recently started my PhD and these are my observations. * First of all, in the Netherlands a PhD position is a job with payment. It is not much but it is certainly more than the PhD scholarship you have received. * To be eligible for this position you require a masters title. * A complete thesis without published parts is highly unorthodox. Most likely a PhD candidate will produce ~4 papers, and will tie these together with a couple dozen pages of unpublished work. * Because it is a job, you cannot "fail" a PhD. So long as the research question is reasonably answered, you will pass your defense, although it might take longer. The thesis might have to be revised a little, but since the bulk of the work has already been peer reviewed, this is deemed of sufficient level. Perhaps the PhD is differently defined in the Anglo-sphere than continental Europe and English as the internet Lingua Franca makes these more prevalent.
I’m years away from a PhD, but I have a question important for when I will embark my heavy journey for it. I know for sure that I want a PhD within Neuroscience, however, my question regards the “topic” my possible PhD would be about. If I essentially went for epilepsy as a “topic”, for example, and I retrieve my PhD in Neuroscience, would I then be constricted to only researching epilepsy later on? Or could I apply for jobs and research within other categories within neuroscience? This part is very unclear to me, and I find nothing about it.
I have been admitted for PhD by research program in Australia and i am waiting for the result of the scholarship award assessment result. I do appreciate if you guide us on how is this kind of program conducted while there is no course to be taken. it means from the beginning I have to start steps of my research proposal? many thanks for your useful videos
if you ask about "where is the end of all of this" - as i know, yes. Your dissertation needs to be passed by phd panel, and after that you need to defense it with good value (clarifying this point because if you have reached the defense, this is already 80% of success, but I know cases when people were failed down during the defense)
I'm watching this video bc I still don't know what to do with my life after finishing my Master's (I'll start the thesis project in April). (Sorry this is gonna be a huge comment 😅) I'm in a relatively niche field (plant sciences) and the first thing is that I don't really have a great idea of what job opportunities there are for MSc vs PhD. Secondly, there's industry vs academia. I feel like I can decide to either sell my soul and all my values to a big plant breeding company that has only profit in mind, OR do what I truly want in my heart but have an extremely unstable job that requires me to move at least every 3 years and is gonna be super stressful. Not to mention I would have to sacrifice ALL of my life for it. And the last issue is imposter syndrome. I keep underestimating my own capabilities, and having to complete a PhD with not much guidance at all scares the hell out of me, especially looking at all the genius people around me I feel like I can't compete with. I do believe I'd survive a PhD program physically, but I am not sure whether the mental damage I am sure it would cause me is really worth it sometimes. Then again, I think to myself I could always just start a PhD and if it is simply too much to withstand, I can always drop out? Just doing it one step after the other and not worrying too much? The idea of researching something no one has ever investigated before makes my fingertips itch and I think I would be super excited about it. But this isn't something I should decide on without careful consideration, right? I just really don't know what to do at this point. But I feel like if I don't start a PhD right after my MSc I will never do it and might regret it later on...
I have a basic question. How does one get into a PhD program? Is it the same as a bachelor where you apply to a University and you get admitted or not?
@@MrCash62 No expert. From what I understand its a little more direct. You would contact the researcher, know some of his/her work before, and not the institution.
Pretty much yes, but depends on the university and the country and the field. Usually you write motivation letter and research proposal, take exams as gmat or gre, English language exam if you are not native speaker. Plus you need to provide 2-3 reference letters and sometimes talk to the professors beforehand if you find one in your field of interest. If you pass first screening then you go thru interviews usually two sometimes just one. Then you wait for response. Ofc you have to think about funding beforehand but phd usually goes with teaching assistantship duties with which you can get stipend for.
Dear Andy, my research proposal got recognization of my former supervisor, and I got admitted. But now I am at the end of PhD year 1, my former supervisor quit and my new supervisor rejected my former research proposal and said it;s cliche. So I have to redo a new research proposal. I don't know what to do. I am very anxious. I mean to start proposal defense by the end of Phd year 1, but under current situation, I have to redo a new one and hopefully I could start my proposal defense on Phd Year 2. I am nervous. Could you please give me some suggestions? Thank you !
I found that listening to papers being read out loud by software whilst I do other things like household chores really helps me cover some ground with papers-particularly if they are only slightly relevant!
UK degrees are usually 4 years (with Honours year) and allow students with 2:1 and above (or equivalent international degree) into doctoral programmes. Same in Singapore. But several European countries like Germany require a MSc as well.
Hi, one of my friends got her phd from Brisbane university in Biochemistry. She said she only got enough credits to graduate without producing a thesis. Was is it possible? Coz I got mine from Melbourne University with a thesis. Can someone please help? Thanks a bunch.
I have two questions regarding a PhD: 1. If I get a master’s, then go for a PhD, do I need to take classes as a part of the PhD program? 2. I’ve heard you and a few others say that a PhD does not make you as likely to get a job as it used to. What about a PhD specifically from Harvard/Princeton/MIT/etc? Do those still “guarantee” a job? The
I had a couple friends who found that their advanced degrees (MS in one, PhD in another) made it harder to get jobs because it specialized them too much without work experience. So they were more limited in finding work in a specific field.
@@somber_soul Well that's why. Engineers don't really need PhDs. in fact, I don't think I've heard of or met any that do. PhDs are more for if you want to be a physicist, chemist, biologist, economist, mathematician, etc.
Do I need to be affiliated to a university to do a PhD or just have a supervisor and do it independently? Who would publish my PhD once finished? I live in France with my French wife and I am British. I speak and write insufficient French to write a thesis in French. I could do a PhD in french university and yet write in English, but am better connected with British unis to find a British supervisor. Does the supervisor have to be of the same university where I'd be enrolled to do the PhD? Please help me to detangle my confusion. Thank you.
Usually only a University can give you the title PhD or equivalent, so independent research institutions usually affiliate with a university. Depending on what field you want to pursue your PhD in, it should not be a problem writing in English. Graduate STEM courses in Europe are usually taught in English and everyone publishes in English as well.
Some fields and some universities have a fast-track PhD programme; you can straight away do PhD right after you finish your bachelor, with requirements of course. You have to check yourself (e.g. on the faculty’s website or simply ask your lecturers) whether your target PhD programme has a fast-track feature or not :)
I would say generally yes, although getting into a Ph.D. program often depends as much on finding a professor willing to take you on as it does on your background. That is particularly true in the sciences where there are often significant costs associated with Ph.D. research.
I love that you're proud of where you have ended up at. This is what Trump supporters don't get because they've forgotten where they have come from. Native Americans the only ones that have been here for millenia
But why do they keep saying a PhD is hard when it is mostly just reading, writing and waiting a very long time to get responses from others? The hardest part is really just waiting forever wondering what to do. But waiting is more of a tolerance exercise, it is not hard in the way that doing some equation is hard or building a tower is hard. I don't get what is hard about a PhD when it is mostly waiting. Can someone please tell me what is the hard part?
I too also worry about ph. D work. In India Ph. D means writing at least 2 papers in Scopus journals. We get afraid to watch these videos. Tell in a simple form how to complete and make a plan in one video. We can save time.
Writing and reading isn't easy! Research isn't easy, especially if you're working on a topic no one else has covered before! It's a massive mental effort.
In Hamburg, Germany, many of them are driving taxi, because their PhD in expressive dancing surprisingly didn't pay out... What it looks like for a student? Like an idiot who made wrong decisions.
If you want to do a research job, a PhD will always have more weight than a master degree on your resume. It's hard to get so people will usualy take you seriously.
@@ssebasgoo I see. but how do you get to making enough money to enjoy your life? I thought that was the goal of going to college other than meeting potential spouses and business partners and meeting people of different backgrounds.
@@DJcyberslash Oh no, if it's your goal, don't do a PhD. xD In fact, they are 2 possibilities for you after optaining a PhD : stay in academia and do what's called "a post doc" OR work for the industry. The pay of the post doc isn't that great and you'll be pressured to produced papers while you'll meet a lot of interesting people, travel a lot and be a lot more intelectualy challenged by your job than anyone. In other hand, the industry knows how to reward their doc with a really good pay, you won't be as much pressured to wright papers but you will work for someone who wait for results and that can be stressful. And if you want to build a family, that's the way to go because a lot of post docs are suffering from there constant "moving around the globe from post doc contract to post doc contract".
