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PhD interview in Physics

F

I'm going to have a PhD interview next week in experimental particle physics (in Europe).
I am asked to give a presentation of my master thesis work in zoom. Do you have any
ideas/tips how I can be best prepered for the interview ?

E

Not in physics, but general advice is to send your presentation across prior to the interview in case there is any technological issues (plus it's always useful for them to follow). Have they given you a time limit?
If the PhD is an extension on the work you did in your masters, be sure to leave enough time to discuss the implications and next stages. Make sure you are able to see the limitations of your work so far, being able to critically reflect and critically analyse your own work is a really important part of a PhD process.
In technology terms, as someone who sat their viva remotely recently, make sure the room is prepared. The last thing you want is to realise part way through theirs underwear on your radiator in the background and focus on that. Make sure the room is warm enough, you have water to hand, that you can easily switch to using mobile data if Wi-Fi fails. Make sure theirs limited distractions and that the lighting is good.
Take your time, and best of luck! If they've offered you an interview they can clearly see you have the potential

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Thank you for your reply. My presentation should be (40 + 10) minutes including a talking session.

Be honest about your work and focus on the research process.

Unless your Masters research is directly related to the PhD project they will care more about how/why you did everything than the research itself. So highlight every step such as; hypothesis, literature review, how your literature review affected your hypothesis/plan, methodology, results, discussion, limitations of your research, what you would do differently and implications of the work. Showing that you can critically think and execute the basic research process is what they want to see. Also, it is good if you have a very basic idea about the PhD project and know about key concepts/methodology.

Goodluck!

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