We are all here to express personal opinions so don't worry about that.
Your first two sentences contradict each other unless you have both sides of the argument. It would be different if you were hearing the same story independently from several trustworthy sources. Just like research. Of course you are welcome to make your own mind up but in my opinion if you are the sort of person who feels they can make a good decision having only heard one side of an argument from an anonymous internet person then this is not a good mindset for a prospective PhD student. If you adopt this sort of philosophy in your personal life, there is a high risk of it filtering into your professional life as a researcher and then you are potentially into all sorts of trouble.

You asked "Are we not judges here"? I'm not really sure what you mean by that. I am well aware after years of painful personal lessons how careful you have to be trusting any human being - especially those hiding their identities as we all do on this forum. Every decision I make is always based on balanced arguments in my personal life as well as professionally. I find I make much better decisions that way.

First things first. Unless you are interviewing with a Nobel Prize winning researcher it is highly likely that they will be just as desperate to hire you as you will be to be hired by them so relax.

Now onto how to prepare.

1) My rule of thumb is to allow for about 1.5 to 2 minutes per slide or you'll be rushing through it and/or overwhelm them. 6 slides as an absolute maximum. 3 per project.

2) Each slide should be crisp, clean and as uncluttered as possible.

3) Present the overview of the research problem(s) you were trying to solve. Talk about how you went about solving it in terms of methodology, tools used etc and why you used those. One page for the background. One page for the method used.

4) If you have results, present a single page of this at the end. This is your third page and to keep the size down I'd put your acknowledgements at the bottom in a footer.

5) Be prepared to be questioned over your decisions.

Other than that you'll be fine regardless of how close your research was to the PhD position.

That's odd.
This exact same post word for word was put on this forum a few months ago under a different user name.

I am not in any way downplaying the problems that students face with their supervisors and the difficulties in getting a fair result when formal complaints are being dealt with but there are ways to overcome these sorts of things without resorting to the sort of tactics we are quick to accuse our supervisors of engaging in.

For a start someone needs to take their university and supervisor to court. Someone will HAVE to do that before the abuse of power gets properly dealt with.

If I was targetting you specifically I would have named you.




Really, this is not a good way of dealing with differences of opinion. You should take a moment to reflect on this. You should also perhaps have waited for my response to your previous post to me before posting this one.

rewt, I think you provide a very good example of why we must allow people to be investigated fairly. Thanks for highlighting this.

Use of social media to attempt to destroy a person's career through "trial by media" is completely unacceptable and downright unprofessional. Encouraging this is cowardly and completely counter-productive.

Use of tools such as "RateMyProfessor" should be treated with the disdain it deserves.

Innocent until proven guilty is how we operate in civilised society. We allow both sides to have their say in an open manner. We should not be simply accepting the word of people using anonymous internet accounts and then leaping to judgment.

There's not much which serious riles me but there's a fair bit of steam coming out of my ears tonight.

There is no point beating around the bush - yes there is a risk they may not be convinced you will complete but consider a coiuple of things.

1) Your supervisor and your university will not want to fail you. It reflects terribly on them.
2) Most people don't have much published at your stage.
3) The overwhelming majority of those who make it to submission will eventually get their PhD. Very few fail.
4) The deadline for submission is not 3.5 years. You will be allowed to continue beyond that date. Most people take 4 to 5 years in the UK.

You are probably in better shape than you think.

You need to be very careful what advice you are listening to.
Whilst it's good to be aware of the potential for problems, the last thing you want to risk is walking through the door on day one of your PhD with very damaging preconceptions about what the experience will be like for you personally.
Even worse would be to listen to bad advice and not even attempt the journey yourself.
What you have posted here concerns me that you are sounding like someone who is psyching themselves out before they start.

There is a saying when you run your own company that a satisfied customer will tell 1 or 2 others about their experience. A dissatisfied customer will likely tell 30 to 40 people pr more simply by posting to Facebook. By extension, be aware that the posts on here will come substantially from those who had negative experiences.
You will not get a balanced set of positive and negative stories on any online platform.

Please be careful when making your decision.

That post of Tienah is a timely reminder that students are just as capable of appalling behaviour as supervisors.

I was in a similar situation when I was younger. I was put into a job which I had no understanding of and was given the task of improving what a specific group of the workforce were doing.
I was given a desk in an office on my own and left there with 3 sheets of paper full of fairly abstract ideas about the job. No computer. No colleagues. Just me.
After about a few weeks I walked into my bosses office and told him I wanted a transfer to another job.

They eventually got rid of me but that's a story for another day :-D

You need to ask this question of the person in charge of the Masters course.
You are getting ahead of yourself anyway. Why are you thinking about failing a resit for an exam you haven't sat for the first time yet? Focus on what is in front of you right now and leave worring about resits until that time (if it ever happens).

If you are peer reviewing papers which use these techniques as a foundation, and you don't know the techniques well enough to follow what they've done, then I think you have no option but to pass on this instance. You have to be honest with yourself about whether you think you can realistically give these papers a fair review. either positively or negatively.

If I remember, you are also writing up your thesis whilst doing this job full time so having to struggle with new techniques is presumably making a difficult situation considerably worse for you. I honestly don't know how you do it. That set of circumstances would have finished me off I think.

Nice to talk to you too. Sorry I don't have anything more constructive to offer.

My actions would depend on whether I had formally witnessed this or not.
If I personally witnessed it, I would intervene. Physically if necessary.
If I had not witnessed it I would try and figure whether the students affected could prove the allegations. If they could (via independent witnesses or whatever), as the student rep, I would help them instigate a full formal report at the highest level within the university and involve local press if necessary. I wouldn't bother going to his manager directly. I would ensure that these students had all the support they needed and would help them ensure the formal complaint was seen through to a conclusion.Talk to student services about this. They'll have a good grasp on the necessary procedures.

Have you been medically diagnosed for either of those conditions?
If so, have you been prescribed medication?

The quickest way to resolve this is to pick up the phone and call the corresponding author if you can find a number for them.

I don't know anything about these sorts of things but is there a difference in the way both techniques are described in papers where those terms are used? If so, can you correlate with the way the papers on your desk describe their methods?