The 2:2 is not great but you have fixed that with the Masters. I dont see any problem in principle but your lack of a distinction might be an issue depending on how many others apply tp the same position.

[quote]Quote From naturalproduct:
Hi, I'm new here, and wanted to ask about the impact of grades (in certain years) on a PhD application (assuming that references are good).
I study an MSci Chemistry degree, and will be entering 4th year this coming September.
My 1st and 2nd year results were mid 2.1's (~65%), however, upon receiving my 3rd year result last month I am rather worried; I have unfortunately ended up with a 2.2 (59%).
The average across the first 3 years totals to approximately 62%; now my MSci year counts for 40% of the entire degree.
I believe the usual time for PhD applications are November/December onwards?
However, I am under the influence that my 3rd year result will greatly impact the application seeing as at the current time, the 3rd year mark will be the most influential seeing as it is the most recent result and so far the hardest out of the first 3 years (is this a correct assumption to make?).
Now what I wish to ask is if I manage to score a strong first in the MSci year, will that outweigh the results of the first 3 years and put me in a better position to successfully obtain a PhD place? (The project is worth 75% and exams are 25% weightings in the MSci year).
And in this regard, will it be more or less beneficial to apply for a PhD once my MSci year is complete?
I wish to undertake a PhD within one of the top 5 UK institutions (I will not name it) as some of the projects I am very interested in (still narrowing it down) have supervisors there.
Many Thanks in advance


If you are grading as low as 59% it doesnt matter what university you are at - you have a problem. Your grade average over all your years is not really any better. Having said that you could still be successful but remember one thing.....Getting onto a PhD is easy in comparison to actually successfully completing one without running out of funding. I would not recommend anyone taking on a PhD with such poor grades. Really you need to be getting a first. Having said that, people do manage to turn things around but you are making a very tough task much harder if you dont have a first.

You are talking about 80% being possible but speaking frankly, your grades are going in the opposite direction and you will definitely have trouble persuading anyone that you can miraculously turn this around. You have no evidence to suggest that is possible and in my opinion the fact that your university is seemingly highly rated, whatever that means, is probably not relevant in that respect. By all means apply, and you certainly should if that is what you want to do, but my strong advice is for you to make turning your poor grades around your top priority and consider the possibility that you might have to do a PhD elsewhere.

I had to wait about 7 weeks I think, which is disgraceful in my opinion. During the break I finished off my last two pieces of work ready for publishing. I then reread the entire thesis with a few weeks to go. Horrible time. Glad it is over,

I am no expert but I would have thougt that finance and economics both involve heavy amounts of programming.
Am I missing something here?

Could it be that you are not particularly good at selling yourself to industry?
I know its a cheeky question but I ask because you clearly dont believe your PhD skills are worth anything in industry. If that is your mindset I would pretty much guess an employer will see that in your body language.
The reality is that industry is full of PhD grads many of whom are going straight in at senior level. I personally know of dozens of them.

That is a good example but in fairness the problem you are describing is not down to a shortage of money. It is down to corruption in the affected countries. No amount of money will fix it without fundamental structural reform.

The specialisation issue is really not relevant.
A PhD comes with an absolute mountain of transferrable skills a small list of which is detailed here:
http://www.jobs.ac.uk/careers-advice/studentships/1541/reflecting-on-the-value-of-your-phd-what-are-employers-looking-for

Your university should have a huge list of skills you should be able to gain.

It is really important to thnk outside the box here.

It's quite concerning to see so many people talk about having no experience seemingly unaware that they have demonstrated repeatedly for 4 years or more that they have an abundance of experience in applying these skills.

I am not talking about networking.
I am talking about treating finding a job as a full time job in itself.
Experience is not absolutely necessary either - I have changed career more than once without any experience by re-training myself.

What needs to be done to ease the process of finding a job is for people to consider a longer timescale. Target the jobs you want and the employers (of all sizes) who use those skills. Develop a solid understanding of the skills you need well in advance of applying. Then start finding employees of those companies on LinkedIn who are advertising that they work in a related area. Contact them or send them your CV and chances are they will pass it to a hiring manager. In some cases your CV will land on a hirers desk before a job is even advertised or considered. Many companies may even create a role specifically for you if they fear you will end up at their conpetitor.

The major probolem with today's job seekers is that they wait until they need or want a job before doing any of this and then they are in panic mode trying to secure a position before their current contract runs out. Learning to play the long game is the key to success.

I think this is turning into a very decent and interesting thread.

It would absolutely be a mistake to consider hard sciences and technology as reliable. Both worlds are crammed full of people doing utterly useless research with no credible pretence at even aiming at practical usage. Here is a very simple and obvious example. If academic science is so convinced of its worth, why does it insist on producing indecipherable papers written in deliberately archaic language and locking them away behind pay walls? Who are they writing these articles for? It certainly isn't the general public who are paying for all this nonsense.

The first sentence of your second paragraph is the core of the pack of lies which academic science spouts in order to justify its existence and secure funding. Almost nobody is involved in uncovering "truths" or producing any benefits whatsoever to society.

I understand that we need people doing genuinely out of the box stuff but right now, in the depths of our economic problems, academic science has a duty in my opinion to step up and start using scarce public money to start producing more useful outputs that could realistically help society. In short, science needs to get its finger out and start doing something to justify its vast budget.

:-D
That is actually a little depressing though.

My personal opinion is that whilst there are many exceptions, I still feel the majority of supervisors on the whole simply not interested in your or your career development. Students and postdocs are there as cheap labour to generate papers and further the career of the academic. Industry has cottoned onto this as well with the latest wheeze being to hire PhD students and temporary postdocs rather than actual staff. This is what happens when you have too many PhDs being awarded - a glut of supply, little demand and wages and conditions go down the pan.

The solution? Self employment. As PhD grads, we are perfect for this.

Too few PhD graduates in my opinion are attempting to establish their own companies to avoid all of this abuse. We have just spent 4 years learning how to wipe our own backsides. Why on earth are so many of us prepared to then deliberately shackle ourselves to employers who don't respect our achievements?

My background is in science. My reasons for leaving academia behind are too long to put in one posts but here are some:-

1) Not interested in pissing away 5 to 10 years desperately trying to get a job I could already do today.

2) I am interested in research and therefore have no interest in a permanent academic post which would essentially be an administration job.

3) Between grade inflation for students, deliberately submitting articles to paywall journals in pursuit of impact factors (causing the funding tax payer to pay twice for the same research), research funding preferentially directed to big name groups and a huge percentage of research being fabricated, academia is totally and utterly corrupt from the ground up. I have absolutely no wish to spend my life in that environment and I certainly don't want to be part of enabling this current state of affairs.

4) Academia is reductivist in nature which means it is hard to get funded for a cross-disciplinary project unless you hire people to do the bits you can't do. I have no interest in this sort of environment because it means I can usually only ever work on stuff I can already demonstrate competence in.

5) Relatively few groups are attempting to solve real world problems with even the remotest pretence of practical applicability.

6) Bullying and other abuse of postdocs and phd students by supervisors.

7) Deliberate "sexing up" of research potential in order to get funding. I have no interest in competing in that sort of market.

8) Male, pale and stale staffing. No diversity. Who would possibly want to waste their career in that stultifying atmosphere?

9) Office politics. Just say no.

10) Lecturers hired not on their ability to teach but on their ability to bring in funding.

11) Absolutely no meaningful oversight for teaching standards or research standards.

12) New students left to fathom out lab safety on their own or via postdocs and other PhD students. I wonder how many deaths we need before proper professional lab training is provided.

Those are just a handful of the problems which leap to mind.

Academia is in an appalling state and needs urgently dragged into the 21st century. I am so angry about this I am tempted to start lobbying politicians about it to publicise what goes on.

I would disagree with this.
If you are only thinking about jobs which are advertised or are only targetting large companies then yes you can have problems.
In the UK we have more than 2 million companies out there and 90% of all jobs are never advertised. People need to get proactive nowadays. Target small companies and dont wait for job advert would be my advice.

This supervisor sounds like he has many faults but so does this student.

Her initial chat with him was so appallingly bad that she needs to accept a fair degree of personal responsibility for pressing ahead and taking this PhD in the first place.

She is taking almost no blame for this and in doing so appears to have missed a valuable lesson. I would like to know why she persisted in taking a PhD with him when she knew what he was like.

It would also be interesting to know why she "craves encouragement". That seems overly needy to me and needy people are not well disposed to doing well as independent researchers.

I can see why she is upset but her attitude in that article comes across as a little "entitled", lacking a bit in self awareness and lacking any serious attempt at critiquing her own decisions.

Maybe I am being a bit harsh though.

My advice to anyone undertaking a PhD is to ask better questions of your supervisor during the interview. Ask about how they like to work, their expectations of you, expected working hours and day, expected publication rates etc. If you can see a problem at this stage then walk away and go elsewhere.