Ive got my upgrade soon and Im feeling so unconfident. Everyone keeps telling me how its a great opportunity to assess your progress and direction and make sure you are on track in the long-term. And that its just a formality. But so far my experience has already led to submitting my upgrade, having a meeting, having to re-write and re-submit. And now I have another meeting because there are still 'concerns'. I dont know what else they want from me. Any advice?!

Dont' panic! The idea of the transfer is to get rid of those that may not be capable of completing the PhD. I too had a lot of edits to do to my transfer report with a lot of this derived from supervisors with differing opinoins on a particular topic. By the end of the transfer review process I have gotten some writing that will provide a base for my final write up.

There is no denying a lot of it won't be used but during the next 12 months a lot of my talks and potential journals may well be based on a lot of what I have included in my transfer report.

I am also presuming that your transfer report included a literature review and a progress to date section. The lit review will be usefull throughout your PhD. I found the progress report bit usefull aswell in that it helped me write down and better realise what I had done so far and also helped in deciding the next stage in my reasearch.

Keep and hope this helps!!

Thanks Studentken. I cant say that it was a positive experience but thankfully I have 'passed' so to speak and can now progress. You are right the process has given me a firm basis for lit review and methodolgy sections so can expand on those and start getting things written up. And I suppose being ripped apart now will be good preparation for the real thing!
Thanks for your support