Don't want to be rude but get a job? Lots of students have to juggle writing up without financial help.

Working for free in a lab will have insurance issues. Maybe look for a part time role and offer to teach for free would be better but I don't think you'll find a 'job' opening without a salary. Good luck.

Do you 'own' the rights to your work though? It'll be argued that it's property of your PI or the university department. I'm sorry but I don't think you'll win and it'll cost you money to pursue. Think carefully.

Okay. Deep breath. You are not 100% at fault, your supervisors should not submit your thesis if it isn't to standard. Have they provided detailed issues w/thesis, and can you address these. If you can rewrite.

Have to agree with others, wear what you're comfortable with. I tend to wear dress trousers and blouse for interviews/conferences and I'm ALWAYS overdressed but it's nice to show you take it serious. Good luck!

If the project is being advertised someone will carry it out and publish their results and thesis. While similar projects a par for the course, unless you have a unique finding your likely going to run into problems if they publish work before you as your results (if they demonstrate the same methods/outcomes etc) will run the risk of being done before. You then need to reference their work and prove you haven't just copied them. That you have your own experimental questions that you are investigating.

You might also run into funding problems and if your name is remembered from this university and you start publishing work they feel comes from their project.

If you like the project, research it and see what else you can add to the proposal, is their something else that can be the focus of a new project on the same subject? What you don't want is to spend 3/4 years working on something that a external examiner can say 'this was all published last year' or 'this looks exactly like what x group published' if you end up with that you are risking your phd if you can't show you've done something of significance that hasn't been done yet.

This I don't understand because an MSc is different to an MRes. I can't see how it's possible to do one and be awarded for the other.



Okay wait, so it's been over 10 years since your undergrad and MSc? But you're currently applying for a PhD?

I'm not saying it's impossible, but you now need to show you have the relevent industrial experience or it will be very hard to compete with students just finished their undergrads and masters. Your age won't be the deciding factor but being away from the research will if techniques have moved on and you now have a lack of skill.

You will have to carefully consider what positions you are best appling for, ones that you can show you have the right skills for and passion to improve on. Good luck.

Also I don't even mention my grade for undergrad I just put Bsc in X, MSc in y. It never stopped my phd application going through, I didn't even mention my masters was a distinction. The fact that you can study to the level of MRes and complete, that should be enough to get you a phd, its just that you'll be up against other students with various grades and experience.

I agree with all that's been said, you need to let it go and continue with what you want. In the UK and MSc will automatically lift your 2.2 to a 2.1 and is more than enough to get a phd if you're the best candidate for the post.

It will really depend on the length of your contract and your day to day role within the group. I know several RAs who tried to do phds part time with 3/4 not completing due to their workload or because they moved on to other jobs. One is in her 4th year doing it and is still happy with her progress.

If you are working very similar tasks throughout the year then it's easier to then have a basis for a phd project but if you're constantly working different projects then it won't be so easy. What you need to be is a contributing factor, not the postdoc your doing bench work for or another student. This makes it harder as you can say the lab developed a method using x to get data on y, I can develop a method using w, x, z to better understand y. That can be a hard thing as it might be the next logical step for the project anyway and gets taken out of your hands.

What you need is to be able to go to your PI and discuss it and show that you can get your RA job done and have enough time during the work week to devote a day (at least) to a project that's going to benefit the lab and be at phd level. That way there may not be too much additional cost to the lab to register you as a phd student.

From management to forensic psychology? That's a leap if you have not done any courses in psychology. I wouldn't think this would be possible without having an MSc to bridge the two. You'd be competing with more qualified students for the PhD unless you self-fund, and if you go that route I think it'll be a massive learning curve that you'd need a supervisor on board with to get you the right courses and training programmes.

If you don't want to do a phd then no, it won't make a difference for jobs. Only that doing an MRes is more likely to give you publications that will help your cv. Some people do better in the research rather than class room teaching. Do whatever course is more appealing to you.

I'm in the sciences and I'd recommend writing as much as possible as you go even if it means rewriting it all later. It'll give you a structure and you can do the methods and introductions at this stage (maybe), consider case studies which again you can redo if needed later when your understanding and knowledge are more extensive than right now. This way you can have a good word count, lots of references that just need polishing to get it ready after you have results to discuss.

It's never too early to start. Trust me.

I thought I knew what my project would be about but a lot of failed experiments and changes to the project left me with no funding and a thesis to write almost from scratch. I was doing additional experiments right up until my funding ended and was then left to go over all the results I gathered in less than a year, try to find a thread to connect them and write up on my own.

It's not been too bad but as I was no longer funded I took an RA job at another university which my supervisors were unhappy with, strangely they thought I'd just spend a few months doing nothing but writing up but what with bills to pay...

So I was given a write up year to finish and submit. On top of working in my research area and gaining more experience which feels like a good thing to me. I stuck mostly to writing on the weekends and even then work was put first, I needed the break.

As long as you, your university and your supervisors agree to a write up period after your funding has ended then it's fine. But a lot of supervisors want to submit before the end of funding. There was a mix in my group of people finishing on time and some using an extra year to write up.

Good luck!

The short answer is no.

But the department you sre in must have some area of interest? And equipment. What papers does your department publish? You have to have a reseaon for taking this position well let that guide you on what field of science you look into.

Bioscience is a very broad term, are you in cell biology, bioinformatics, cancer markers, disease markers, new drug treatments. Is your university connected to hospital patients, trial studies etc. These all fall under 'bioscience' but not all labs have the facilities for these types of studies or research.

You have to know an area of these, you then narrow the literature, consider what you'd like to see as a career option (such as cancer studies) and see where a gap in knowledge might be that you can try and provide more insight into with your phd.

If you are doing a funded phd in the uk the money is given in a lump sum to the university and is then allocated throughout the length of the project.

There might be less phd projects as a result of brexit but you wont have students start and then have funding pulled. Not in the sciences anyway, that's not how it works.

I can only speak from my own experience, but I've never heard of a phd project that starts and then loses funding. Nor have I heard of using your salary for your final years to buy equipment needed for the project.

To complete a phd you need a body of work, not one experiemental chapter. The change in sample size from 100 to 30 isn't so much of a problem, but the equipment needed should be something for your supervisors to get sorted. Don't let them talk you into using your salary, I've never heard of that ever happening before. You should have your salary from one fund, a budget for consumablies and equipment, something for travel and conferences and maybe even someway to budget for benchwork or software needed for the data collection and analysis.

You need to speak with your supervisor and have the both of you agree and what money there is and what you can achieve with those funds, only then can you work out how to get enough data for a phd.

Good luck.