Hi,

I have a good master's degree but limited experience, so I'm looking for an entry-level postion. During my search I have noticed a high number of vacancies at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and they often seem to have relatively basic or broad selection criteria compared with jobs at other institutions. Obviously I have been applying to jobs for which I meet the selection criteria, and so when I see these jobs I apply.

My question is basically, are Oxford and Cambridge as competitive to get into from an employment perspective as they are from a student's perspective compared with other universities?

They are clearly both highly prestigious, and therefore I assume they receive some very good candidates. But having said that, they also both have very large research infrastructures and relatively small local populations which may reduce competition for lower-level posts.

Are they listing relatively non-restrictive criteria because they need to attract more applicants, or are they just not bothered about the criteria because they know they will get the best people anyway?

Thank you for any advice, I don't want to miss out on any opportunities, but at the same time I don't want to waste my time applying for positions I have no chance for when i could be applying to others instead.

Personally I don't think its a good idea. Even if you spend three months working for free there's no guarantee you'll be offered a funded PhD position, so you could just end up depleting your saving for no benefit. You say you already have one year of paid research assistant work experience, so perhaps you can find another RA position for now; and ask the supervisor you want to do a PhD with to contact you if funding becomes available. This way you'll be getting paid work experience instead of voluntary. Maybe your chance of getting the PhD when funding comes up might be slightly reduced compared with if you had been working with the supervisor already, but to me taking the 3 months unpaid work would be too much of a gamble.

When do you get the confirmed results? I think often if you've failed only one component, it can be upgraded to a compensatory pass if you've passed the module overall. I wouldn't count on it, but it's certainly possible. Has you uni actually told you that you've failed the course or are you just assuming?

As for applying to jobs, I would just list my result as 'pending', and then if asked at interview you can say you have to resit one exam. Relax, I don't think its as big of a deal as you think it is right now. You haven't failed, you just haven't finished yet.

Just to clarify my last remaining question:

- Are there likely to be PhD graduates applying for research technician roles in the UK?

I would just like to know the type of competition for those kind of positions with regard to education.

Thanks again, Malik.

Hi awsoci, thanks for your reply.

The only noteworthy research experience I have is that obtained through my undergraduate and MSc research projects. (3 months part time lab work for undergrad and 3 months full time lab work for MSc, not including the literature review/experimental design/write up stages). I think my courses may possibly have incorporated a little more lab work than average, but obviously that pales in comparison to the experience other applicants who have worked in a research role will have.

What you're saying with regard to RA positions backs up what I've heard from other people, and I guess that makes sense considering the competitiveness of postdocs.

I am a little surprised that there are significant numbers of PhD graduates applying for technician roles though. Many of the adverts I have seen specify that not even an undergraduate degree is necessarily required, is that the same in Australia? If so, I think I might have to rethink my plans as I thought having a masters degree would put me at an advantage education wise which may somewhat compensate my lack of experience, but maybe not if I'll be going up against PhD graduates.

Caro -

Thanks for your advice. Yeah, I will apply for as many relevant jobs as I can and see how it goes. Maybe register with some recruitment agencies as well like awsoci said.

With regard to volunteering, I will definitely have a look for something. The main problem is that in order to afford to do volunteer work I would have to stay in my hometown, and I'm not sure how many, if any, scientific roles will be available in the area. I will have a search though and hopefully something will come up.

Hi,

I'm looking for any advice people might be able to share regarding the best way for me to begin a bioscience career.

I have a 2:1 BSc degree in biomedical science, and I'm just about to graduate with an MSc in biotechnology - both from a mid-ranking university. I'm 22 years old, I have continuously been in full time education, and I have no significant work experience. My long term career goal is to get into the industrial research and development sector.

Over the last year I have applied for ~10 funded PhD studentships relating to virology. I had 2 separate interviews at a very prestigious university, but was unsuccessful in obtaining either position.

I'm reluctant to keep on applying for more studentships because I would rather wait and eventually get a studentship for a project I'm really interested in at a good university, than lower my sights in the hope of obtaining something which may be somewhere less competitive. Also, I feel that my greatest weakness now is my lack of experience, and worry that by going straight into a PhD this would become even more of a problem afterwards.

Therefore, my current plan is to try to get a job as either a research assistant or research technician. Then, in 2 - 4 years after 1 or 2 different jobs, reapply for PhDs and hopefully get something really exciting.

My question is basically this - do you think I am being reasonable? I have seen quite a lot of job adverts for both research assistants and technicians, but I have heard from several different people that RA jobs are very difficult to obtain, is this true? Also, how much are research technicians generally paid? My primary concern is not money, but ideally I would like a salary of ~£20,000 or more. Do you think this amount is realistic for someone in my situation?

Thank you so much in advance for any help.

Malik.

Thanks Thesisfun.

Sorry, I don't think I explained it very clearly.

I am looking at the viability of mutant bacteria in response to a compound, and this is recorded as a percentage of the viability observed in normal conditions. In the positive control mutant and one of the test mutants, viability is almost 100%. In the negative control mutant and two of the test mutants, viability is almost 0%. I want to show whether each test mutant is as resistant/sensitive to the compound as the control is.

I think a Bland-Altman plot may work, I haven't had a chance to look thoroughly yet though so any other suggestions from anyone in the meantime would be very welcome.

Thanks again, Malik.

Hi all,

I have some data which I am trying to compare; 3 experimental datasets and 2 control datasets (positive and negative control). Each set consists of 6 percentages, each from a different repeat of the same experiment. I basically want to compare each experimental set to the positive and negative control (separately) to confirm which ones are similar.

In other words, 2 experimental datasets should be very similar to the negative control and 1 very similar to the positive control. I can see visually that this does appear to be the case, but I want to confirm it somehow if I can.

I have done this already using Mann-Whitney U tests, but now I realise that this doesn't particularly help. For example, in one case I got a P-value of 0.361. That tells me they're not significantly different, but are they 'significantly similar'? Is significant similarity even a meaningful concept?

If anyone can help it would be very much appreciated, statistics aren't really my greatest skill.

Thanks, Malik.

Thank you for your help. To be honest you have confirmed everything that I was hoping to be true!

I do have a couple of follow up questions which I hope you/someone else may be able to help me with. How many applications to different research projects would you expect someone to send or consider to be relatively normal before a position is successfully obtained? On one hand I have an urge to apply to as many projects as possible as fast as possible in order to increase my chances but on the other hand I worry that too many applications will firstly annoy my referees leading to worse references, and secondly take too much time away studying for my course.

My second question is if I want to start in or around October 2014 (my MSc finishes in September), when will the peak in advertised projects likely occur? I don't want to apply to too many projects now if the majority of project adverts won't become available until April for example, but then I don't want to apply to too few, expecting more to become available later if they don't!

Thanks again, Malik

Hi, I am 21 years old and I have recently started studying MSc Biotechnology at Nottingham Trent University. Before I began this course I studied BSc Biomedical Science at the same university. I have extremely little work experience. I feel that my courses have contained a lot a practical laboratory experience compared with courses at other universities based on conversations I have had with other people but this is the only lab experience I have. I am currently thinking about what my next steps should be once I finish in September 2014.

I would like to develop a career in research. I see myself working in industrial research in the future, although I think I would also be happy doing academic research. I am aware that in order to obtain a high level research position in the future, a PhD would almost definately be required, and I would also be genuinely interested in obtaining a PhD for its own sake even if it didn't improve my career prospects so I do think that studying for a PhD would be appropriate for me at some point.

My first question is regarding PhD funding. I have been looking at PhD project on this website and see that, in the biosciences at least, a decent proportion of positions either have funding attached already or are competition funded. How difficult is it to obtain a funded PhD position, in other words, is there a realistic likelihood of me being able to obtain a funded position?

My second question is regarding research assistant positions. Would it be a good idea to apply for research assistant jobs instead of funded PhD positions in order to gain a few years work experience and therefore increase the likelihood of obtaining a funded PhD position, and also make it possible for me to pay for a non-funded PhD position if I could not obtain a funded place?

Finally, how difficult would it be to obtain a research assistant job? Easier or more difficult than obtaining a funded PhD position?

Kind regards, Malik.