Thanks for the feedback everyone!

Been having some significant trouble with this. I submitted 6 of the chapters in the middle of January and agreed a two week turnaround. However, one of my supervisors has gone off on an unexplained absence leaving me with feedback from only one chapter since then (in nearly 3 months!).  Speaking with my second supervisor, he is not able to review this as he has to pick up my other supervisor's taught classes, research commitments, etc and has not seen any of my thesis previously. As such, he does not seem to want to review this. My drop dead date for submission is January 2012; however, even if my first supervisor returned today AND the two weeks a chapter turnaround starts now I am still not going to have feedback on the whole thing till the middle of August leaving only four months to do any major changes.

Do you think it would be appropriate to ask for another academic within the department to review this instead of my current supervisors?

Hey everyone,

I've recently completed a first draft of my thesis, consisting of nine chapters and approximately 80,000 words. What do you think is a reasonable amount of time that I could expect my supervisors to look through this and get back to me with comments?

My advice would be to ensure that you nail your research question as early as possible.

I'm just about to submit (3 months over a 4 year EngD deadline) and could attribute almost all of that delay to a lack of clarity over what I was basing my research on in the early stages. What I realise now is the critical importance of picking a research question and sticking to it, rather than fishing about for a more exciting, challenging or ground breaking topic.

Also be sure that you plan a reasonable amount of time for parts of the project where you are at the mercy of others (e.g. organising interviews, focus groups or workshops and having chapters reviewed by your supervisors and peers) as it can be extremely frustrating if you have to wait on these individuals.

Hi everyone, thanks for the input.

I think you are right that you should push for a direct entry position rather than going through a graduate scheme. However, it's important to make this decision yourself and this might not be the same for all individuals doing an EngD.

On the theme of potential wages, I think some a current survey of graduate EngDs and PhDs salaries would be very useful. This could potentially help out those negotiating contracts to make sure they do not undersell their skills and experience. However, I would suggest that using an old data set and inflating this could be error laden and as such any figures produced in this manner should be taken as an indicative value rather than an absolute.

I am fast approaching the end of my EngD and starting to weigh up my options for the future. I know I want to go into industry rather than academia, but don't know what the best route to take into industry is. What I am keen to understand is others experience of gaining a direct entry into a named position in an organisation or going into industry through a graduate scheme after a doctorate and how you came to these decisions.

I am currently trying to work out whether it would be better to use the skills, experience and contacts I have built up over the last four years or going back to the grass roots to broaden my skills base, gain wider experience and try some new areas of business.

Thanks,
Willie