Marcello, you mention universities advertising PhDs. Have you been in any contact with potential supervisors, directly? Specifically, do you have a particular research question in mind that you can prepare and produce a research proposal for?

In my experience (although I don't know if other European systems would view it differently), supervisors were generally extremely keen to talk with someone who:

A. Had a broadly defined research proposal
B. Were interested in working with them (it's nice to be thought of so highly, I guess, right?)

Now, that won't be true in all subjects, universities or of all people. However, it's also my thought that if a supervisor is really engaged, sees you have initiative, and your interest ties nicely with their own, you're in for a much easier application process. The supervisors can (and do) push for their potential students when it comes to funding opportunities.

I find it hard to believe that a university should have 1000+ applications for one PhD position: unfortunately, with the state of affairs in our economies, it doesn't seem impossible.

Keep on trying: the feeling you will get when you finally get the confirmation you're going on to do your studies will be worth the pain and frustration.

I can believe that there might be over 1,000 applicants for a funded PhD to be honest. When there are so many talented applicants, the criteria on which they select will not simply be an excellent MSc etc. Same with grant applications. So difficult to them also.

What makes an application successful and how many people apply will vary widely between disciplines, universities and supervisors. I don't think there are any hard and fast rules! Contacting potential supervisors with ideas might work.

I applied (successfully) for a fully funded PhD project when I was 40, with a masters (and first degree) in a different discipline (completed 15 years previously). They seemed to think I had what they wanted - hasn't stopped me from suffering from impostor syndrome for the whole of my PhD!

Good luck, I hope you find something soon. :)

I have a 1st class undergrad degree, an excellently graded masters, and two peer reviewed conference publications.
I've been applying for PhD positions (project specific and open call), for about 2 years now. I've written three different full length research proposals, and submitted about 70+ applications.
So far, I've had 2 interviews, and 0 offers.
Apparently it takes time.

There is just a myriad of applicants, so things like that can happen. Main problem is probably that a lot of positions are advertised not because they search for a student but because it's demanded by law. For instance in Sweden, they just write an ad that perfectly matches the CV of the student they already have. They never intended to higher a person from another university.

What are you doing during this long period of waiting? If it is not field related, it will be really hard to find a position now. Your chances probably strongly diminish if you are out of the field for a while. Any Plan B?

There are many people who get positions after taking a break from studies for several years and work in completely unrelated jobs (including me) so don't give up Lude

Sure. Sometimes it happens, sometimes not. Strongly depends on the field. If you work and continue applying, you have nothing to lose, but I would not completely focus on that, while financing myself, for example, with small jobs here and there. The day may come or never come, so good to have something up your sleeve in case it does not work out :) Just a well-intentioned advice

Unfortunately, I've had this great luck with employment too. The last 7 months were wasted by a UK multinational company which offered me a graduate position last October, and informed me about a week ago that they couldn't get my work permit, despite signing and processing all the employment paperwork.

I have been on-off affiliated with a technology start-up company that I helped found straight out of undergrad. But it is not official, because *drum roll* I don't have immigration permission :-)

Marcello - are you on good terms with the Italian academic who supervised your MSc work? I wonder whether it might be worth seeing if s/he has any connections to German professors, and would be willing to contact them to say that an excellent former student of his /hers is looking for a PhD place, and could they help at all? It might make you stand out a little. I suspect there are a lot of applicants from Southern Europe at the moment, and Germans can be quite snobbish about non-German universities, so a personal connection might be the way to try. It might be that your age is a bit of an issue, as Germans do seem to have very strict ideas about what age you should have done things by, but I can't see it being insurmountable.