Important tips for online Phd

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FREE KILLER TIPS FOR ONLINE PHD SCHOLARSHIPS

WHY DO YOU NEED THESE KILLER TIPS? OK, first of all before you spend your time reading the rest of this document here is why you need these killer tips? 1. As with anything in life the choices that you make can BREAK or MAKE you. 2. You are responsible for your own choices So do your research before you select! Other wise you can end up 1. Without a PhD after 4-5 years of HARD WORK 2. Very bitter, disappointed, frustrated, very unhappy and maybe DEPRESSED 3. Without any career direction 4. Without even a single piece of paper to show for the hard back breaking labour that you have done during the past 3-5 years. 5. POOR!

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WHY SHOULD YOU LISTEN TO US? Because WE 1. Have been through this whole process 2. Have more than 20 YEARS of combined experience of working at a number of universities 3. Have personally SUPERVISED a large number of students 4. Have acted as external and internal examiners to a number of PhD students at universities 5. Have successfully navigated through the system 6. Have helped 1000s of people who wanted our help at http://onlinephduk.com/ 7. Get stopped on the street or at the supermarket by the people who want to know about how to get a PhD scholarship. And LASTLY 8. We DON'T charge you a penny (/cent) for our advice. WHY DID WE WRITE THIS REPORT AND WHY IT IS FREE? We get asked the same questions over and over again, at cocktail parties, dinners, in the pub, at the supermarket, or shopping center. So we thought it would be better to write this and tell them where this is so that they don't have to stop us and ask these things at all times! Seriously we spend quite a lot of time with people advising about these things. This is free because we assume you are not extremely rich and because you are looking for a scholarship, but we may be wrong, and you might be very rich!

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WHAT IS A PHD? A set of documents which satisfy the regulations of the host institution that you are studying at and can satisfy the external and internal examiners. So it is true to say that in this process you have to satisfy a lot of people and mind you they do seek satisfaction.

WHAT IS A SCHOLARSHIP OR A BURSARY? This is funding for your studies. Usually this includes 3 things 1. Your course fee, as a fee waiver (which is paid on your behalf ) 2. Pocket money, this is for living expenses 3. Part time lecturing opportunity – usually this is for extra pocket money SEEKING FOR AN ONLINE PHD WITH SCHOLARSHIP ? Ok you are probably looking at an online PhD because you think that it’s much cheaper than an onsite PhD where you have to physically attend a university. Nothing wrong with that and its much greener and cooler to do it online anyway. Usually online PhDs are cheaper than onsite PhDs, so it's a great deal if you can get a scholarship for an online PhD because they can reduce the cost further. This advice here is mainly for people who are seeking online PhD scholarships in the UK or USA, does the physical location matter when the PhD is studied online? Yes and NO, we believe that the tips that you would use to get a scholarship can be applied to any country in the world.

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Are you READY? Ok if you think you are ready, we can start our journey towards your final destination of getting scholarship for an online PhD. According to our research there are 7 CRITICAL things or we call them KILLER TIPS to get right in the scholarship hunting process. 1. DEVELOPING YOUR PORTFOLIO 2. PLANING AHEAD 3. CHOOSING YOUR SUBJECT AREA 4. CHOOSING YOUR UNIVERSITY 5. CHOOSING YOUR DEPARTMENT 6. CHOOSING YOUR SUPERVISOR 7. MAKING YOUR APPLICATION

It is extremely important to understand that you can

TIP # 1
DEVELOPING YOUR PORTFOLIO

significantly increase your chances of getting a PhD scholarship if you have prior research publications like conference papers, journal articles, or books. The secret is to approach a potential supervisor with a good track record of publication, and he will be very happy to offer you a scholarship because he or she knows that you are going to publish more of your research under his name. If you check the best universities like oxford or Cambridge you see that many PhD students, especially with scholarships had published before joining. So publish or perish. Make your research portfolio ready before even looking for any scholarships.

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TIP # 2
PLANING AHEAD

When you are looking for a Scholarship, PLAN AHEAD and do your research for required subject area, university and their department (check what they are looking in a Scholarship applicant, for example first class, high GPA etc)

TIP # 3
CHOOSING YOUR SUBJECT AREA

If you are DESPERATELY looking to do a PhD then you don't have much choice in the subject selection, there are some subject areas where no one wants to do a PhD in, for example in the UK subjects like PHYSICAL SCIENCES. So it’s usually dead easy to get a scholarship in these areas.

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It is exceptionally critical decision that you must try and find a university which is not too competitive like oxford, Cambridge or Harvard. It's much easier to get a scholarship

TIP # 4
CHOOSING YOUR UNIVERSITY

from a university which is in the middle of the league table. IF you go for a bottom of the league university they will inundate you with paper work, form filling and a lot of bureaucratic red tape. These lower league universities are under a lot of pressure to from quality assurance so it's more paperwork than research. Plus they are very keen on the single problem approach to PhDs where you must find a big enough problem to write about 80000 words. The amount you have to write for your thesis (the word count) is higher at these lower league universities. So choose wisely. The best advice is that to take the university league table and start at the middle and work your way up and down and avoid the best and the worst universities.

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Once you have selected a university, the next step is to select a department which is suitable for your subject area, now this

TIP # 5
CHOOSING YOUR DEPARTMENT

can be very flexible depending on the university. For example if you wanted to do a PhD in computer science you can select the department of computing (obviously !) or you can select the department of mathematics, many departments are happy to arrange this kind of flexible somewhat unrelated to the department PhDs. When you see the next step you will see that sometime the trick is to select the right supervisor who is working in the wrong department.

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Your supervisor can either make or break your PhD! so choose VERY CAREFULLY and be very picky. During our research, we come across this advice that one of the critical things before taking this decision is to have a discussion with the future

TIP # 6
CHOOSING YOUR SUPERVISOR

supervisor about your subject area and see his enthusiasm, if for example if he starts yawning then not the right one, but if he gets up with a pen and start writing thing on the board or paper to explain things and contradict you this could be the right one. But be careful about the nutty ones who draw a lot of circles on paper and on the boards but does not make one bit of sense. In every university, there are different types of supervisors and believe it that your success depends on this selection. You can easily get a Scholarship if your selected supervisor is desperately looking for a candidate on that specific time-period (may be he is working on a project or looking for his own promotion). Try to contact different supervisors and discus the possibility of getting a distance PhD with Scholarship.) According to our research there are 4 main types of supervisors 1. Who lets you get on with your work, and at the end of the study period you need to submit the thesis 2. Control freaks, who try to control each and every thing about you and your PhD. 3. I had it tough so I am not going to make it easy for you! Type

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4. To keep my job / tenure I need to keep you after

TIP # 6 Continued
CHOOSING YOUR SUPERVISOR

that I don’t' need you any more and you will not have a PhD after all your work! AVOID 2-4 AT ANY COST! IDENTIFY THESE TYPES AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE

Than there will be a question about the AGE, do I find a young, middle aged or old supervisor?

Avoid the recently graduated PhD supervisors, as they tend to be type 4 above. For example if his grammar was so bad

TIP # 6
YOUNG

and had a terrible time with his writing up then he will definitely be a grammar freak with you. One easy way to notice is if he insists on using oxford commas and acts like an editor instead of a scientist or a professor!, this sort of people love to use latex, bibtex which are professional editing packages and they are notoriously difficult to use, compared to something like MS word. But if this is your cup of tea then you too would get along splendidly.

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Tends to be more understanding and not too bothered about being picky, just wants some papers with your research and

TIP # 6
MIDDLE AGED

his name on it and he is happy like a pig in mud. Can identify this type when you look at their publication record, it tends to be lengthy, about 100 conferences papers, 75 journal articles, 15 books, etc.

Be careful and make sure that his retirement is not due before your graduation. Most of the scholarships are

TIP # 6
OLD

arranged between the university department, the supervisor and the student, we've had a number of cases where the supervisor retired and the students had no supervision, so no scholarship any longer and he was out without a PhD. If ever you are in this situation best medicine is to bite the bullet and change the university, even if you have to pay your PhD fees at the new university.

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OK, another trick, our researchers have observed various situations where when you have approached the newest member of staff, even though they are new, they will be

HOT TIP # 1

keen as mustard to supervise your PhD. They will be very pleased that you have asked. So if you can identify someone like this who has joined the department recently, its worth a quick email and a phone or a chat to figure out that he is not a type 3 (I had it tough so I am not going to make it easy for you!)

HOT TIP # 2

Another hot tip is the right supervisor in the wrong department. For some reason in some departments there are professors / lecturers who’s research is in completely irrelevant areas, for example there are people in computing departments who research about optometry (something to do with eye tests, and eyes etc), their research is highly irrelevant to their department and the only reason for them to being there is to improve the research profile of the department so that the head of department is happy. This sort of researchers are more prone to offer you a scholarship, but be careful they will definitely get you to research in the same pet research areas they are in. The trick is to find your subject, search for someone in an unrelated department who is researching in your area and approach them. Always make sure to check that they are NOT types 2, 3, 4!!! As you can see there are so many factors when selecting 11

a supervisor, so in summery like Age, background, educational background, personality, interests, likes and dislikes, tenure, how long he has been on this job, how relevant his research is to the department, ethnicity, gender. So it's just like dating :)

With our advice if you have decided and chosen your subject area, department/university and supervisor than

TIP # 7
MAKING YOUR APPLICATION

next step is to “make your application properly (application form + personal statements + research proposal)”. As this step will lead you further towards your destination the “scholarship”. There is a possibility that you can take advice from a professional to develop your research proposal or personal statements. Don’t try to write an untidy proposal or statements for any application as they are the keys to your successful application. Especially for the UK universities presentation is the key, if you can print your application on cream colored slightly thicker A4 paper using a color printer and include a lot of pictures graphs and Harvard references. Once you send your application don't think it's over, because it's not over yet. You need to contact who ever was supposed to receive the application and thank them for receiving it. Most probably this would be an administrator and they might see that you are a nice person and might decide that your application should be on top of the pile. So do everything possible to stand out from the crowd and be at the top of the pile of applications.

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After about a week contact the person again and ask how they are etc and then ask about the application (do these in the specified order for best results). The trick here is to keep in tough with them continuously until you get the scholarship without annoying them. You have to go through this again when it comes to submitting the thesis and arranging for external and internal examiners so be ready but let worry about that later…

Finally,

With all these hot tips now it is time for us to close our discussion, however

feel free to send us an email or if you want to add your experience here then please head over to onlinephduk.com and leave a comment and tell us about your views regarding our research and its importance for your scholarship hunt. Please do tell us what happened to your scholarship application and the PhD, we will always be here for you at http://onlinephduk.com/. Especially if you need any help at any time for PhD application process, writing-up, submitting or graduating visit us at http://onlinephduk.com/ and we will be more than happy to help you. All the best, From onlinephduk.com RESEARCH TEAM James Phillips & Christopher MacDonald

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