@olew said:
Hello madam, ano po ang field ng PhD nyo?
Can you give some high-level background about requirements, costs, timeline and required study/research hours? Thank you
I'm doing my PhD about Lighting Design (under the Faculty of Engineering).
Requirements for applying for the PhD program varies a bit between universities, but generally you need a PhD proposal, someone willing to supervise you (who has the expertise in what you're researching), completed application form, documentation (academic transcripts, CV/resume), publications/writing sample (your application looks more competitive if you have some published research work, but not always required).
Eligibility for a PhD program is usually a research master's degree (MRes/MPhil), unless you have completed a degree wherein 25% of it was research/thesis (like doing one sem of thesis in a 2-year master of science or one year of thesis in a 4-year bachelor's degree). If you don't immediately qualify, you may be admitted to the MRes or MPhil program, and then request to upgrade to PhD after one year of doing the research master.
The cost of doing the PhD as an international student is around AUD 40k/year (tuition fees). If your prospective university offers scholarships, apply for them. Once you get in contact with a prospective PhD supervisor, ask them if they have faculty-specific scholarships. Based on my observation and research, there's more funding for PhD than master's degree by coursework. If they don't offer a scholarship this year, try applying next year. One of my friends waited for 6 months before she was offered a PhD scholarship---it really depends on the timing and availability of funding.
Timeline for applying really depends on you. The most difficult part is the proposal and finding a supervisor. Some PhDs create their own research, while others just work on what the supervisor wants (I'm in this category, so I didn't have to start from scratch). If you're creating your own research, it could take you 3-6 months before you can churn out a decent research proposal. The application process itself was relatively quick in my case, maybe 3-4 weeks.
Required study/research hours? As a full-time research student, you are expected to do research for at least 40 hours/week---the same amount of time you would spend for a full-time job. You could easily spend hours just scouring the web for journals/articles relevant to your topic, skimming through the abstracts, coding literature (a.k.a. categorizing or taking notes), attending writing workshops (if you're not very confident with your writing skills), attending career seminars, etc. In my case, I don't really count the hours I "study" because my schedule varies day to day. I can be lazy one day and accomplish nothing (just thinking or something) then the following day be motivated enough to write 1000 words. What matters more to me is that I get work done---PhD is output based, so it really depends on the person.
