Elly's Manchester PhD Research Tips

Elly is a first-year PhD researcher in the Department of Materials. Read her top tips on deciding to start a PhD after working in industry, reading every email before you start, supplementing your income during your PhD, the importance of support in your research group, and much more.

This is an edited transcript of?Elly’s advice, and you can listen to her thoughts in full, as well to as all of our other?research advice, here.

On...how you know a PhD is for you

"I've always been quite inquisitive and liked to know how things work, how they're made. I love those kind of TV shows and I've always been really into science and engineering, and I love problem solving as well, I love puzzles and things like that. They're all combined together really to go into research. You need all those kind of things like the problem solving and the curiosity and you want to dig deeper."

On...committing to do a PhD?

"Make sure it's definitely what you want to do, because it is a commitment. It'll take you three, three and a half years or more to complete your PhD. Think about the subject area, is it what you're interested in? Are you passionate about that kind of thing?"

On...how industry experience can help with a PhD

"I felt with industry I almost like a glass ceiling. I wasn't getting the development that was promised. It just felt like my career was kind of going in the wrong direction and I just wanted more options. A lot of the jobs I wanted to apply for, they were looking for people with PhD's so I thought why not do one? I feel like if you want to develop go further in your career, it definitely gives you more options if you've got a PhD. I think it's good having the industrial experience as well before you go into doing a PhD because you know what industry is like, you know what the finished products are like, you know what kind of the manufacturers are looking for. So it definitely benefits you having the industrial experience before you do your PhD."

On...why you should start a PhD after being in industry?

"I'd think about what you want to do with your career, what your goals are, where do you see yourself in 10 years time? That kind of thing because you kind of get stuck in the short term when you're looking at your career and thinking what am I going to do with my current job? Where am I going here? What should I do for my next job? You don't really think, “maybe if I had a PhD I could do all sorts of things that I can't do at the moment, maybe I'd have a higher position or be more well paid, or just get some more interesting experience”. It's where you want to be down the line rather than where you are now I think."

On...being organised when you apply?

"When you're actually doing the application as well, I found it really good to have all your documents ready before you applied. They ask you for your passport, your degree certificate, your academic transcript, so I made sure I had everything saved in a folder so when I came to upload them it was really easy. It made the process a lot quicker."

On...reading every email before you start

"I'd read every e-mail that you have, even if they don't make sense to you just yet. Maybe save them and come back to them later because there's some great emails to begin with where it says about how to order a laptop, how to register for a GP, and you might not think “ohh I don't need to do that yet”. Definitely save them so you can come back to them when you've actually arrived and you kind of understand them a bit more. I think that's really important."

On...key things to do before you apply?

"Read what the PhD is, which research area? Is it something you're interested in? Something you're passionate about? It’s something you're doing for the next, well for me, three and a half years, some people take longer to do a PhD, so you've got to love it. I would look at the funding as well, is it already funded? Mine was industry funded, not all of them are, you have to look for funding elsewhere, so that's something to be aware of. Next is the supervisors, I've heard people that didn't have a supervisor they got along with, they weren't that keen on, or one of my friends had a supervisor that left halfway through and that ruined his project. So I'd Google them, I would give them a stalk on LinkedIn, I would look at what research papers they've written and if you have any friends at the university, I went and asked some of my friends who've done PhD's, “have you heard of this supervisor?”, “do you know them?”, “are they're good?” “what's your experience been?”, and that was really helpful for me."

On...preparing for your PhD interview?

"During your interview you really want to make sure that your skills and experience relate back to the posting. If they say they want someone really organised, make sure you find examples of where you've been organised in the past and relate those factors. If you have to do a presentation, like they asked me to do one on my experience and background with nanocomposites so I rehearsed it loads, I practised with my family. They probably got a bit sick of me. I practised all quite common interview questions as well, so I'd always have an answer."

On...the benefits of an industry sponsored project?

"A lot of my material that I'm using is supplied by them, so that's really useful. I have access to their suppliers as well and I've gone to visit their factory and seen their manufacturing and if they they've invited me as well if I want to use any of their equipment, I'm welcome to go visit them. So that's really useful, I can email them any time about anything. They sent me samples as well to test, so I've been waiting quite a while to make my own samples so in the meantime I've had some of their samples, so I've been able to get training on equipment that otherwise I would have had to have waited ages to use."

On...supplementing your income as a postgraduate researcher?

"I was already saving a lot of money each month, so a lot of that was just going into banking savings. Also, when you get to uni you can do fun jobs like this where you can become something like a PGR Ambassador and make a little bit of extra money. You can become a graduate teaching assistant as well. I’ve seen some other jobs advertised where you're like helping for career service, looking at CV's for students so you can do other things to supplement your income. My stipend, I think it's pretty similar for everyone, is about ￡18,000 and it's tax free so actually when I crunch the numbers I was like, “well, I can actually still afford my mortgage, I can still afford all my bills”. I just probably need to cut back on things like not getting my hair cut and died as often and not getting a coffee all the time, bringing my own lunch, and that kind of thing."

On...the importance of support in your research group?

"If I wanted something immediately, I might go to someone else in my research group. We've got quite a lot of doctoral and post-doctoral students there so a lot of them have done similar research projects and had similar problems. Often I'll just turn to the person on my right and say, “hey, have you ever come across this?”, or “do you know who to contact with this?”, that kind of thing? It's kind of good support. The university has so much support anyway, we've got like a fair like disability or counselling that students for the career services library. There's lots of places to go if you need help, if you're stuck and your supervisor is not."