Hi I finished my master’s degree five years ago and since then have worked with different reputed research organisations, like think tank and advocacy groups. I have been applying for PhD in Europe, particularly Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland. But no luck so far. I applied for 7 programs over past four months and none of my applications got shortlisted. What am I missing:
-
Marks in Masters degree? (I scored a humble 65%)
-
Recommendation Letters? (Most of the programs didn’t require any)
-
Long time since I finished my master’s? (5 years, but I have working in similar areas)
-
Lack of first author publication? (I have one multi author publication)
-
I am an international student.
I believe I wrote strong research statement, cover letters and got in touch with respective faculty to understand our research alignment before submitting formal application.
Please suggest me what am I missing here.I am losing hope now and might stop trying further.
Comments
Don’t underestimate how may candidates you are up against. If you are applying to funded PhD positions, you should realize their are likely to be 100’s of applicants!
Last funded PhD position I was involved in hiring (I work for a private company, but this was for PhD student that will do half his work in our labs), we got 200(!) applications. We (me and 4 professors) each screened a part of them, selected our top 5 (so that leaves 25), discussed those together to pick the top 5, interviewed those, talked to the references of the top 2 and chose 1 candidate. 1 out of 200…
Marks in your Master: not likely to be looked at. Can be used to compare you to other candidates, but only in the final comparison. The institute you studied at carries more weight than your grades.
Recommendation letters: most of the time, they are not required. But in the end, your references might be contacted by phone.
Yes, that doesn’t help. It seems like you decided to do a PhD because you don’t like the other options, rather than because you want to do research.
Most European Masters don’t have a publication to their name. Most, not all. However, having a publication is only worth it in a good journal. Q1 A1 journals only. Rubbish journals, predatory journals,… will lose you the position, as much as a good paper can keep you in the race.
That doesn’t really matter. We only interviewed international applicants for the last position.
Your letter doesn’t get you an interview. It can probably only get you out of the race if it is poorly written or has poor spelling.
If you found some groups you really want to do a PhD at, even if they don’t have an open position, contact them. Ask them about opportunities to apply for funding so you can work with them. This escapes the numbers game for funded positions and makes you stand out immediately. That said, I don’t know how difficult it is to get funding for PhD in the Netherlands in your field.
When applying for PhD, I also applied for lots of European PhD positions, with most got rejected before receiving the only ONE offer. Competition is simply too fierce (as European PhDs are mostly fully funded).
Among the five points you listed, No.5 doesn’t matter. I guess the issue is related to No.3 and No.4, though having taken some research roles after Master, it’s still different from pursuing an academic career. And perhaps your industry/policy research work is not fully justified by output (that is, academic journal or conference. Reports and comments on media are not considered academic output).
For reference letter, my Master’s thesis supervisor get contacted directly by the PI of the PhD programme that accepts me. I think a strong recommendation (though not required at initial application) and previous GPA can help you stand out among shortlisted candiates but not something you must need to get shortlisted.
The one you are missing: Networking. A lot of profs prefer to take PhD students whom they already know (either because these people already worked at their lab as RA during their master’s, did their master’s thesis there, or at least from some in-person event). If you know people in person, it’s in fact often easy to get a PhD position, for most people.