FindAPhD Mug Shot

So, did anyone else get one?

Thanks to Andy from www.FindAPhD.com/www.FindAMasters.com for the freebie – and for producing a useful web resource which I do recommend frequently.

Their website is especially comprehensive for biological and chemical sciences but also has lots of opportunities for other subjects.

However, the one area which is less well represented is humanities PhDs, so I challenged Andy about this. He pointed out that for most humanities PhDs, you have to come up with your own proposal – so there are far fewer pre-defined PhD projects to advertise. Obvious really, if I’d only engaged my brain before asking.

Postgrad Study Fair – Weds 28th Oct

Tomorrow is the big Postgraduate Study Fair at Manchester Central (G-Mex as was).

Good reasons to go:

• You’re thinking about continuing with postgraduate study (for most of you, this will be a PhD – or maybe another Masters?)
• You want to talk to almost 100 exhibitors, face to face, about applying to their institutions, what funding they have, what their university is like etc.
• You want to investigate studying outside the UK – there will be representatives there from Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland, in addition to lots from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England.
• You’re interested in some professional study programmes such as News Associates Journalism training or MAs from Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
• You want to talk to careers advisers about where postgrad study might fit in your career plans.

Bad reasons to go:

• You’re looking for postgraduate jobs.
  This is about doing postgraduate courses. There isn’t a purely “postgraduate jobs fair” – all the graduate jobs fairs include jobs open to postgraduates.
• You need to talk to someone about a specific PhD or research topic.
  They’re unlikely to have your potential supervisor in attendance, but may be able to talk to you more generally about support for postgraduates.
• You’re looking for more of those freebies you picked up at the last two fairs.
  Hmm, these are universities, so you might strike lucky with the odd pen or cardboard coaster but don’t expect lavish giveaways (though I have heard that someone will have mugs which you can write on with chalk, like blackboards – but I’m not telling you who’s got these until I’ve been there first…)

Study or Research in the USA

If you’re a UK citizen and are interested in either postgraduate study in the USA (for example going for a PhD after your Masters) or in a research scholarship (if you already hold or will soon achieve a PhD), the Fulbright Commission award schemes are currently open for applications.

These are prestigious awards and naturally very competitive – but someone’s going to get them. You have to apply well in advance of the date you want to go the States. The deadline for both schemes is May 31st 2009 – but that’s for intended departure dates between July/August 2010 and April 2011. So, even if you’re not due to finish your current qualification for a while, it could be time to start putting your plans for “What’s next?” into action.

Further details of these schemes are at:

• Postgraduate Student Awards
• Distinguished Scholar Awards

Even if you don’t get one of these awards, if you have any interest in studying in the USA as a UK citizen, the Fulbright website has a wealth of useful information on everything you need to do to make that happen.

Two Careers At Once

I’ve recently met two inspirational people, one an MP and the other a lawyer, who proved that if you want it badly enough, you can change career radically, even if you’ve already got a full time role to fulfil.

First up was Dr Brian Iddon, MP for Bolton South East, and former Chemistry lecturer. Talking at a careers conference for researchers in Lancaster, Dr Iddon showed how he not only established a successful academic career (lecturer, senior lecturer and reader at Salford University), whilst at the same time, performing his popular “Magic of Chemistry” lecture to young people all over the country, and building up a parallel career as a local councillor.

Eventually he rose to be Chair of the influential Housing Committee on Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council, for 10 years before being selected as a parliamentary candidate and elected to parliament in 1997. Two things struck me when Brian was talking:

• It was refreshing to hear some pretty forthright opinions about the research councils and to find out about the wide ranging work of select committees (plus the politics of getting your committee’s reports published). When most of our contact with MPs comes either through professionally polished party-approved spin or artificially generated adversarial jousts with journalists, hearing directly from Brian was a reminder that most MPs get into politics because they’re passionate about making things better.
• With energy and determination, you can pursue two careers at once, and this may be a pre-requisite for your ultimate career goal.

Last week, at another careers conference (it’s the season – you wait all year then two come along at once) I met Jan Kidd, a corporate and commercial lawyer who specialises in working with the Life Science industry with Covington and Burling LLP, an international law firm. Her job involves lots of working on licensing and collaborative agreements, an increasing feature of the life science sector, as well as more general commercial legal issues. However, she didn’t start out as a lawyer.

• Jan initially started her career as a development scientist, latterly becoming a Global Project Manager within the pharmaceutical industry before becoming a solicitor. She finds this experience invaluable in being able to translate between law/business and science. As a lawyer, this makes it much easier to get to grips with the complex technology issues at stake with collaborative ventures, and means she can help the scientists understand the legal and commercial implications of their work.

So how did she make the transition? This is what really blew me away -

• Jan started an evening class in law, for interest, while she was a Project Manager. This led her to realise what she really wanted, so she took the first step to qualifying as a solicitor by taking her Postgraduate Diploma in Law part-time, followed by her Legal Practice Course, also part-time.
• When I digested the implications of this, I had to talk to her afterwards to check I’d got it right. Both of these courses are generally 1 year full time courses. You can do them part-time, but she was already holding down a full-time management role in the pharmaceutical sector – so she took courses which covered the work in concentrated bursts (including weekends) over the next four years. And before you say, it’s all very well if you don’t have kids – she did!

I assume if you ever want a masterclass in time management and organisation and planning, Jan’s your woman.

Both of these are a real wake-up call to anyone who says they would love to go into Career X but it would mean re-training and they can’t afford to give up their job to do that. It takes guts, determination and lots of hard work – but following two careers at once could be the way to change your life.

Manchester Medical School Selection Process

As part of Alex’s talk last week on entry to medicine for graduates and postgraduates (slides available for download on our website), she came up with some interesting “inside information” about how Manchester address the selection process. OK, it’s not really “insider info” as they were perfectly open about it, but useful to know if you’re thinking of applying :

• Candidates are first screened by academic criteria.
• If they meet the requirements they are shortlisted on the strength of their UCAS personal statement and academic reference.
• The School shortlist more candidates than there are interview places available. Once shortlisted they are put in rank order by their UKCAT score – those with the highest scores are offered an interview.

They do, however, take into account mitigating circumstances. As the Medical School says :

“Importantly, we will continue to give special consideration to those applicants who claim mitigating circumstances or have benefited from our mentoring programmes. Hence a low UKCAT score is not necessarily an indication that you will be rejected before interview. We look at our applicants as individuals not numbers!”

So, there is no cut off score or pass mark for Manchester, but students have to do as well as they can in the UKCAT to increase the chances of being ranked high enough to get an interview. One may have a better personal statement than another but if they are ranked higher on their UKCAT score they are more likely to be interviewed, assuming they make the first cut.

This means that once you’ve reached the required standard on your personal statement, continually fine tuning the statement to make it even better won’t help. You’d be better spending time to make sure your UKCAT scores are the best they can be. As with most aptitude tests, you can’t really revise for them, but doing the practice tests provided on the UKCAT site will help with familiarising yourself with the format, which generally gives you a head start getting stuck into the tests when you see them for real. (Quick warning – if you download and start running the practice tests, there’s no way of stopping them before the end, without  “ctrl-alt-delete”-ing your way out, so only start once you’re prepared to spend the time to finish.)
[Update 7.04.09 - see Holly's comment below for more resources to help you prepare for UKCAT.]

Looking at this selection process wearing my ex-HR manager’s hat, it does seem like good recruitment practice – once you’ve assessed that a candidate has reached the standard required, by looking at a CV or personal statement, it’s better to use objective measures to differentiate between candidates (like the UKCAT test). If instead, you just spend more time poring over their personal statements, you’re increasingly likely to make subjective judgements based on irrelevant – and potentially unfair – criteria.

So, hats off to Manchester for their selection process – but don’t assume all universities are the same. Check, and if in doubt, keep polishing that personal statement.

Want To Retrain As A (Medical) Doctor?

Next week, Alex will be giving our annual talk on how to get into medicine as a graduate or postgraduate (or even post-doc – I know several members of research staff who have gone down this route). Details of the talk are as follows:

• Topic :  “Graduate Entry to Medicine – Options, funding and applying”
• When : 1.00 – 3.00pm, Wednesday 25th March
• Where : Stopford Building, Lecture Theatre 3
  ***NB. Venue has changed since posting this, to accommodate larger numbers***

Full details of what she will cover are on the events page on our website but it does include the application process, funding and, importantly, getting work experience. I’d sign up in advance and get there early, because it ended up as standing room only last year (before we snuck into a larger lecture theatre which turned out to be booked by somebody else – but empty).

I’ve blogged in more detail in previous years about getting into medicine as a postgrad, so if you’re interested, have a look at “Want To Be A Doctor, Doctor?“. We’ve also got a section on our website, “Medicine as a second degree“, with lots more information (and I know it would be at least a 3rd degree for any postgrad, but we can’t agree on a better title for the webpage!) – and we’ve even got our own Medical Careers Blog (a feed of the recent posts is in the sidebar of this blog). The blog really comes into its own in the autumn, when medics are applying for foundation programmes (when the blog hits soar through the roof), but also includes some detailed info on career alternatives for doctors (working outside the UK, non-medical alternatives etc.)

Manchester Leadership Programme for Researchers

At last, we’re ready to open the Manchester Leadership Programme for Researchers for new applications. This is a pilot programme for doctoral researchers and research staff. The reason it’s restricted to these groups is because it’s funded by “Roberts money”, earmarked for supporting skills training for doctoral researchers and what we used to call post-docs. It’s due to go live next March, with the unit running from 03/03/09 to 26/06/09.

The programme has been extremely successful at undergraduate level, and this is our first chance to extend it to at least some of our postgrads. It’s always a bit difficult to get across what the programme is about but Sam Hemsley, who has recently joined us on the MLP team (after completing her PhD in archaeology and working at Liverpool University), puts it succinctly as being about “how positive leadership can successfully promote sustainable social, economic, and environmental development”. It’s about the leadership decisions people make and the broader context in which they make them. Although you should develop or enhance a range of skills which will be useful in leadership roles, it’s not meant to be a management skills training course. If that’s what you’re after, you might be better looking at some of the other offerings (eg. for research staff, there is a management course being developed by EPS and STDU, also due to be piloted next spring).

The new MLP programme will use parts of the current on-line unit (see the taster podcast for a sample of the sort of thing currently in place), particularly the video interviews with people such as Barbara Stocking (CEO of Oxfam), but with different interactivity and assessment, more suited to researchers, rather than undergrads. It will have an element of group work, including a face to face group tutorial and presentation of the group project which forms part of the assessment. That means that you will have to be able to be in Manchester on specific dates to take part (for this pilot at least – if it’s successful and we expand it, we can consider ways of including those working at a distance).

The programme also includes a commitment to completing 60 hours of community volunteering over a year, which will need to be completed to give you the Manchester Leadership Award. Many of you will already be doing community volunteering, and your current commitments may be suitable for inclusion. There are, however, eligibility criteria - for example, the volunteering needs to benefit the wider community outside the university, so supporting other students is unlikely to count.

There’s loads of info on the new MLP for Researchers website, including a registration form (which includes giving your reasons for wanting to take part in the programme and your commitment to volunteering) but if you’ve got any questions about it there are two ways to get your questions answered :

• Come along to our information event on Friday 19th December between 12-1pm, on the 5th floor (room 5.004) of Crawford House (that’s the end above the Careers Service entrance)
   
• Or, post your questions in response to this blog post, and I’ll be happy to answer them here.

Which US Grad School? (Part 1)

If you’re considering moving from a Masters to a PhD in the USA, or perhaps if you’re looking at post-docs jobs over there, one issue which often arises is which institution is “the best”.

There are a bewildering number of institutions and programmes to consider and if you’re not familiar with all the names it can be hard to know which ones have the best reputation. Talking to Bridget Costello from the Fulbright Commission yesterday at the Postgrad Fair, she suggested that using the EducationUSA search advice would be a good start for finding programmes of interest to you. It includes an on-line search facility provided by Peterson’s, or if browsing paper resources is more your thing, we’ve also got the full range of Peterson’s hard copy guides in the Careers Service.

However, that doesn’t tell you anything about the reputation of each school or programme. Bridget suggested that the best starting point would be to talk to the academics in your School in Manchester to see where they would suggest. Academia is such a global community that they will almost certainly know who are the best researchers and research groups in your field, wherever they are in the world.

The USA doesn’t have the same RAE process as the UK, but they do go in for educational rankings in a big way. There are numerous systems, all deeply suspicious of each other, and many with rather dubious methodology. For example, the most commonly quoted league tables, from US News, come in for a lot of flak from universities for using factors based on “who do other academics rate?”, amongst other more objective measures.

However, there is a good overview at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – all the Grad School ranking systems you could ever want, linked from one place, plus a discussion of the ranking controversies. At least it allows you to decide which system best matches your own criteria and compare different rankings.

Next Stop Harvard?

Whilst Manchester is a fantastic place to be (a city filled with an abundance of great music, vibrant student culture and ample precipitation), no-one can deny that having Harvard or MIT on your CV as well would look pretty good. Here are a couple of scholarships with closing dates in the early autumn which might help make this a reality :

• Frank Knox Scholarships – these allow for 6 UK students to undertake up to two years of graduate study at Harvard. There are also opportunities for students from Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Naturally these are very competitive, and in addition to an application form and references, successful applicants will be selected on the basis of “future promise of leadership, strength of character, keen mind, a balanced judgment and a devotion to the democratic ideal”. Applications must be submitted by 27th October.
   
• Kennedy Scholarships – applicable to study not only at Harvard but also MIT, they are intended to “act as a spur to closer trans-Atlantic relations”. These scholarships allow for one year’s study in the USA. However, their website indicates that if you get funding as a Kennedy Scholar for the first year of a PhD, you will usually get offered funding from Harvard or MIT for the 2nd year onwards. In addition, it allows for a year’s Visiting Fellowship mid-PhD if you’re already studying here. Applications deadlines are “usually the first Friday of November”.

Tesco China Loves Our International PGs

Proof that our postgrads really are very employable - see Amanda’s post on her International careers blog.

This is the sort of news we love to hear, so if you’re one of our Manchester University postgrads (from any country) and you’ve managed to get a job or further study lined up, it would be great to celebrate that too.  Just drop me a comment on this post – don’t have to leave your name if you’d rather be anonymous, but let us know which course/school you’re in at Manchester and the job/employer/course you’re going to.

Go on, don’t be shy – we all need some good news to inspire us occasionally.