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I'm looking at a few "fully" funded PhD's in the UK. Now I understand it is a terrible timing with the whole Brexit travesty. But disregarding that, I'm failing to understand a few things and I hope you may be able to assist.

1) "...first-class or strong upper second-class undergraduate degree with honours (or equivalent international qualifications), as a minimum, in science or mathematics..."

What nightmarish system is this? I tried converting my Masters Degree in Science(2 years), which by the Danish system has an average at 10.93. Now according to a conversion guide I located, a 10 is 2:1 whilst an average of 12 is a first-class(Which is unrealistic to obtain by the way). Am I right to assume an undergraduate degree would be equivalent to my bachelors in science(3 years) and won't matter? So if I only look at my masters degree average, then what am I? First class graduate or 2:1 graduate? Who determines this when applying? What about honours? This doesn't exist in my country at all. I also found something about some information about early courses counting less, than harder courses later on - where as we count everything by the ECTS system.

2) When finding fully funded PhD positions, it often says that as a non-UK citizen, a fee is applicable. However, I cannot find anything specific detailing this. I find this concept slightly difficult to grasp, as any EU citizen that comes to my university here in Denmark, and is accepted into a fully funded PhD, will have no economic expenses and will be paid very VERY well every month. Generally regarded as an employee.

I hope my questions was specific enough. I appreciate you taking your time to look it through.

Best regards.

Mars
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  • Hey Mars, and good luck. The UK PhD system is currently even more messed up than you could assume just becouse of Brexit. Several pointers (I can wrap it into an answer later if nobody comes up with anything more concrete): a PhD in the UK is a bursaried position, not salaried. You still get money every month, but you are not employed, meaning you are not paying pension contributions nor taxes. Secondly, most importantly, you can enroll into a PhD in the UK after your Bachelors. Only two British PhD students in my lab did just that - enrolled into a joint Master+PhD programme (to be continued) – penelope Feb 12 '19 at 16:51
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    Where did you look up this conversion? It seems unreliable. I suggest you just apply and let them decide whether you meet the requirements. – Thomas Feb 12 '19 at 16:53
  • where they never obtain a Masters degree, but during their first year they are technically a Master student (then they do a transfer to a full PhD). Thirdly, (non-UK-specific), fees of some sorts do exist with PhD programmes in many places, and are usually a token enrolment fee payed once or once a year (less than 500 euros, so way below a half of what you would get monthly). Finally (UK-specific again), there has been a big freeze on most conventional PhD funding. This means that currently, most PhD positions will open as a CDT ("centre for doctoral training"); special Master+PhD (continued) – penelope Feb 12 '19 at 16:54
  • programmes, 4 years long (as oposed to standard 3 years in the UK) where you do small projects + classes during the first year, and then a "real" PhD programme for the last 3 years. They are all fully funded (on a bursary). In fact, all the PhD students in my team, local and international (CDT and older programmes) are all fully funded, which is the norm. So if there's any extra, non-token fees applicable to any position offer, it is most likely not an offer an international student should be looking at. – penelope Feb 12 '19 at 16:57
  • Thank you for your replies guys. That definitely explains a lot. Here PhD's are salaried. So it sounds like it to me, that taking a PhD in the Nordic countries is a hellouva lot better than this :p

    @Thomas yes, I found it frustratingly unreliable as well. I managed to locate a UK service that translates grades properly. Takes a week or two and costs about 50 quid. I might consider that. But I think I'll keep looking for PhD's in other EU countries. I've already got considerable student loans and need to find something that doesn't make it worse.

     – Mars Feb 12 '19 at 17:03
  • There's a Department for Education degree equivalency table (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/overseas-degree-equivalency-table-and-methodology). – borrible Feb 12 '19 at 17:59
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    Agree about the duplicate on question #1; I recommend making a separate post for question #2 – cag51 Feb 12 '19 at 22:56

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