• Question: what is PhD

    Asked by anon-205686 to adeliegorce on 2 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Adelie Gorce

      Adelie Gorce answered on 2 Mar 2019:

      Hello!
      A PhD is the last stage of university studies: after high school, you can go to the university to study for 3 or 4 years and if you still feel like you want to learn more then you can continue for an additional four years, in PhD!
      It is a bit different from school because you almost don’t have class, you work all the time on a project you picked with your supervisor, and learn about it by yourself, by reading, and with his/her help. Most of the time you study a very precise subject and after the 4 years you’re the person in the world that knows most about this subject! It’s very exciting, isn’t it?
      After your PhD you can become a professor in a university or work for a company, and you get to be called “Doctor”, that’s the cool part 😉

Comments

  • Photo: Russell

    Russell commented on :

    So right now at school you have to learn all subjects. When you go to secondary school, you can start to choose which subjects you can learn and which ones you can drop; for example in Year 8, you might get to choose which language (French, German, Spanish) you want continue learning. As you go into Year 9, you get to choose your “Options” – here, you get to drop subjects you don’t enjoy / are no good at / not interested in and focus more on the subjects you want to continue with. For example, you can choose which humanity (History or Geography) you want to do.
    Depending on how well you do at your GCSEs, you’ll go on to choose just 3 subjects to study at A-Level at college (for example, I did Maths, Geography and Art).
    From there, you can then choose to study just one really specific subject at a university that you might be interested in. I always liked the ocean so was able to use my Maths and Geography to go on to study Oceanography. I spent 4 years at university studying all aspects of the ocean.
    During your time at university, if you find a certain thing that you’re REALLY REALLY REALLY interested in, you can go on and do a PhD – this is another 4 years at university and you’ll study just one tiny thing in a lot of detail. At the end you’ll be the world expert at that thing and you can put Dr in front of your name so everyone knows that you’re clever 😉

  • Photo: Gabriel

    Gabriel commented on :

    Adelie answered it quite well!

    In your PhD, you’re basically trying to answer a question which no one has ever answered before. You spend a few years reading up on your subject, talking with other people, and maybe designing experiments, all so that you can figure out the answer to that initial question.

    You usually have a supervisor who will guide you through your project. Unlike your schoolteacher, your supervisor doesn’t have all the answers, but he/she might have ideas to help you find them out for yourself.

    In the UK, a PhD will take 3-4 years, but in other countries it might take longer.

    When people see that you’ve done a PhD, they’ll know that you’re probably pretty smart, that you know how to ask good questions, and that you’re very hard-working. 😉

  • Photo: Affelia

    Affelia commented on :

    And if you’re very lucky, you sometimes get paid to do a PhD!