Our aim

Detail on the motivation behind PhD Your Way and the issues it seeks to address can be found in our mission statement: PhD Your Way mission statement

"From our personal experience, and from hearing about the experience of other maths PhD applicants, we found that:

• PhD schemes can sometimes seem intimidating and exclusive.
  
  

• Undergraduates have fixed stereotypes about who can be a PhD student. There is a prevailing idea that you have to be a “genius”. This leads to talented undergraduates feeling that a mathematics PhD is “not for them”. All our actual PhD experience suggests that in fact the qualities it demands are to be interested in your subject and to be persistent.
  
  

• There is no centralised location for information about mathematics PhD opportunities. This means that unless you are told where to look, you might find yourself scrawling across a million pages on the internet, missing potential opportunities due to the non-standardised application timeline and process.
  
  

• Nobody tells you how you apply for a mathematics PhD unless you attend a university that can provide lots of support, or unless you are friends with an academic who can tell you.
  
  

• A lot of academia relies on knowledge being passed on by word of mouth. This works well for applicants who are “in the know”, but can disadvantage students without adequate connections, regardless of their ability.

All of the above observations lead to a system in which overrepresented groups within mathematics are more likely to apply for maths PhDs than underrepresented groups. This is because they are more likely to believe that a maths PhD is “for them”. It also advantages students who attend universities which have the resources to provide information about PhDs to their undergraduate and masters students. Finally, because so much information is transferred by word of mouth, it advantages students who already have links into academia and disadvantages first-generation university students.

The motivation for PhD Your Way is to address the above problems by creating an event in which information about mathematics PhDs is provided in an accessible, honest and friendly way, with a specific focus on issues which concern underrepresented groups. On top of this, we aim to minimise bias towards institutions that have the time and financial resources for recruitment, and allow applicants to make informed choices based on their own needs and experiences. "