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November 16th 2022
In 2022 we launched our first ever event, and we welcomed over 100 students to join us on Zoom for an afternoon featuring talks, panel discussions and our flagship breakout rooms. The breakout rooms allowed attendees to meet current PhD students at different institutions across the UK and talk with them about what the PhD experience is really like at their institution.
Leading up to the event we provided attendees with an information pack about the universities that would be participating. This was designed to give attendees some prior knowledge about the participating insitutions before the event. A link to the information booklet for PYW 2022 can be found here.
All participants were expected to adhere to a strict Code of Conduct, to ensure the comfort and safety of all participants. It can be found here.
Participating Universities:
University of Bath
Brunel University London
Durham University
University of Edinburgh
University of Glasgow
King's College London
Loughborough University
The Open University
Queen Mary University of London
University of Southampton
University College London
University of Oxford
University of Warwick
University of York
A quote from one of our attendees:
"I believe that PhD Your Way levels the playing field for students from underrepresented groups in Maths.
I started studying MSc Maths with a view to pursuing a PhD the next year. In my experience, this meant looking for PhDs as soon as the MSc began. I felt really overwhelmed trying to study and simultaneously figure out what PhD applications even looked like. It seemed that every institution had a different process, and almost every PhD student I spoke to had got there in a different way. A baffling number of them had ‘got lucky’. I knew that having strong interest in the subject and an excellent fit of supervisor(s) was paramount, but the probability of securing a PhD at all, let alone one that fit me so well, felt hopelessly remote.
There was a small community of Maths PhD students at my uni, and the tips they happened to remember made a huge impact on me. They knew about funding opportunities and CDTs I’d never heard of, and they could vouch for good and bad supervisors from across the world. They casually mentioned that it was common practice to reach out to a prospective supervisor for a virtual meeting, to see if we got along. I hadn’t known that I was allowed to do that.
Their knowledge and insight was invaluable to me, and it was coming to me completely ad-hoc.
PhD Your Way exists to give everyone this knowledge and insight. It’s a one-off virtual event featuring a wealth of up-to-date, curated information for PhDs in the UK and in the US, and a chance to speak to friendly PhD students from a huge number of UK Maths faculties.
By the end of the event, I felt like light had been shone on the UK and US PhD admissions processes; I’d noted down new scholarships and CDTs I wanted to investigate, and I held a gleaming list of supervisors of happy students that I would reach out to in the coming weeks. Finally, I felt like I knew how PhD applications worked and had the information I needed to stand a fighting chance.
My impression is that students from underrepresented backgrounds in Maths are significantly less likely to ‘get lucky’. PhD Your Way is an extremely useful resource for hardworking, talented students who can’t rely on luck."
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