With deadlines looming for attractive PhD scholarships such as the Irish Research Council, current undergraduates often realise that the path to a PhD is somewhat opaque, with many different ways to get there.
Finding a PhD is something we have covered already, but a question I often get asked is: do I need a MSc or can I go straight in, or what about an internship?
There is nothing stopping you going straight into a PhD from your undergraduate degree, but it can be difficult to be competitive unless you have a flawless academic track record, or have been singled out by a supervisor as an ideal candidate and its pretty much your PhD from the start. More usually, whether you are applying for an open post that has been advertised, or your own funding through a scholarships scheme, you need to out-compete your peers. To do so requires some non-algorithmic compilation of your academic grades, degrees, and academic experiences. Opting for a taught MSc is one obvious way to lengthen your academic training on your CV, as well as hopefully improving on your track-record. Its also a useful way for you to highlight your new skills and explain how they will make you a better PhD student than the rest.
It is important to remember that simply listing your modules or new skills in bullet-points is not the way to do this. You need to elaborate, and explain how your modules improved you as an academic, and how you interacted with the course to better yourself. Don’t just say “I took a course on linear mixed effects modelling”, tell us about how you realise now that this tool is important in ecology as a hierarchical data structure is a very common feature of research in this domain, and that you can now tease apart effects that manifest within and among groups. Give an example of how you applied this tool to answer an ecological question. The MSc projects are typically larger than your undergraduate ones, and ideally you would conduct a novel enough piece of research to allow you to write it up as a research paper – this is a great way to rubber-stamp your CV for PhD applications.
Of course, MSc courses tend to cost money, and last up to one year (or some are even two years these days). Another option is to volunteer as an intern in a research group. With the right match to your supervisor, and a bit of luck, this approach can be just as good as a MSc or even better (at least in my opinion). You might intern as a research assistant helping to run experiments or collect field data for on-going projects. Such teams are often in need of extra hands, and being involved can mean you learn lots of new skills and techniques. Ideally though you want to make sure you are involved enough, and have the chance to put enough academic input to the project to deserve and be rewarded with authorship on a research paper.
Alternatively, you might intern more as an individual in a group, and work on your own project much like doing a MSc project but without the actual degree. Again, you are looking to develop new skills, learn new techniques and apply them to ecologically or evolutionarily relevant questions. The not guaranteed, and by no means necessary, icing on the cake would be a research publication.
Ultimately, some post-graduate experience will really help your CV when applying for PhDs but only if you can articulate how your efforts have improved you as an academic. A research paper (or several!) would be the ideal outcome from whatever path you take as it is nearly indisputable evidence of your ability to do science as part of a team, to a high standard and to convey your findings to an audience.
I took a research assistant position after my undergraduate degree, and used that to explain how the overall experience had convinced me of my desire to pursue academic research, as well as providing me with new skills. I am therefore quite keen on the idea of internships or research assistant positions in place of the more formal and structured MSc courses, so it’s rather a personal thing for me. Take some advice from others though, as maybe the MSc route carries more weight for different people.
Author: Andrew Jackson @yodacomplex
http://www.tcd.ie/Zoology/research/research/theoretical/andrewjackson.php
Photo credit: http://www.quickmeme.com/Condescending-Wonka/page/1826/