 Good afternoon and welcome to today's webinar, Applying for a Postgraduate Research Programme at SOAS. If you are interested in applying for a Master's programme at SOAS, this is not the webinar for you. Master's admissions are managed by our colleagues and any queries regarding these programmes should be emailed to our colleagues at mastersadmissionsatsoas.ac.uk. Today we are discussing the application process for postgraduate research programmes at SOAS. My name is Danielle Cameron and I am a Doctoral School Officer at SOAS specialising in PhD admissions. These are a few areas that I will be discussing in today's webinar. Please be advised if you have any questions about the application process, please do so through the chat function and I will answer them at the end of this session. Programs offered. The Doctoral School offers two postgraduate research programmes, the M4 PhD programme and the Visiting Research Student Programme, also known as VRS. Please be aware neither programme is offered through distance learning. The research programme is continuous and the talk course term dates do not apply to research students. Students are required to be in London and at SOAS throughout the duration of their studies, regardless of mode of study. SOAS does not offer a standalone MFIL degree. The MFIL-PHD programme is a PhD programme and successful applicants that commence their studies at SOAS on this programme will be working towards a PhD degree. All students admitted to a PhD programme are initially registered for the degree of MFIL. In the third term, full-time or part-time equivalent, students are considered for a transferred to PhD by their supervisory committee. If the upgrade is successful, the date of registration for the PhD is imbedded to the commencement of your studies. Our Visiting Research Student Programme is a non-award programme. Students enrolled on this programme are not registered for a degree programme and are not formally assessed on their work. You can apply for either one, two or three terms as a Visiting Research Student. And as a VRS, you can expect up to five hours of supervision per term and access to SOAS's library resources. Eligibility criteria. What are the academic requirements for a postgraduate research programme at SOAS? The school's requirement is a good UK master's degree or overseas equivalent, which is generally in a relevant field to the programme you have applied for. However, some departments do have more specific levels which are generally advertised on the relevant department's pages of the SOAS website. Administratively speaking, if you meet the school's definition, we will mark your application as academically eligible. If you do not meet the school's minimum academic entry requirement, i.e. you do not hold a UK master's degree or overseas equivalent, you can still apply but your application will be marked as not academically eligible. It would then be at the discretion of the academic selectors and whether an offer of study was made. Any offers made for applicants considered to not meet the academic eligibility criteria must also be approved by the relevant associate dean of research. The English language requirements for the PhD programme are set at a higher level than the undergraduate or postgraduate taught programmes offered at SOAS. It is important when reviewing our requirements that you do refer to the doctoral school admissions on the SOAS website. Please be advised, requests for an exemption of the English language requirement cannot be considered at the application stage. If your application is successful, an offer of study is made and it includes a condition based on the English language and you qualify for the exemption of that, you can submit an exemption request at office stage. In general, due to strict home office requirements and the school's needs to treat all international applicants and non-native English speaking applicants alike, we will require all applicants educated outside one of the home office list of majority English speaking countries to submit a secure English language test relevant to the study of academic English. If you require a tier four visa to study in the UK, then you must take a UK VIIL test. Tests, test results must have been received within two years of the start date of the programme in order for these to be considered valid. From the 2019-20 academic year, all department offering an MPhil PhD programme at SOAS will only offer one entry point each academic year. This will be in September of each academic year. As a non-award programme, the visiting research student programmes are currently offered multiple entry points. In September, January and April, the online system is currently open to applications. You can access the online system by going onto the Doctoral School Admissions pages of the SOAS website and selecting the link titled Postgraduate Online Application. Strict deadlines for the visiting research student programmes and applications that remain incomplete after these deadlines will be withdrawn. The completed deadlines are the final deadline for you providing all required information. Extensions beyond the department's deadline cannot be permitted and incomplete applications will be withdrawn from consideration. Information regarding individual department's deadlines will be available later this academic year, but the school's deadline for completed applications to September 2019 entry is currently 11.59pm, 30th of June, 2019. As the applicant, you are responsible for ensuring you have provided us with all required documentation and ensuring that two acceptable references have been confidentially submitted by your nominated referees by the specified deadline. Please do remember all this information is also available on the Doctoral School Admissions pages of the SOAS website and these will be continuously updated with the most up-to-date information as and when it comes. Choosing your programme. At SOAS, we very much welcome applications for interdisciplinary research, but only one application to one department may be submitted each academic year. Submission of multiple applications will result in a withdrawal of these applications and may delay the processing of your chosen application. Applicants are welcome to make contact with retention supervisors to request feedback on their research proposal, but this is not a requirement of the application process. Please note, any informal expression of interest does not guarantee a formal offer will be made, or that if an offer is made that your proposed supervisor will be the academic that you contacted. If you are unsure which department your research will best sit under, we do recommend reviewing the expertise and research interest of the academics within the departments. This information can be located under the relevant departmental pages of the SOAS website. You can also view a full list of all programmes offered on the Doctoral School Admissions of the SOAS website. Indeed, SOAS are happy to announce that from the 2019-2020 academic year, we are offering a new MPHG pathway entitled Development, Environment and Policy. If you are interested in applying to this, please email Professor Bavani Shankar. His email can be found on the SOAS website, but I will read it now as well. His email is b.shankar at soas.ac.uk. You can also apply to this pathway via the Global Studies pathway that is available on the online system, but please ensure in your personal statement that you clearly state that you want to apply for the Development, Environment and Policy pathway. Completing your application. In order to be considered through the formal application process, applications must be submitted through the online application system. Doctoral school admissions aren't able to make a formal assessment on whether your qualification can meet the eligibility criteria without a formal application being submitted and initially assessed. Due to the volume of applications we receive and to maintain transparency of our procedures, we are unable to review your documentation prior to submitting a formal application and this being initially assessed. Please do note that two references must be confidentially submitted in support of the application before we can make that initial assessment. It is essential that you select the correct class or grade achieved for any previous qualifications you have been awarded. Please do enter this information as you complete your online application form in the relevant class or grade achieved box. If you cannot locate your class achieved from the drop-down list, you should select other and manually input the correct grade into the free text field provided. Please also ensure you are entering your overall grade and not just your dissertation results. And also please do remember that if you have any questions about any of the information that I'm speaking about right now, please do enter them in the chat and I will answer them at the end of this session. Definition of a completed application. So on this side I will talk about all the different components that are required before an application can be deemed complete. Before you submit your application for consideration, you should review the documentation you have uploaded to ensure it is the correct version if you want to be considered. It is a responsibility applicant to ensure all required documentation is submitted by the deadline. Only applications deemed complete by the doctoral school admissions team can be forwarded to the department for academic consideration. Please note an application is only considered complete when the following is included. Number one, a formal application form. In order to be considered, your application must be submitted to the online application system and this form can be accessed via the online application system that in turn can be accessed on the service website. Number two, personal statement. This is your chance to tell the academic selectors about yourself, who you are, why you want to study your chosen program and why you want to study at SOAS. This is a real chance to tell the academic selectors your story and why your previous experiences, whether that's work, education, life, makes you a very suitable candidate for a postgraduate research study. For this, you should aim to write at least the page. Number three, CV. This must cover your formal education and work history. With start and end dates clearly displayed. Be sure to account for any gaps and make sure that your CV is right up to date so you increase information and rises up until 2019. If you are travelling and that's the reason for any gap in your formal work or education history, please do note this. Again, it's part of telling your story and telling the academic selectors how you've reached this point where you would like to do a PhD and you feel that you are well equipped to do so. Number four, a research proposal. This is one of the most vital parts of your application and it will be studied in great detail by the academic selectors. There are generic guidelines available on the Doctoral School admissions pages of the SOAS website for writing your research proposal. And we recommend as a minimum that it should be at least between 1000 to 2000 words. Again, demonstrate how your experiences up to this point have led you to want to pursue this research while your research represents an original contribution to the field of study you wish to place yourself within. You must also include a preliminary bibliography of the most relevant primary and secondary sources you intend to use in your proposed research. If you have a more detailed proposal than just say one to 2000 words, please do submit this. Number five, official transcripts. You must provide us with official transcripts for all qualifications studied at degree level or higher that detail all marks received throughout the duration of your studies. We understand the previous study section of the online application form only allows you to detail up to three previous qualifications. But any additional qualifications should be listed in your CV and you should provide documents for all by utilizing the additional documents section of the online application form. Number six, degree certificates. The same applies to your degree certificates. Even if you do not believe the qualification to be relevant to the program you have applied to, please include it with your application. When the academic selectors review your application, they look at it as a whole. On occasion, they may feel your application may be better suited to another department and may recommend we forward it on their consideration. Number seven, English language. If you have a valid English language test available at the time of your application, please upload this in the relevant section. As I mentioned previously, an English language test can only be deemed valid if it was sat and awarded within two years before the start date of the program you were applying for. For instance, if you're applying for September 2019 entry, your English language test should be sat. You should have sat an English language test between September 2017 and September 2019 for it to be considered valid. If you do not have a valid English language test at the time of your application, please do not panic. Your application can proceed without this documentation, but if your application is successful and a test is required, this would be stipulated in the conditions of any offer made. Number eight, references. In order to be considered complete, your references not only need to be nominated, but your nominated referees must have confidentially submitted their references by the stipulated deadline. Finally, any documents you upload to your application that are not in English require accompanying certified translations from a representative or the administrative authorities at the awarding institution. Self-made translations by applicants will not be accepted. You should ensure that you have read through how to apply guidance in the Doctoral School Emissions section of the SOAS website prior to submitting a formal application for consideration. Please be aware, failure to disclose any current or previous studies may result in a decision being made that a false declaration has been provided. References. So as I previously mentioned, two references are required and these must be submitted confidentially by the referee. References should not come from prospective supervisors, as they must come from individuals who have direct experience of supervising you. Due to the volume of applications we receive, Doctoral School Admissions are able to contact referees on behalf of an applicant to request the submission of a reference. It is the responsibility of the applicants to ensure two acceptable references are confidentially submitted by the completed application deadline. When deciding who to nominate as a referee, please bear in mind the following. If you are currently studying or your most recent qualification was awarded within the last three years, then you will need to nominate two academic references, with at least one of them being from your current or most recent place of study. If your most recent qualification was awarded more than three years ago, you can nominate either professional or academic references. All references must come from individuals who have direct experience of supervising you in either an academic, so that will be a professor, a supervisor, a thesis supervisor as well, a seminar leader or professional. And that would be, for instance, your line manager, employer, team leader. And these should be individuals who have direct experience of supervising you in either an academic or professional capacity. When you complete your application, if you nominate referees as online and provide an acceptable email address for the referee, they will receive an automatic email through the online system, notifying them of the nomination. Please do check in with your referees to make sure they receive this email and make sure that they check all inbox folders to see if that's been sent through. When you complete your application, if you nominate referees as offline, you will need to contact your referees directly to request them to submit their confidential reference in one of the approved formats. Amending your application after submission. As the applicant, it is your responsibility to ensure that all required documentation has been provided for your application and that the versions of your documents uploaded are the final and correct versions that you wish to be considered by the academic selectors. We do understand however that occasionally an error or a mistake will occur, but in those instances you should alert us at the earliest opportunity. You can do so by emailing dsditions at soas.ac.uk. It is essential that you fully review all documentation uploaded to your application prior to submitting it. Application process. So this will give you an overview on the kind of process and timeline of what happens after you submit your application. It is important to highlight that within doctoral school admissions, we process all information. This includes applications emails and posts in date order received to make this fair to all applicants. We do ask that applicants avoid sending duplicate queries as these can delay our progress in time. Once submitted, your application can only be assessed by the doctoral school team once two references have been confidentially submitted by your nominated referees. This means if you submit your application for consideration today, 11th of April, but your referees only submit their references on the 5th of May, then your application will only go into the queue to be initially assessed from the latter date, from 5th of May, and will be processed in date order according to our current volumes. Once the initial assessment is completed, you will receive an email from doctoral school admissions updating you on your application status. This will either be a request for additional information or references or confirmation that your application is complete and has been forwarded to the department for consideration. From the date your application is forwarded to the department and not from the date that you submit your application, it may take between five to eight weeks for a decision to be returned. All formal communication regarding your application will come from the doctoral school admissions and is subject to the formal application process. Once the decision has been returned and processed for your application, you will be notified by email that a decision can be viewed. Due to data protection legislation requirements, we cannot give decisions over the telephone. Offer stage. If your application is successful, you will need to meet any conditions stipulated in your offer letter by the deadline specified. The deadline for meeting conditions for September 2019 entry is the 31st of August. Failure to meet your conditions will result in your being expired and offered withdrawn. During the application stage, we accept scans of your official documentation, but during offer stage, we may require hard copy original evidence of one or more of your qualifications. This means the physical documents may need to be posted to us. If your application is successful, further details of what documentation is required will be stipulated in your offer letter. If you require a tier four visa to study in the UK, you will need to have met all conditions specified and accepted to your offer prior to applying for your CAS number. Relevant guidance is included in offer letters for successful applicants. If your offer is successful, but your circumstances change and you are unable to commence your studies in the year offered, you may consider applying for a deferral. Please note, deferrals are not guaranteed and are subject to accurate approval and availability. If approved, an offer can only be deferred once to the following academic year. For instance, if you applied for September 2019 entry and then wished to defer to 2020, you won't, and your request is successful, you wouldn't be able to then defer from 2020 to 2021. Deferrals must be requested prior to the start date of the program offered. All queries related to deferrals should be sent to doctoral school admissions. If you would like further information on how fee status is assessed, what the tuition fees for the first year will be, or what scholarships are offered, and what the deadlines for these are, please review the relevant guidance. Links can be found on the slide in front of you now. Please note, if you are applying for a scholarship, this requires a separate application to the program application and earlier deadlines apply. So please do keep checking the scholarships pages to see the most up to date information. Getting in touch. For privacy reasons, we are unable to discuss an application with a third party. The only exception to this is where an applicant has submitted an application to a SOAS approved agency. If you have a query regarding application, you will need to contact us directly. Please be aware, doctoral school admissions process all information in dates or received. We are unable to prioritize a query ahead of one already in the queue. If you email us, you will receive an automatic email advising you about current processing times in which we aim to respond to your query. And it's also really helpful in all email correspondence if you can include one of your application identifiers. And this can be your application pin number if you have not yet submitted your application or your seven digit application number if you have submitted an application. Indeed, when you call or if you call us when calling us regarding your application, please ensure you have one of those application identifiers to hand. As this information will be requested by the admissions officer. And by including your application ID or your pin number in your phone call or your email, that will help us to locate your application system and ensure that we're talking to the right person. So here you can find our contact details. So we are reachable by email, doctoral school admissions, we're reachable by email or phone. And you can see, you can see further instructions on how to apply programs offered further information about the doctoral school at SOAS. It's all available on the SOAS website following the relevant link there to admissions PG research. So thanks for tuning in today. We hope the session has provided you with some valuable information to assist you in making your application for a research program at SOAS. Further information and guidance to assist you through the process can be located, as I mentioned in the doctoral school admissions section of the SOAS website. Please do try to make sure you have read these pages prior to submitting a formal application for consideration. So I will now go into the questions in the chat. If you have any questions at all about what's been discussed in this session, please do let them in the chat. So I'll pause for a few minutes or seconds. And anyone that wants to submit a question, please feel free and go ahead in the chat function. Okay. So thank you. Okay, starting with the first question. So someone has asked whether if you want to apply for a PhD in African studies, for example, but their masters is in creative writing. How does that affect the application process? I'm also guessing that you're asking whether that meets the minimum academic entry requirement. Well, as I mentioned earlier, the school's minimum academic entry requirement is a good UK masters or overseas equivalent. Generally, that's expected to be within a related field to the area of research you wish to pursue with your PhD. However, please include all that information in your application, the academic selectors will review all of your information holistically. And also your personal statement and your research proposal represent opportunities for you to explain how your masters has helped you decide to pursue this PhD in a specific field. And the second question. So is there a minimum GPA requirement? As mentioned previously, the school's minimum academic entry requirement is a good UK masters or overseas equivalent. Some departments have more specific course area and that may that may include a grade requirement. And if that's the case, that would be that information would be available on the relevant departments web pages. However, the school's services minimum general entry requirement is a good UK masters or overseas equivalent. And the third question is, is it possible to contact a potential supervisor and to have him or her as one of the academic referees? So as I mentioned previously, your academic referees must have direct experience of supervising you in the past. So if your potential supervisor does have that experience, they start you at master's level and now they want to continue supervising you at PhD level. Then yes, that would be evidence of having direct experience of supervising you in the past. However, if your potential supervisor does not have a history of supervising you before you made contact with them, then they would not be accepted as an academic referee. They must be able to comment on how their past experience of supervising you in an academic capacity has informed them on your capabilities in applying completing postgraduate research. But by all means, you are welcome to contact a potential supervisor and discuss your application, your research proposal with them and ask for any feedback you wish. Of course, the availability of different supervisors and academics differs from individual to individual, but all of the email addresses and contact to eat info can be found on the SOAS website. Okay, if there's any further questions, we still have plenty of time, so I'm going to pause and feel free to write any questions about the application process you wish. So thank you for your next question. The next question is, is it possible to be in a department and have a supervisor from another department, say for example, being in an economics department and having a supervisor from the development studies department. So generally speaking, your supervision panel will be made up of two supervisors, your lead and your second. So your lead supervisor is generally expected to be within the department you've applied for. So your lead supervisor, if you've applied for the economics department, generally speaking, your lead supervisor is expected to be from the economics department. However, your second supervisor could be from a different department, a related department. They may offer expertise in a related field to your research and that may well sit within development studies. So that would be possible. However, that would be something that would be discussed after you enroll at SOAS. If your application is successful and offer of study is made, you would enroll and then within the first meeting with your supervisor in the first term, you would discuss matches for your second supervisor and any other training needs you might require. So yes, please feel free to send in any more questions and I will answer them. Thank you for your next question. So this question is how do the references comments, references and defects your admission and is it a strong factor in deciding on whether or not to make an offer or not. So as I mentioned earlier on, these applications are treated holistically by the academic selectors, so I cannot comment on how strong a factor a reference may be in deciding the ultimate outcome on your application. Each of these components are very important and they are considered as a whole when being reviewed by academic selectors. And then a phrase I used earlier is, use your application to tell the story of how we've reached this point of getting to you wanting to do a PhD and feeling like you're well equipped and suitable for it. So of course your references will hopefully confirm your readiness for postgraduate research and the academic selectors who assess your application will take your referees comments on board. But I cannot comment on whether or not that would be a strong factor or a deciding factor in making an offer of admission. Thank you. So regarding the research proposal, our next question is, is the word count research proposal including the bibliography. So please note there is no maximum words count for the research proposal. There is only a minimum. So and that does not include the bibliography, whether you write 1000 words or 5000 words that does not include the bibliography. So please do make sure that your bibliography is about one page long and it does stay all the most relevant primary and secondary sources to your proposed research. Of course your bibliography can be longer than one page if you're worried about that. But it just needs as a minimum the bibliography needs to be one page and that is not included in the wider research proposal word count. Again, we have got plenty of time so please feel free if it's a lot of information to process flex and any questions you have please do type them in the chat and I'll answer them for the session ends. Thank you. I'll pause them now but please do type anything you wish any questions you wish in the chat function. Thank you. Next question which is, can I elaborate on what the minimum academic eligibility criteria is when we say a good UK masters degree or overseas equivalent. So in regards to good masters degree, that means whether or not you hold that masters degree and you pass fit and it went well. But as I mentioned, certain individual departments will may well have different requirement and if that is the case that would be stated on the relevant departmental web pages on the site website. Alternatively, if you do not hold a postgraduate qualification so that good UK masters or overseas equivalent. This, this doesn't mean that you can't apply for a PhD program, but your application will be marked as not academically eligible. And all this means is it goes to a further stage of consideration. It has to be both considered by the academic selectors and the associate dean of research. The next question is asking about if you've been away from your academic career for a long time, should your references be from your academic supervisors or can it be a professional reference. So if your most recent academic qualification was awarded more than three years ago, you can submit reference references from either academic supervisors or professional supervisors. As long as they have experience direct experience of supervising you in either an academic capacity or professional capacity, there will be an eligible referee. So that's just another confirmation. If your most recent academic qualification was awarded more than three years ago, you can ask for academic and professional references to be submitted. So in terms of elaborating more on the question about the possibility of having academic or professional referees when the most recent degree was awarded more than three years ago. So by that I mean if your degree most recent qualification academic qualification was awarded. More than three years ago. Then you could, is that your discretion whether you wish to ask for references to be submitted from academic supervisors or professional supervisors is it is at the applicants discretion. So as I mentioned, an academic supervisor or some an individual that has direct experience of supervising you in an academic capacity could be a seminar leader, a thesis supervisor, a lecturer, etc. Or a professional reference would be, for instance, your line manager, your employer, your team leader, etc. And again, as it's relating to the next question, can it only be professional references? It can be, is that your discretion, as I mentioned, is that the applicants discretion. If the most recent degree was awarded more than three years ago, if they want to ask for two professional references, references, one professional, one academic, it is at your choice. Thank you for your further questions. So, indeed, another question about elaborating on what it means by good masters degree. As I mentioned, that's the school minimum requirement. But the individual departments may well have more specific requirements. Indeed, as a minimum of say 60 in your MA degree, please check the relevant departmental web pages for the department that you're interested in applying for. These requirements are stated on their website. The next question. If I identified the subjects in the university you wish to apply to, but there is no funding for the degree, what options might you have? So, doctor school admissions, do not manage scholarships. Our colleagues in the lovely scholarships team do manage scholarships and applications for funding. So, I would say it's best to get in contact with them. If you don't see any funding available or if you want to explore funding options, please email them at scholarships.soas.ac.uk. And you can also visit the scholarships web pages on the website. And if, for instance, you're unable to secure funding for the year that you wish to answer, say you were applying for September 2019, but you're unable to secure funding. And you've been made an offer. You can defer that offer, but please do email doctor school admissions if you wish to start that process. So, another question concerning time spent away from academia and how that affects references. So, if your last degree is more than five years ago and you do not have contacts in your previous institution and you are welcome to secure professional references to professional references. As long as they meet the criteria that they're from individuals who have direct experiences, supervising you in professional capacity, and they're submitted through one of the acceptable formats that would meet the application criteria. And the next question is regarding when do applications for the 2020 to 2021 academic year open? So, the application system is currently open for September 2019 entry and the deadline for that is June 2019. The online application system will open to 2020 applications in November 2019. Yes, that's correct. Scholarships.soas.ac.uk is the scholarships email address. We only have a few minutes left. So, any last minute questions you wish to ask, please do type them. And if you have any questions once the session has ended, please do email them to us at doctoral school admissions. So, I've just received a question asking whether you'll be able to listen to the session again after this finishes. Yes, it will be uploaded to YouTube in the coming week or so and you'll be able to re-listen to all the information related today. And I'm just going to respond to that question in chat as well because the individual can't hear at the moment. So, the final question I'll be taking today is asking whether it will be beneficial for your application if you have a certificate in the same area, even if your academic pass is not in the same area. So, I presume you're asking if you have a certificate in the same area as the research you're making or proposing even if your academic pass is not in the same area. So, again, I cannot comment in exactly how that would affect your application, but please do upload any documents that you believe are relevant to your proposed research If these certificates are extra to your official qualifications and higher education, please do upload any relevant other documents that you think will support your place for admission. Thank you for your kind comments and thank you for attending this webinar as well. Again, I'm going to wrap up now and say goodbye. And thank you so much for attending and Doctor School admissions. I was happy to help with any questions you might have about the application process. And I can only say we wish you the best of luck with your applications. Hopefully, speak to you soon. Okay, take care. Bye-bye.