 Hi there and welcome to today's webinar, applying for a postgraduate research program at SOAS. Today's presentation is going to be all about the PhD program. So I'm Kushla and with me today is Pamiel and we're the Doctoral School Officers at SOAS specialising in PhD admissions. These are a few areas that we will be touching on in today's webinar. So the Doctoral School at SOAS offers two programs. We have the infill-phd program and the visiting research student program. So neither of these programs are offered via distance learning. Our research programs are continuous and the taught 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. So SOAS doesn't offer a standalone infill degree. The infill-phd program is actually a PhD program and successful applicants that commence their studies at SOAS on this program are working towards a PhD degree. All students are initially admitted and registered for the degree of infill. In the third term full-time or part-time equivalent students are considered for a transfer to PhD by the supervisory committee. If the upgrade is successful the date of registration for the PhD is then backdated to the commencement of your studies. This is standard practice amongst many UK higher institutions. So our visiting research student program is a non-award program. There is no award at the end of this. Students enrolled on this program are not registered for a degree. They're not formally assessed on their work. However, they do benefit from the similar facilities, supervisory arrangements, affiliations as a PhD student during their time with us. You can apply for a visiting research student program either for one, two or three terms and during your time at SOAS you can expect up to five hours of supervision per term. Now on to eligibility criteria. So what is the definition of a good master's degree? The school's definition is a good UK master's degree or overseas equivalent which is generally in a relevant field to the program that you are interested in applying 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. However, if you do not meet the school's definition, i.e. you do not hold a UK master's degree or overseas equivalent, you can still apply but your application would be marked as not academically eligible. It would then be at the discretion of the academic selectors on whether or not an other 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. Please note the English language requirements for the PhD program are assessed at a higher level than the undergraduate or postgraduate taught programs at SOAS. It is important when reviewing our requirements that you refer to the doctoral school admissions pages on the SOAS website. Please note requests for an exemption of the English language requirements will not be considered at the application 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 require all applicants educated outside one of the home office list of majority English-speaking countries or educated for less than three consecutive years at a degree level in one of these countries within the last two years to submit a secure English language test or CELT relevant to the study of academic English. Please note if you require a tier four visa to study in the UK, then you must take a UK VIIELTS test. Test results must have been received within two years of the start date of the program that you are applying for in order for these to be considered valid. From the 2019-20 academic year, all departments at SOAS offering an infill-phd program will only offer one entry point each academic year and this will be in September. The Soul of Finance and Management Studies will not offer three entry points beyond the current academic year, the 2018-19 academic year. This means that it is currently possible to apply for an infill-phd program for the School of Finance and Management Studies for April 2019 entry or September 2019 entry. However, all other departments only offer September 2019 entry. As a non-award program, the Visiting Research Student Program currently offers multiple entry points in September, January and April. So for those interested in applying for the next academic year, the online application system is currently open and applications can now be submitted. So deadlines. Strict deadlines for the Visiting Research Student Program do apply and applications that remain incomplete after those deadlines will be withdrawn. Information about the entry points and the relevant deadlines for the Visiting Research Student Program can be found on the doctoral school admissions pages of the SOAS website. There is a link currently on the screen for you regarding our entry points page and this is where you will find this information. The schools deadline for completed applications for September 2019 entry is 1159 p.m. on the 30th of June 2019. Some departments may choose to remain open beyond that date and if so, we will advertise this information on the doctoral school admissions pages as and when it becomes available. The completed application deadlines are the final deadline for you to provide all required information and for your referees to have conveniently submitted their references. Extensions beyond the department's deadlines are not permitted and incomplete applications will be withdrawn. As the applicant, you are responsible for ensuring that you have provided us with all required documentation and ensuring that your referees have conveniently submitted their references by the nominated deadline and that the references you have nominated are acceptable and meet our criteria as outlined on the doctoral school admissions pages. So choosing your program at SOAS, we do welcome applications for interdisciplinary research but we only permit one application to one department to be submitted each academic year. If you submit multiple applications, this will result in withdrawal of the additional applications and it may delay the processing of your chosen application. We do advise that applicants are welcome to make contact with potential supervisors to request feedback on their proposal or their project or whether or not they may be a relevant supervisor for them. However, it is not a requirement of the application process. Do want to highlight that it is not guaranteed that a formal offer will be issued following an informal expression of interest from an academic or if you are made an offer of study that your proposed supervisor would be the academic you have made contact with. All applications subject to the formal application process and any offers are issued through this. We do advise if you are not sure between which department your research best fits or potentially what the expertise are within each department. We recommend that you review the research interests and expertise of the academics within the departments you are looking at and this information can be found on the departmental pages of the SOAS website. So on to completing your application. In order to be considered through the formal application process applications must be submitted through the online application system and you can access this through the SOAS website. Doctoral school admissions are unable to make a formal assessment and whether your qualifications meet the eligibility criteria that was outlined earlier 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 you submitting this formal application and this being initially assessed. It is essential that you select so the correct class or grade achieved when filling out this application form for any previous qualifications you have been awarded. 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 this dissertation result for your prior qualifications. Now on to a definition of a completed application. Before you submit your application for consideration you should review the documentation you have uploaded to ensure it is the correct versions you want to be considered. It is the responsibility of the applicant to ensure or require the documentation is submitted by the appropriate deadline. Only applications deemed complete by the Doctoral School admissions team can be forwarded to the relevant academic department for their consideration. An application is only considered complete with the following. So number one, a formal application form. In order to be considered your application must be submitted to the online application system as I mentioned earlier you can access this through the SOAS 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, why you want to study at SOAS. For this you should aim to write about a page at least. Number three, a CV. This must cover your formal education and work history with start and end dates clearly displayed. Be sure to account for any gaps so this could cover things such as a gap here where you spent travelling but this must be noted down. Number four, a research proposal. Now this is one of the most vital parts of your application and it will be studied in detail by the academic selectors. There are generic guidelines available on the Doctoral School admissions pages of the SOAS website for writing lists and we recommend as a minimum that it should be at least 1,000 to 2,000 words. You must also include a preliminary bibliography of the sources you intend to use. So these would be the sources most relevant to your methodology, to your research questions, etc. If you have a more detailed proposal please submit this. Number five, official transcripts. You must provide us with official transcripts for all qualifications studied at a degree level or higher that detail all marks received throughout the duration of your study. 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 also provide documents for all of these by utilizing the additional documents section of the online application form. Number six, degree certificates. The same applies for your degree certificate. Even if you do not believe the qualification relevant to the program you have applied to, please include it with your application. When the academic selectors review your application, they do look at it as a whole. On occasions 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 evidence. If you have a valid English language test available at the time of your application, please upload this in the relevant section. However, don't worry if you don't have it to hand at the application stage, your application can proceed without this documentation. But if your application is successful and the test requires, then this would be stipulated in the conditions of any offer of study that was made. Number eight, references. In order to be considered complete, your references not only need to be nominated, but they must have 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 legal translator or the administrative authorities at the awarding institution. Please note, self-made translations will not be accepted. You should ensure you have read through the how to apply guidance that is available in the doctoral school admissions section of the SOAS website prior to submitting the formal application to consideration. Please do 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. References. 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 referees with at least one being from the current or most recent place of study. If your qualification was awarded more than three years ago, you can nominate either professional or academic referees for your application. All references must come from individuals who have direct experience of supervising you in either an academic or professional capacity. References should not come from prospective supervisors and should be independent of the application process. Due to the volume of applications we receive, doctoral school admissions are unable to contact referees on behalf of an applicant to request submission of this reference. As the responsibility of the applicant to ensure two acceptable references are conveniently submitted by the completed application deadline. When you are completing your application, you will have the option of if you're nominating your referees online or offline. If you provide an acceptable email address for the referee, so this is either an official institution email account or professional organization email account, then when you click the nominate and select online, they will receive an automatic email through the online system, notifying them of the nomination and providing them a link, encouraging them to submit their reference directly to your application. If you nominate your referee as offline, so in the cases where your referee does not have an official institution, or a professional organization email account, and only have a free-use email account, if you select offline, you will need to contact your referees directly to request that they submit their reference in one of the acceptable formats. So where your referee does not have an official institution email account or professional organization email account, they'll need to send in a postal reference for your application. And further details on this can be found on the how to apply page of the doctoral school admissions section of the SOAS website. 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 this documentation uploaded are the final versions and the ones that you would like to be reviewed as part of your application. It is essential that you fully review all documentation uploaded to your application prior to submitting this for consideration. However, we do understand that occasionally an error will occur, and in these instances, you should alert us at the earliest opportunity. You can alert us by emailing us at dsadmissions.soas.ac.uk. Similarly, if after submitting your application for consideration, your nominated referee advises they cannot provide this on your behalf, and you can nominate an alternative referee, and this can be done in one of two ways. So you can ask them to submit their reference directly to us at dsadmissions.soas.ac.uk, quoting your name and application number in the subject line of their email, or providing us with the details, so email those to us, and we should include their name, email address, relationship to you, and any relevant details, and asking us to add them to your application as an additional reference. So the application process. It is important to highlight that within doctoral school admissions, we process all information, and this includes applications, emails, and posts, and date order received to make this fair to all applicants. We ask that applicants avoid sending duplicate queries, as these delay our processing times. Once submitted, your application can only be assessed by the doctoral school team once two references have been confidently submitted by your nominated referees. For instance, this means if you submit your application for consideration today, say 15th November 2018, but your referees only submit their references on the 3rd of February 2019, then your application will only go into the queue to be initially assessed from that date, and will be processed in date order according to our current volumes. So once the initial assessment is completed, you will receive an email from the doctoral school admissions team updating you on your application status. This will either be a request for additional information or new references, or confirmation that your application is complete and has been forwarded to the department for consideration. It is important that when you do make your application, you note which email account you submitted this from, as any email correspondence regarding your application will be sent to the account attached to your application. From the date that your application is forwarded to the department and not from the date that you submit your application, it may take five to eight weeks for a decision to be returned. It may take less time, however, we do give the academic department five to eight weeks in order to make a fair assessment on your application. All formal communication regarding your application will come through the doctoral school admissions team and is subject to the formal application process. Once the decision has been returned and processed for your application, you will then be notified by email that a decision can be now viewed. Due to data protection, we are not able to give decisions through to telephone queries. Offer stage. So if your application is successful, you will need to meet any conditions stipulated in your offer letter by the deadline specified. And the deadline for meeting conditions for September 2019 entry is the 31st of August 2019. Failure to meet this deadline will result in your offer being expired and withdrawn. During the application stage, we accept scans of your official documentation, but during the offer stage, we may require hard copy original evidence of one or more of your qualifications. If your application is successful, further details of what documentation is required will be stipulated in your offer letter. If you require a tier 4 visa to study in the UK, you will need to have met all conditions specified and accepted your offer prior to applying for your CAS number. Relevant guidance about this process is included in offer letters for successful applicants. If your offer is successful, but your circumstances change and you are now unable to communicate your studies in the year offered, you may consider applying for a deferral. It is important to note that deferrals are not guaranteed in a subject to academic approval and availability. If approved, an offer can only be deferred once to the following academic year. Deferrals must be requested prior to the start date of the program offered, and any queries regarding a deferral should be sent to the doctoral school admissions in the first instance. So here are some useful links where you might find further information regarding areas of queries that you might wish to make. So 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. And you will find relevant web pages listed on this slide and feel free to click through on those. Please note, if you are applying for a SOAS scholarship, this requires a separate application to your program application, and earlier deadlines may apply. Getting in touch. All queries regarding an application must come directly from the applicant, and you can email that through to us at dsadmissions at soas.ac.uk, or you can submit a text and query as well. For privacy reasons, we are unable to discuss an application with the third party. The only exception to this is where an applicant has submitted an application through a SOAS-approved agency. If you have a query regarding your application, you will need to contact us directly. Please be aware, doctoral school admissions process all information and data which are 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 of our current processing times in which we aid to respond to your query. Please do avoid sending duplicate queries as these delay our processing times. When calling us regarding your application, please ensure you have one of your application identifiers to hand as this information will be requested by the admissions officer. If you are emailing us regarding your application, please ensure you also include one of those application identifiers in the subject line of your email. Those identifiers can be either your PIN number or your application number. So thanks for tuning in today. We hope this session has provided you with some valuable information to assist you in making your application for a PhD program at SOAS. Further information and guidance to assist you through the process can be located on the doctoral school admissions section of the SOAS website. Please ensure that you have read through these pages prior to submitting a formal application for consideration. We're now going to look through the questions that we've received and start answering them for you. So the first question we received is asking whether the entitlement of a supervision entitlement is five hours per term. So Taha, in regards to your question, that comment relates to visiting research student programs that someone coming on a visiting research student program which is a non-award program does have an entitlement of five hours per term for supervision. So for the school's minimum entry requirements it is a UK master's degree or overseas equivalent. Departments do expect that the degree you have will be in a relevant field to the program you're applying to but at the end of the day if you meet the school's minimum entry requirements you are eligible to apply for the program. It will then be an academic decision whether or not your qualification is deemed relevant and whether or not they have a supervisor willing and able to support your studies. 2437037 from your experience how do students know if they really need to take on a PhD? That is very much an individual process. Everyone is on their own career path and everyone has different expectations of how long that journey will take them and when they are ready to undertake it. So it is very much an individual decision of if someone is ready to undertake a PhD. It is a big commitment given the program is three years full-time with submission required within four years and part-time this equates to six years part-time with submission required within seven years. So it is a very big commitment and it needs to be an individual decision on what is best for each person. So Sam Kim has asked does CIS offer rolling admission? So no, the majority of departments at CIS only offer one entry point each academic year and for this 2019 slash 20 academic year all departments at CIS will only offer entry once each academic year which is in September. So the next entry point for all departments for the Enfield Splash PhD program is September 2019 entry. So tell her, I can see that you've asked another question regarding the research proposal word count. You asked whether it was between 1,000 to 2,000 words plus bibliography. So as mentioned, we would recommend that you read through the more extensive guidelines provided on the doctoral school admissions pages of the SOAS website regarding our research proposal. We do have a PDF that you can download and will take you through what kind of information you're expected to include in your research proposal. There is not a word count for your research proposal. We do recommend as a minimum it is at least 1,000 to 2,000 words plus your preliminary bibliography of the sources you intend to use and the methodology you're considering. However, if you have a more extensive and more detailed research proposal you are more than welcome to submit this for consideration. So the question here is can the referee be my potential supervisor? So as we mentioned references should not come from potential supervisors. They should be independent of the application process. Your referee should come from an individual who has direct experience of supervising you in either an academic or professional capacity. If your potential supervisor is someone who has previously taught you in your studies they could provide a reference. In these instances we would recommend that you nominate three referees to have another second reference independent of the application process. So the next question is how do you find a PhD sponsor and when should you try? So asking about time frame should you ask for a sponsor before or after your application or before or after you're approaching a supervisor and getting that kind of informal interest. So regarding any funding or scholarships these are not managed in our office they are managed to the scholarships team. And any SOAS scholarships require a separate application to your program application. A lot of the SOAS scholarships do have earlier deadlines and many of them require you to hold and offer a study prior to applying. So I would recommend if you are interested in some of the scholarships offered by SOAS that you read through their guidance and criteria on their pages at the SOAS website to determine what the eligibility criteria are what the deadlines for applying and also whether or not you need to apply for both the program and scholarships simultaneously or if you need to apply for the program first and later the scholarship once been successful. For external funding you could begin to search for external funding prior to receiving and offer a study. And the next question is how long does the application process take for the PhD program? So as I mentioned previously the PhD program is three years full time with submission of your thesis required within four years. Part time this equates to four years with submission of your thesis required within sorry part time Eric equates to six years with submission required within seven. So again just to note that any decisions on whether or not your qualification is deemed to be academically relevant to the department you're applying to it is an academic decision and not one made at an administrative level. When we assess your application we check to make sure that all required documentation has been provided and that the two referees are acceptable and the references provided meet our criteria. We check all this to make sure your application is complete prior to it going forward to the academic department for an academic decision on your application. Next question who do I send my proposal to for a PhD application for your PhD application to be considered? So if you're asking in terms of making informal inquiries with academic members of staff it is at your discretion to determine and identify who you think would be the most appropriate supervisor to discuss your proposal with. If you are sending your application to be considered formally through the application process then you upload your proposal in your online application. We always advise if you do wish to make contact with academic members of staff that you do it simultaneously to submitting your application for consideration. So the next question for the PhD for the PhD program are there any taught courses that require attendance? So during the first year of the PhD program students are required to undertake training prior to going in the upgrade process. So each department have departmental research training courses that are required for their students to attend. They may have other courses that also requirement and this will be advised by the departmental research tutor after enrolling. There is also a research integrity online program that must be completed by all new students within the first year of study. Any other programs that you either may be required to audit so attend but not take any examination for or taken pass or potentially language training will either be stipulated in your offer letter or identified in discussion with you and your supervisor after enrollment. So just to note that the taught course modules are as a priority for master students in the first instance so we cannot guarantee that it will be possible for you to attend however we do aim to try and where possible make that happen. So again if you wish to make contact with potential academics you are welcome to do so but it's not a requirement of the application process. So if you do wish to make contact unfortunately we cannot guarantee their availability and how quickly it will take them to be able to respond to your query. However any contact details for these academics are available on their page of the SOAS website and if their contact details are listed you may call them or email them depending on what contact details are available. So the following question is a new application well sorry should you create a new application profile if you have an existing profile on the online application system from a prior taught space graduate application? So yes you cannot reuse your previous application to submit a new application for consideration. Each application you create requires a new account to be created. So if you have previously applied through the online system you will need to create a new account in order to submit a fresh application for consideration of the info slash phd program. When you go to the create a new account the system should prompt you to a paid headed duplicate account. You will need to click on the continue and create button. So this prompt is included to prevent applicants making multiple applications within the same academic year as that is not permitted for the phd program. So again if you make contact with potential supervisors it does not mean one way or another we view not your application will be successful because all applications are subject to the formal application process. Again we cannot comment on the availability of the academics to respond to your inquiry and it may be that they are currently on a research leave or a sabbatical and that may be why you have not yet got a response to your query. So the next question is regarding how many hours of supervision are phd students entitled to receive? So in your first year of study for a full-time student we expect that you will meet with your first lead supervisor fortnightly. Individual arrangements though will depend supervisor to student and you will work that out together to determine what will work best for you however we do expect fortnightly meetings to occur. Regardless of where you completed your previous qualifications all applicants are required to upload all documentation that is requested to their online application in order for us to proceed. Undergraduate and master's applications are managed by different admissions team so doctoral school admissions do require you to upload all required documentation as requested. So another question about concerning deadlines so the school's deadline for completed applications for September 2019 entry will be the Thursdays of June 2019. However departments may choose some departments may choose to stay open longer than that and as soon as we receive that information the website would be updated. Please bear in mind if you are applying for funding a separate funding deadline may apply and they may be earlier than the school's deadline of Thursdays of June. So academic feedback on previous unsuccessful applications is not guaranteed it is provided at the discretion of the department if you have previously applied and were unsuccessful you are welcome to submit an email to doctoral school admissions requesting for academic feedback on your application and we will forward this request onto the department for consideration and response. Occasionally an application may be unsuccessful because the department did not feel the qualification was relevant to the program applied to and they requested that the applicant complete a master's degree first. They may also believe that the the department does not have the expertise within SOAS to supervise the project or they may be very interested in the application that believe that the application they did not unfortunately they did not have a willing and able supervisor to supervise in the academic year and encourage re-applications the following academic year. So see I would recommend that you read through the doctoral school admissions frequently asked questions page regarding applying while you're currently studying as this will give you some additional information. So it is possible to apply whilst you're currently undertaking your master's degree and further information is provided now frequently asked questions. However, if your application is successful you would need to have either be able you would need to either be awarded your master's prior to starting the program in which case any offer would include a condition of providing us with the original evidence of this qualification or if your master's degree would be completed by the start date of the program but not awarded until the end of term one then it would be a progression requirement which is a post-enrolment condition. So you would have to provide us with the evidence that you meet that grade requirements stipulated by the department before the end of term one or unfortunately if you could not meet that your application would be withdrawn. So if there is no more questions we're going to end the session today but if you have any more queries then please send them through to us at dsadmissions at soas.ac.uk as shown up on your screen now so if you have any further questions about today's session or about the application process please do email us your queries so that we can look at that and respond to you as soon as possible. I believe there's one question coming through so regarding the application process you need to upload all required documents to your application so any previous qualifications you've undertaken require copies of all official transcripts and all official degrees to be uploaded to your application during application stage if you are made in offer of study then you would be required at that time to may be required to provide original evidence of either your highest qualification or most recent but details of this will be stipulated and the conditions of any offer of study made so again thanks for joining us today we hope this information has been helpful and please do send any further questions that you have for us through to dsadmissions.ac.uk thank you