Success in the PhD

What is success in the PhD?

I want to talk about what a ‘successful’ PhD is. The reason I think this is an important topic is that this will not look the same for students with different goals, and also because the criteria that matter the most for a) your thesis grade, B) me as your supervisor, C) me as an academic, d) your future job prospects within academia, e) your future job prospects outside academia and even f) completing your PhD are not all the same. Because you also have a limited amount of time to allocate to different activities during the PhD, but are also largely in control of your own time, there are different points you need to consider. 

What do I want from you?

Firstly, what do I want from you? You should know this first so you can evaluate the rest of what I say for potential bias! As your supervisor, I want you to complete your PhD, have a generally positive experience throughout the PhD period, and go on to a future career / job / life in whatever field you choose, whether it is in or out of academia or even in or out of science entirely. Know that I will support you to do this regardless. Specifically, you can spend as much time as you want on professional development activities such as attending workshops and training courses, and I will give you the opportunity to teach into our courses if you want it. I will also write you whatever kind of reference you need in whatever format for you to apply to future jobs. I can also offer career advice but mostly only for academic positions, since this is where I have experience – you should seek out additional mentorship for other career paths. I will do my best to connect you in this respect but have fairly limited connections outside academia, mostly just to a handful of plant breeding and genomics/biotech companies. 

As an academic and research team leader, I need you to publish research papers. The two most important criteria for my personal success in my job are 1) number and quality of publications and 2) successful grant applications. Last author publications in peer-reviewed, high impact factor journals where my group members are first author are worth the most ‘academic points’ for me as a professor. I also get some credit for graduating PhD students, but you should know that from the perspective of the university and the faculty, they really only care about paper publications and grant money. 

What determines your thesis grade?

For your thesis grade, the primary criterion in the current system is how many papers you publish. How many high-quality thesis chapters did you produce, how many are published already, what kind of range of experimental work and evidence of independent and critical thinking as well as comprehensive understanding of the research topic and literature will all be evaluated. That said, most of these points are highly subjective, and your thesis examiners are (unfortunately) me and usually at least one other faculty member who may only have a vague understanding of your thesis topic, so conventionally speaking it often comes down to whether any chapters are already published and where, and how many have been produced total. The minimum for a ‘by publication’ thesis is two published chapters, with the idea being that the average/minimum thesis should be three experimental chapters, such that two are already through peer review and one pending by the end of the PhD (two submitted by the end of the second PhD year). The oral defence is worth a third of the grade, but top marks on the written thesis are critical first. I wrote about the issues with the grading system elsewhere, and you should know I find the whole system moderately terrible here, but within Germany at least thesis grade may be a consideration for future employment. Personally I (and probably most academics) would only consider published papers though, not thesis grades! 

What is important for an academic career?

For an academic career, the most important criterion is again paper publications. It is also a bonus if you have obtained any awards or travel grants/ scholarships, particularly to work in other research labs. Depending on the position, the specific research skills you have may also be important. However, you should know that if you haven’t produced at least one or two peer-reviewed research publications from your PhD experiments by the time you graduate, this will have a major negative impact on your chances of finding a postdoc position. 

What is important for an industry career?

Industry employers in our field (plant breeding and biotechnology companies at least, I don’t have experience outside this) do like to hire PhD graduates. These are often leadership positions, e.g. of small teams, projects or research methods /areas. The really large international companies may only require English, but there are many smaller companies within Germany who need German speakers. If you already speak English and German this is the most employable within Germany, and other languages may also be a bonus. The companies care most about what skills you bring, and that you can manage a research program to achieve specific goals. 

Submitting the PhD thesis

Completion rates for PhDs are far from 100%. When I was a first year PhD student at the University of Western Australia (in 2007), I went to a workshop where the organiser told us that the completion rate for PhDs was only 50%, although the majority of candidates dropped out in the first year for various reasons. However, it is also not uncommon for students not to finish after spending many years on the PhD. The other important statistic was that of submitted PhD theses, 99% graduate. So, what is happening here is that many students are just failing to submit the thesis document. This is not an outcome that anyone wants. At The University of Western Australia, a requirement for students to submit a literature review and research proposal by six months as well as yearly progress reports were implemented to try and help this.

It is strongly recommended by all experts on this topic to start writing early in the PhD and to write up experimental work as you go. The most common way to fail to complete is to leave all the writing until the end – students think that everything is going well and that it’s ‘normal’ to do experiments first and just spend the last few months or so on thesis writing, but then drastically underestimate the difficulty and amount of work required to produce the thesis document. Even worse is when they reach the end of the PhD without having achieved a comprehensive understanding of the research literature related to the project, and have to not only write up but also have to come to terms with the fact that their research was not as novel as they thought, or that they made poor or difficult to justify experimental choices due to lack of deep familiarity with the research topic. To some extent supervisors try to protect students from this, but by the end of the PhD you should be the expert on and take responsibility for your PhD project, not your supervisor.

Many students also find writing to be one of the least enjoyable aspects of the PhD, in which case, psychologically speaking, leaving all the writing until the end will be a disaster for motivation. If this is you, then consider the ‘swallow a frog’ example: if you have to swallow a live frog every day, when is the best time to do it? The answer is first thing in the morning, so it’s out of the way and you don’t have to worry about it all day. Block out calendar time to write (and to read papers, but I often consider this as part of writing since you should be taking notes or using papers as references as you read). It’s really not a huge amount of writing in the sciences, and it’s easy to make significant progress with just a few dedicated hours per week. It’s only potentially a massive task if you leave it until the end of the PhD and try and do it all at once! One last point from the thesis workshops I went to – people are in different life situations so this may or may not apply universally, but actually completing the thesis should be one of your most important work/life priorities if you want to get it done on time – preferably in the top two or three for what you are doing at the moment. Otherwise it’s not easy to find the time and motivation for such a project. Be careful on this point re: balancing your time, particularly if you know you can be easily distracted or if you have a lot of work (professional development, publications) or other life stuff on the go.

My personal experience with the PhD

So that covers most of the different goals for thesis success, at least from my perspective. I had a pretty easy time of it during my own PhD, since I was still living at home and had no financial or caring responsibilities. Treating the PhD like the full – time (but with flexible hours) job it should be was simple under these circumstances. I was highly motivated to finish the PhD on time because of financial considerations, so submitted the PhD the day after my stipend ran out at the 3.5-year mark. I had five experimental chapters in my thesis, two of which I ended up merging for publication to give four published papers. Only one was accepted for publication at the time I submitted, although two more were under review. I had three external thesis reviewers, who generally agreed my PhD was very good although not excellent or outstanding, although in Australia there is no official grade: the PhD is pass/fail. In Australia (like in many countries) the minimum requirement for thesis submission is three experimental chapters, although these do not have to be published. In my graduation cohort (six or seven students in my School who graduated at the same time) one student had five papers published or accepted for publication in her thesis! She made it to professor faster than I did 🙂 These first papers I published did have various flaws, which I can see now with experience – some weaknesses in experimental design, for instance. But it’s a learning curve, and the most important thing is to try and hit those productivity milestones. The first papers you produce will likely be the worst of your academic career, so don’t aim for perfection 😛

Tips for completing your PhD on time

• Start writing early (literature review and research proposal in the first 6 months) and write up experiments as you go (methods, then results, then discussion and introduction). 
• Make a timeline with all tasks you need to complete for the PhD. For every time estimate (how long you think it will really take) multiply by 2.5.
• Don’t plan all high-risk experiments – make sure you have at least two (hypothesis-driven) projects which should work without too much trouble (established methods etc.).
• Ask for help and advice often and from a range of people – talk about your project with others to get input and different perspectives. Others may see issues you (and I) are too close to the project to see.
• Take time to become an expert on the literature. If you do nothing else for the first six months of your project but read the literature and write a literature review and research proposal then I will be happy and consider this an excellent use of your time.