Studentship Interview Aid
Introductions to candidate to include:
- brief description of numbers taking research awards within Faculty & Across BU;
- briefing about the role of the GraduateSchool;
- research environment;
- brief outline of main milestones;
- details of supervisory team; etc
Interviewee’s name
Date
Background
- Career/education to date
- Current job position
- Previous experience of research
- Relevance of previous research to this proposed area
- Exposure to research methods
Research experience at Masters level
- Can you tell me about your Masters thesis?
- Why did you select that research area?
- Who were the main academic writers/ authors you came across when doing your research?
- What was the purpose of your research?
- What research strategy and design did you employ?
- What were the most challenging & most rewarding parts of your Masters thesis?
- What did you learn from doing your thesis?
Research proposal
- What is your understanding of the project?
- What approach do you envisage taking?
- What is your intended research methodology (including analytical tools) and research strategy and why are they appropriate for this project
Awareness of doctoral programmes
- Why do you wish to do a research degree?
- How much do you know about doing a PhD
- How long do you think it is going to take you? (48 months of funding (stipend and fee waive), what is going to keep them motivated to succeed?)
- From your experience of research so far, what areas do you think you will need help in developing (for instance, data bases, electronic referencing, writing styles, data analyses, SPSS – seek out both process and content issues)?
- If FT (or overseas) do you have any family/friends living in this area?
- How much of your doctoral study do you think is going to be independent learning?
- Expected progression milestones – Registration; Initial Review; transfer (progression); submission; completion
Expectations of the programme
- What are you looking for in a doctoral programme?
- What are you expecting from your supervisory team?
- What other types of research support programmes are you hoping to access? (Methodology etc)
- You said that one of your motivations for doing a research award was because …. If you are intending to go into academia, how does this affect your desired grounding in research methods (both qualitative and quantitative)?
What would you like to ask us?
Interview Checklist
(2016)1