PhD proposal

twylight

I have a degree/masters in maths and want to do a PhD in finance.
When i contact the lectures theyre all really positive but then basically say get back to me with a proposal... I am a little confused as to what exactly they want? I dont have any formal study of finance done-so dont know a lot about what sort of stuff has/hasn't been researched already... Has anybody had a similar experience-did a degree/masters in one subject then applied for a PhD in a different area? And if so, can you tell me what was expected from the proposal?

Red Alert

It depends on how well you know the lecturers involved. Check out what they tend to research, and then what other people around the world are doing in that field. A proposal might just be a more nailed down statement of what you intend actually doing - they are just trying to see if you've enough interest to pursue it a bit.

Get the name or email of a couple of their postgrad students too and try to meet them. Almost all lecturers will be very happy to do this for you.

H2G2

As a lecturer, I often ask this of potential students when I am ‘cold called’ by unknowns. Asking for a proposal serves a number of purposes (at least for me):

• If you are serious, you will take the time / effort to put something down on paper. Or are you just fishing. I am usually too busy to waste time on non-serious people. Its too easy for people to email and not follow-up.
• Establish if the person has any real ideas of what they want to do
• Establish scope of potential project. Often, I get lots of proposals and I would like to pick and choose those most interesting to me.

Suggest you push to make an appointment to meet the potential supervisor(s) in person. I am always more receptive to personal meetings that emails, as I get more than a hundred enquiries per year – its often difficult to find who is a serious potential PhD student.
As RedAlert says, talking to current PhD students in the group is a good idea. But personally I would recommend talking to the potential supervisor first. Then you can get a personal introduction to his/her students and potentially better info. That way. Also suggest you shop around for lots of different supervisors / universities. The more you talk to the better.

NextSteps

Some things to include would be:
A description of the topic/area you are interested in. A description of where your proposed study would fit in, and of why it is worth doing. What the questions to be answered are. A tentative title.
A description of your background (why you are qualified to do this), and of the time-frame you have in mind (full time? part time?) might be worth putting in too.