Can PhD students study in universities in Germany, in engineering courses, without knowing the German language?  Can they research and live without any problems?    Does applying to these universities require knowledge of the German language?
121752
Can a Ph.D. student who only knows how to speak English study in a European non-English speaking country (e.g., Austria, Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, etc.)  without any problems? Does applying to these universities require knowledge of that country's language?
53116
I start my master studies this fall in quantitative finance/economics in Europe. Since this will just take 3-4 semesters I want to take a look ahead and obviously PhD is one option to do.   So I am wondering if it makes sense to go to the US for PhD, since I will have already a master's degree in two years. I read a lot about the US PhD's which can be started after bachelor and therefore are somehow like a European master &amp; PhD combined.   I saw some PhD programmes from well-known US universities and their curriculum contained almost just courses I will already have in my master. Wouldn't that be a waste of time to repeat them? Specially compared to my country (Switzerland) where a PhD duration is between 3-4 years.  Every input/personal experience will be appreciated.
10891
I have accepted a PhD offer from a very good university to do a project very close to my interests. I have told the project supervisor I accept it. In the meanwhile I have managed to secure a PhD offer from another 2 universities much better in world rankings and with better research groups and better faculty. Additionally these 2 universities do research exactly on what I want to devote my PhD research.  My only commitment to the first university is a mail confirming I accept. Nothing else. I understand declining the offer after already having accepted it is quite dishonest but it is a huge decision that will affect my future in a very significant level.   I would like your opinion and I would also like to ask for possible consequences of such an action. As far a postdocs concerned, in the first university there is no chance I ever get a postdoc since they do not actually do research on my area (except for the prospective supervisor and even he not as much).  UPDATE I have decided to do as I was afraid to. I have decided to choose a different university than the first one that I have already accepted the offer. My offer acceptance included:    An online "I accept" statement. An e-mail I sent stating "I accept the scholarship and this University is my first option"   I do not have any legal commitments since I have not signed anything. The supervisor of the first university though is really nice to me and continuously was sending me mails. How do I very nicely tell her I will not be joining in the end? Additionally the place I will go in the end will be for research in Mathematics and not Physics. Can I use this as a part of a sensical excuse?  WHAT I HAVE CHOSEN AND WHAT THE CONSEQUENCES WERE  I think that I should let people, especially other beginning grad students know what happened with my case. I have chosen to nicely tell the first university I got accepted that I will not be attending and will not be pursuing a PhD there since I decided I have different research interests (which is true). I had applied there in the first place since I was not sure what I wanted to do and because it was a nice program. Despite that, I got an offer from a World top university to work on 100% my research interests. I explained this to them, the first uni, and they happily let me go and wished me good luck, especially the supervisor who faught a lot secure me funding. I was lucky.
120157
I have heard many people say they have a PhD in a certain area.  For nearly all of my life,  I thought a PhD was simply a doctorate,  and I didn't know that it had anything to do with philosophy.   There are many doctoral degrees, why are PhD's the most popular doctoral degrees by a long shot?
83347
I am currently a Master's student and planning to apply for PhD. Now, I have directly worked with two professors for research projects. Unfortunately, those two are the only professors I have taken more than one course with too. With no other professor I had two or more classes so they do not know me well. I could be able to convince one of them to write letters for me. But surely that's gonna be a canned recommendation like "I taught him this course and he's got an A". Besides as an introvert, I am not memorable at all. I don't drop by during office hours to have small chats or ask many questions in the class. On the other hand, I have a PhD student in my research group. He doesn't have the credentials or experience, but he can write a more personal and accurate recommendation letter for me. I have worked with him closely and he can give his opinion from both our personal and academic interactions.   Edit: just to be clear, the two professors I have worked with already agreed to give me LORs. I need a third letter.  Edit 2: I have another option. I have worked as a TA for one semester. The instructor can give me an LOR. But he is neither a tenured professor nor a Ph.D. degree holder himself. So I am not much sure about this option. Is it gonna "hurt" my application?  Edit 3: I collaborated with the PhD student before and we are co-authors of two papers.
35494
I did my PhD in Electrical Engineering with supervision from three people. Very hard times during PhD as there was not much supervision from the three. Presently, I am working in an industry doing R and D, but look forward to apply for post doctoral positions. One of my advisers have told me he won't recommend me for any university in the foreign country, the second one is not reachable and the third is very rude fellow. In short, I wont get recommendation from any. What are chances for a post-doctoral position in a reputed university.  I have 3 international journals (2 Elsevier and 1 IEEE) and 3 conferences from my PhD work. I also have a Best Paper Award from one of the main IEEE conferences (EMBC 2014). I can manage reference letters from my masters advisers. Will recommendation from my masters advisers sufficient for applying to post-doctoral studies? Chances of getting a recommendation from any faculty from the university where I did PhD is very low.
109921
I am really confused by the difference between Hochschule (university of applied sciences) and (Technische) Universität ((technical) university) in Germany, especially with respect to the master’s degree.  What is the main difference and features?  Can a master graduate from Hochschule have a chance to do PhD like a graduate from a university in Europe, US, Canada or Australia?
92129
I am currently a PhD student in a EU country and recently I was advised to pursue a European Doctorate Programme.  I thought that, being "European", it was some kind of regulated, inter-country program with specific rules, but I cannot find any "official" documentation from any European institution. The only things I can find by searching on google are doctorate programs from various universities that claim to be "European".  I am aware that some EU students are encouraged to do 3-6 months of their PhD (or more) abroad, but I don't know if by doing this their PhD qualifies to be a European Doctorate.  So, what is a European Doctorate Program? Is there any regulation for it by a European institution? How does it relate with doctorate programs where students decide to spend some months abroad?
115926
I am curious to know whether PhD is the highest degree one can earn? Is there any other degree beyond that, if so what is it and what are the universities offering the same?
19727
I graduated with a Masters of Engineering, concentrating in digital signal processing, in particular medical and audio, almost two years ago. I've always been interested in research, but due to personal circumstances I could never commit a lot of time to working on a research project with a professor, and obviously didn't get a chance to publish anything. Now that I'm more settled and have much more time on my hands, I started getting involved in some open source projects and reading some technical literature (engineering, mathematics) that I couldn't get to before. However, I'd still like to find someone to to collaborate with on a research project who is already established in the field and publishes papers. Part of the reason I want to do that is to be able to eventually apply for a Ph.D. program in a good school, and having publications would be a great thing on my resume.  What I'm trying to find out is how I can work on a research project similar to those graduate students work on as a part of their studies if I'm not a student anymore? Should I contact my old professors from the university? Is it possible to find some "open research" team that accepts collaborators from outside? Do I have to do it on my own (quite frankly I'm not sure I can give myself a good enough quick-start)? In short, I'm willing to volunteer my time in exchange for a possibility of publication in the future. Can I do it, and if yes then how?
66138
Is it possible to apply for a graduate program in theoretical physics without having a bachelor's degree in physics or mathematics?  I'm completely self-taught. I'm half way through Jackson electrodynamics and Peskin QFT. These books are taught to students at a graduate level, let's say that I can pass the GRE exam and graduate level examinations. Is it possible that this would substitute for an undergraduate degree?
100922
Some of the students are doing research in another language than English because they are living and studying in a non-English speaking country; they may be doing research in their mother-tongue language because they are studying in their own country or they are studying in another country in which the language is not English.  If these students have non-English language publications which are published or sent to a non-English conference/journal; Do these publications still have the same value in their CV when they are going to send it to an English speaking university/company? Or only publications in English are of value in those institutions.  PS: I think the situation is easier for the students having English publications in their CVs and want to send it to a non-English speaking university/company as they welcome and accept those publications.
99672
I recently saw this infogram circling around various social networks:    It appeared in  with the following claim:     Got a PhD? Your chance of becoming a Professor is 0.45%. Good luck.   Being a bit sceptical of the claim and of shiny info-grams in general, I traced the image back through  to  by the Royal Society (see page 14), featuring various reputable academics in the introduction. The report cites a number of other reports from UK organisations as its source (I did not dig deeper). The infogram seemingly pertains to graduates of PhDs in the UK in STEM fields.  I find the figures literally incredible. I cannot believe them. Fewer than 1-in-200 PhD graduates become professors? This would imply, for example, that STEM professors in the UK would need to graduate 200 PhD students just to "repopulate" themselves.  I would like to compare these estimates with figures sourced elsewhere. And so my question is:   Are any other studies or sources of data for estimating the number of PhD graduates who end up with professorships? (... preferably within the STEM areas and not restricted to the UK)    There is a related question specifically for the maths field and referring to tenure-track positions but none of the answers really address this question:   EDIT: Pointer to a follow-up question asked by @gerrit:
65839
I am a senior undergraduate (electrical) engineering student, exceedingly interested in physics. 4 years ago when entering university, for some reasons (better: illusions) I chose engineering as my major, while I was interested (and also really knowledgeable) in physics . Soon after the first semester I realized that I've decided wrong, and I must have chosen physics.  Since our university is a technical institute and does not have a strong physics department I decided to study physics on my own, without changing my major.But I took and passed the basic graduate physics courses (advanced quantum mechanics, advanced statistical mechanics, electrodynamics I &amp; II), have done a few research projects and had a paper published (maybe 1 more in the future). I have explored lots of research areas in physics and I think I have a good potential for doing research.  While concentrating on physics, I was inattentive to EE courses. Today, while searching for graduate programs, I saw that some schools require a minimum GPA, usually 3. I just calculated my GPA and found out that it is 2.95!   Do all universities have a GPA threshold?  Since I'm changing my major and also have a good GPA in graduate physics courses, is there any way I can compensate for my (very) low electrical engineering GPA? (like by taking subject GRE, etc.) If I first (somehow) get a masters degree in physics and then apply for a PhD, can I throw away this electrical engineering GPA in my PhD application ?   Any other suggestion is warmly appreciated.
110636
I currently work as an Aerospace Engineer for the Department of Defense for nearly 6 years now, and I have a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from a top-10 university in the United States. I am seriously thinking of doing a 2nd PhD in Computer Science, because I want to eventually own an Algorithmic Energy Trading Firm and need to become an expert in Machine Learning algorithms.  As of now, I am working on a few journal papers to publish and I am not going to have any problems getting strong letters of recommendation from my employer and professors on campus.  I ought to be able to get a letter from the Dean of my college as well.  So, I am thinking of a second PhD in Computer Science because I really want to immerse myself in Machine Learning and figured a PhD was the way to go.  Question for everyone:  Would it be a challenge for me to acquire entrance into a top 5 school in Computer Science for a PhD?  I ought to mention that my PhD research was in Computational Fluid Dynamics, Turbulent Flow and I had to develop my numerical solver and turbulence models in Object-Oriented C++.
2970
I am facing a dilemma regarding whether or not to apply for Spring for PhD programs at some universities in US. What are the pros and cons of applying for PhD or MS programs in Spring?
103018
This question is specifically aiming at the UK PhD admission system.   Having spent roughly 6 years in the UK - 2 years A-Level and 4 years undergraduate, I am now moving forward into applying for PhD programs. To my surprise, I discovered that I would have to face a lot of difficulties regarding my eligibility for funding.   Most of the funding I applied for were strictly 'UK/EU citizens only', and it is rare to have full funding for international students. I have applied to a lot of places, and received a lot of responses in the form of "... you are a good match, but I don't have funding for overseas students...".  Having chosen the UK to study with the belief that 'as long as I am competent I should be qualified for the job', the reality has really slapped back at me.   Why such discriminations are allowed in a developed country like the UK? I made this claim knowing little to nothing about the US or other countries' systems, but lots of my friends having applied to EU PhDs received their offers without being asked whether they are 'caucasians' or not.