Part-Time PhD
Every undertaking and every dream we wish for in life is not that easy to achieve. Education is no exemption and taking it to the highest level is quiet challenging.
Pursuing your academic endeavor in PhD degree is a lengthy task, which requires a lot of responsibilities and self-discipline. This program can be taken in a full-time or part-time or as a distance PhD, depending on your availability.
Part-Time PhD – Admission Tips
This article deals with Part-time PhD, its specific study areas or specializations and the things to be considered to help PhD students get their PhD successfully.
• Ensure that your school and its committee allow you to get Part-time PhD. It is not advisable for you to take this mileage if the members of your committee, especially your major professor, are not supportive to you.
• Select an area of knowledge that you are passionate about. This will give you a fighting spirit of getting the course, notwithstanding your other commitments in life such as your work or family. In fact, you will be physically ill or depressed if you are prevented from working on a course that you really wanted to pursue.
• Motivate yourself by striving for a full personal alignment. See to it that the topic you chose to study for PhD is aligned with your job so that you can make it through, both your PhD and work. Do not just focus into either your job or studies, unless the circumstance really demands for it. This is especially true in case you do not have passion in your preferred field of specification.
• Ensure the relevance of your study field to your committee to avoid having trouble in keeping your committee intact. This is very true for Part-time PhD students as your primary goal is to have your committee together for longer time than being a full-time PhD student. However, there are difficulties that you may encounter here. One difficulty you may encounter is that the duration of most funded projects tends to be appropriate for full-time programs, rather than the part-time programs. Another difficulty is the fact that you need to be first out with certain topic to be eligible for the degree. Remember that being first is not that easy to maintain as there are many other students who strive to win.
• Strive to fund you own studies. It will not be significant for your work to be included in the currently funded projects of your committee if you are paying it yourself or through other grant or scholarship. Your work in this case may serve as a chance for you committee to explore a new area that allows you to identify whether or not this area is sufficient for further funded work. Remember the fact that you are a part-time student with a daily job. If you are paying your own education cost, you will be free from the coercion of project durations for customary research.
• Have tolerance in uncertainties as PhD students usually encounter high degrees of uncertainty.
Despite the disadvantages mentioned above, taking Part-time PhD while working can be a great and enjoyable experience if you will just do your part as a student.