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Ray It seems to vary from institution to institution. At Lancaster (or at least in the Applied Social Science Dept) we don't usually get a chance to upgrade until mid-way through the second year. ESRC stipulate that the upgrading must have taken place before the end of the second year or funding for the third year will not be forthcoming. I have not yet sat in front of my upgrading panel but will be doing very soon. I have two supervisors - 1 from App. Soc. Sci. and 1 from Applied Statistics. The one from App. Soc. Sci wants to see evidence that I can "write like a Ph.D. student" whatever that means. I think he means that I need to show that I have the analytical skills sufficient to investigate the literature. Also to show that I have developed the ability to write in a style that is ridiculously and unnecessarily esoteric. I don't know why this is. I put it down to academic snobbery. The supervisor from Applied Stats simply wants to see that what I propose to do in terms of my emprical work is firstly achievable, and secondly will contribute to knowledge. I should point out that these are guidlines from my supervisors. They will not be sitting on the panel. I am expected to produce a document in two sections. The first will be similar in content, but somewhat more comprehensive, than my presentation at WPC. The second will be an outline of the research questions I hope to answer. I suppose its a lit. review and a methods chapter. I think my superviosrs are expeceting somehwere in the region of 10 - 20 thousand words. But they always expect the impossible. I noticed that Natasha, I think, produced a 5,000 word document, but it may be at Lancaster as we are not expected to go for upgrading until the mid-point that we are expecetd to produce more Anyway hope this has helped. Les > -----Original Message----- > From: Raymond Gard [SMTP:[log in to unmask]] > Sent: 29 April 2001 20:16 > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Upgrading. > > Hello there everyone, > > Is it not nice to be back to reality where one has to pay for ones own beer? > > I just wanted to pick everyone's combined brains. You'll have to excuse me if > the question is a bit simple as before the Workshop I had only met one other > criminology research student. > > I am about to try and persuade my supervisor to let me upgrade to PhD from > MPhil. At Goldsmiths it involves going in front of a couple of Prof.s and > persuading them that you should go for the PhD. I also have to produce at > least one chapter and a literature review. I just wondered what you all had > to do and if it is similar to this. How difficult was it to get through and > what was the main concerns of those making the decisions. > > Hope you can help. > > Cheers, > > Ray Gard.