Some notes for new (and not so new) PhD students

Welcome to all our new postgraduates in UCL's "Group A" (Astrophysics, including cosmology and the Optical Sciences and Atmospheric Physics Laboratories). These notes are to provide some basic introductory information, so you at least have some idea of what sort of (non-academic) questions to ask!

All our postgraduate studentships start on Oct 1 unless you've arranged otherwise; this is when we expect you to turn up and occupy your desk. You should arrange with your supervisor a time and place for a first meeting, normally some time in the week starting October 3. Bear in mind that most (though not all) academics work a late-ish day; think in terms of a 10 o'clock start, not an 8 o'clock one.

By contrast, the UCL academic year starts on Sept 26. This shouldn't affect you, except that you have to register (i.e., sign up), and there is a schedule for doing this that's intended to minimise queuing (and which seems to work surprisingly well for undergrads). If you're in London for the last week of September, you might want to take advantage of your scheduled registration slot (or even turn up over the weekend of 24/25 Sept, when the system should be up and running and there won't be many undergrads around). Otherwise, you should still be able to register up until (but apparently not later than) Oct 7.

All new students are assigned a supervisor on a provisional basis. Student/supervisor pairings don't usually change, but may do so for administrative or other reasons, subject always to the student's full agreement. In general, your supervisor is your first port of call – don't hesitate to ask her/him how to do something, or how to access some resource.

These notes are intended simply to cover "obvious" things that might otherwise get overlooked - and not to be comprehensive. One-off, first-day things like "where do I get my grant", "where do I sit", "where do I get an id card" aren't covered, as the system and/or your supervisor should answer those questions more reliably than this page can.

ESSENTIAL POINTS:

A key source of additional important information is the (UCL password-protected) Departmental PG web page.

Although intended mainly for undergraduates, there is also on-line guidance on registration etc.

You are required to open and maintain a graduate school Research Student Log. This is YOUR responsibility, not your supervisor's! (And you will not be allowed to graduate if it is not complete.)

Unless you use your UCL email account as your main account (normally you'd use your starlink email instead), make sure that UCL email is redirected.

While you should aim to write up with 3 years, keep in mind that there is a hard deadline at 4 years, after which a range of penalties come in (on you, and on Group A).

Finally – just to be sure that someone, somewhere, tells you this explicitly – expect a PhD to be fun, interesting, challenging, and rewarding, but don't expect it to be a guarantee of a subsequent job in astronomy. Perhaps 15-20% of PhDs are still in the business ten years after graduating, although, of course, virtually 100% of astronomers have a PhD; that is, it's a necessary, though not sufficient, condition...

Welcome, and good luck!

General Administrative Things

Computer Things