Does the ranking of the university matter?

Less than applicants expect and less than the funding, the completion record and the supervision. Rankings aggregate institutional research volume, which is only loosely connected to whether a specific group in a specific department will get you to a finished thesis. A strong group in a mid-ranked department is a better bet than a weak one in a famous department.

Should I take an unfunded PhD offer?

Treat an unfunded offer as an offer to pay for several years of full-time work with no salary, and check whether the funding rules of that country even allow you to work enough to cover it. There are situations where it makes sense, typically when you already have external funding, an employer sponsoring you, or a part-time route designed for it. Accepting one on the expectation that funding will appear later is the version that goes wrong.

What is a thesis by publication?

A doctorate submitted as a set of published or submitted papers with a linking commentary, rather than as a single monograph. Where it is the norm, it sets a de facto publishing schedule from your first year and makes the choice of journals part of your thesis planning. Where the monograph is the norm, papers are optional and usually come later.

How long does a PhD take?

The nominal length in the programme description and the median completion time in that department are often different numbers, and the second one is the one that will apply to you. Ask the department directly for the median over recent years. Programmes that track and publish it tend to be the ones that manage it.

Can I change supervisor during my PhD?

In most systems yes, but the difficulty varies enormously: it is routine where you were admitted to a cohort and are funded by the department, and much harder where your funding is attached to one person's grant and one specific project. Since this is the mechanism that rescues a bad match, it is worth asking about before you accept rather than after.

How to Choose a PhD Programme

A programme decides your funding, your duration, your obligations and the people around you. A supervisor decides your project and your week. This page is about the first of those two.

Applicants compare supervisors carefully and then accept whatever programme comes attached, which is backwards in about half of all cases. The programme sets how you are paid and for how long, whether you take courses, whether there is a committee that can intervene when something goes wrong, and who else starts the same year. Choosing a person is covered in how to find a PhD supervisor; this page assumes you have candidates and are now comparing the structures they sit inside. Nothing here repeats the supervisor criteria, and the two pages are meant to be read together.

Which of the two decisions is actually yours

Before comparing anything, work out which decision the system in front of you is asking you to make, because that determines what you should be researching.

Cohort admission, common in North America: you are admitted to a department, often rotate through several groups in year one, and choose a supervisor afterwards. Here the programme is the decision and the supervisor is a decision you defer.; Project admission, common where a funded project is advertised: the supervisor, the topic and the money arrive as one package. Here the programme is mostly a container, and what you are really evaluating is the project and the group.; Own-proposal admission, common in parts of Europe and in many self-funded routes: you agree a project with a supervisor, then the programme admits you. Here you make both decisions, in that order.; Mixed systems exist, especially in doctoral schools and structured programmes that admit to a cohort but attach you to a supervisor from day one. Read the admissions page rather than assuming the national pattern.

How the doctorate is funded, and for how long

Funding is the single most consequential difference between programmes, and it varies more by country than by university. What you are comparing is not only the amount but the mechanism, the duration and what it obliges you to do.

Employment or enrolment: in several European countries a doctoral candidate is hired on a fixed-term contract with a salary, social security and pension contributions, while in others the same person is an enrolled student on a stipend or paying fees. Vacancy listings on EURAXESS state the contract terms, and a programme page will say which model applies.; Duration of the guarantee, not the nominal length. A four-year thesis funded for three years is a well known and entirely foreseeable problem, and the question to ask is what typically happens to students in the final year.
Teaching obligations: whether teaching is paid on top, counted inside the stipend, capped in hours, or effectively unlimited. In some systems teaching is the funding, which changes how much time the research actually gets.; Fees, and who pays them. A stipend that is quoted before fees is a different number from one quoted after, and international fee levels differ from domestic ones in most of the anglophone world.
What happens if you need to interrupt: parental leave, sick leave and their effect on both the funding and the registration deadline. This is boring to ask about in advance and expensive to discover later.

Structure: what you are required to do besides research

Programmes differ enormously in how much of the doctorate is prescribed. More structure means slower early progress and a stronger safety net. Less structure means you start research at once and carry more of the risk yourself.

Coursework and credit requirements, which range from none to two years of taught classes with grades that can affect your standing.; Rotations, where you spend a few months in two or three groups before committing. Where they exist, they are the best possible way to choose a supervisor, and they are worth a great deal.; Qualifying or comprehensive exams, and what happens if you fail one. Ask what the pass rate is and what the second attempt looks like.
Annual monitoring: a progress committee, a thesis advisory committee or an equivalent panel that meets yearly. This is the mechanism that catches a supervision problem before it becomes a lost year, so its existence is a genuine reason to prefer one programme over another.
The output format: a monograph thesis, or a thesis by publication with a required number of papers. The second one sets a publishing schedule for you and changes what a good first year looks like.

What the country changes

Country differences are not a matter of prestige, they are structural, and they affect the length of your twenties as much as the content of your thesis.

Typical duration: doctorates that are designed as three to four years and doctorates that routinely run to five or six are different commitments, whatever the advertised figure says. Ask what the median completion time was in that department, not the official one.; Visa and work rights, including whether your partner can work, whether you can take paid work outside the contract, and what the route to staying after graduation looks like.; The language of the thesis and of daily lab life. Some programmes accept an English thesis while running everything else in the local language, and only one of those two facts is on the website.; Where the degree is recognised and by whom, which matters most if you intend to return to a specific national system with formal equivalence rules.; Cost of living against the stipend in that city, which is a more useful comparison than the stipend on its own. Two identical numbers in two countries are not the same offer.

The cohort and the department around you

The people who start with you affect the experience more than most applicants expect, because they are the ones you actually ask when something is not working.

How many students start each year in that programme, and whether they are treated as a group with shared training or as isolated hires attached to individual supervisors.
Whether a doctoral school exists, and what it provides: training budget, transferable skills courses, conference funding, a formal complaints route independent of your supervisor.; Conference and travel funding, and whether it is guaranteed per student or comes out of your supervisor's grant. The second version makes attendance a negotiation.
Support that does not run through your supervisor: counselling, an ombudsperson, a graduate student association. What you want to know is whether there is anyone to talk to whose interests are not tied to your project finishing.; The department's own culture around hours and holidays, which is best established by asking two current students the same question separately.

Questions worth asking before you accept

These are the questions that get honest answers when asked plainly, and they are all things you have a legitimate reason to know before signing.

What is the funding source, and on what date does it end?

What was the median time to completion for this programme over the last five years, and how many students did not complete?

Is there an annual committee or panel, who sits on it, and what happens if I raise a problem there?

How many hours of teaching am I expected to do, and is it paid separately?

What happens if my supervisor leaves, retires or moves institution during my doctorate?

Can I speak to a current student and a recent graduate without the supervisor present?

Frequently asked questions

It depends on the admission route. Where you are admitted to a cohort and choose a supervisor a year later, the programme is the decision you are actually making. Where a funded project is advertised by one researcher, the supervisor and the project are the decision and the programme is largely a container. The mistake is applying the answer from one system to the other.