I previously described why it is difficult being an external Ph.D. student. One of the aspects is that you have to convince me that you can prevail, even though I have much less opportunity to advise you than I’d have with a “wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter” (TA/RA position funding Ph.D. studies) that I employ.

So, if you are thinking about approaching me to become your advisor, I recommend you go through the following mental exercise first: To layout the work that motivates you as a combination of research question, possible hypotheses, research approach and employed methods, and expected results. You should be able to write this up as a 100-200 word abstract.

Here are two examples (I wrote this blog post on a whim, so please don’t hold me to the quality of these examples):

Continue reading A Note to and Exercise for Prospective External Ph.D. Students