About PhD applications to Germany

I applied to several PhD programs/positions in Germany. I see this country as one of the strongest ones in computational neuroscience research. I did not get any of these positions but the journey way was far from meaningless.

🔵 Professor from Julius-Maximilians-Universität, Würzburg invited me to join one of his electrophysiological projects. After several zoom meetings, he expressed his willingness to take me on for PhD; and I decided to not move forward with this opportunity because:

1. He never sent a formal offer via email, even after several kind reminders. That lack of transparency is a red flag in PhD. If a professor changes his mind later and selects another student, there's no way you simply can show his lack of mentorship reliability, and defend your rights.

2. While the project was nice and aligned well with my background, I didn’t feel intellectually inspired by the topic. I believe that pursuing a PhD requires the deepest personal interest in the field. Without that internal drive, you might have nothing to keep you going through the years of experimental failures and long working hours.


🟢 LMU GSN program Doctoral Program, Munich selected me as a PhD candidate. I successfully passed all stages of the selection process: the application, documents evaluation, and interviews with professors who assessed my readiness for doctoral research. I was so in contact with professors there that I was even invited to visit one of the labs I was interested in and to attend the Brain Day. It was such an honor to speak with all professors during this conference. I even met a professor I used to annoy with annual emails during my bachelor’s, asking about internship opportunities. He was so surprised to see me in person.

However, in the end, I didn’t receive a lab placement, which is a necessary requirement for joining the program. My mistake was that I was applying only to labs that truly interested me within the computational field, and that are not necessary aligned with my academic background/lab experience. I simply couldn’t bring myself to show enthusiasm for research I dont feel connected to so I interviewed only into few labs. Also, the average answer was "you have not enough experience in computational neuroscience to get experience in computational neuroscience" which is strange but kinda true as I have only few self-organized projects. Not enough to take responsibility for the whole PhD project.

🟡 Professor from Cornell University saw my CV (as I understood, his friend from the GSN program shared it with him bcz my profile suited his project) and invited me to join an electrophysiological/computational project for a PhD. This option is now gone bcz of political reasons. He delayed and then froze the process of sending me an offer, about that I already briefly mentioned here. I understand his position, as he said that taking me on as PhD student is risky and would come with a lot of responsibilities, like getting a student visa for me. Being a Russian woman scientist is a sad jackpot there nowadays.


Sum up of this PhD application saga:
✏️ Each step in this experience helped me understand more clearly what I want and don’t want from my PhD. It thought me the game's rules, all process steps and pitfalls; next time I change my application strategy A LOT. Also, after this whole process I’ve also expanded my academic network, especially in Munich. During the Brain Day event (and the party after that), I connected with several PhD students there who shared their contacts with me.

✏️ I believe that I can do my PhD in computational neuroscience even without univ education in it. There is no way that I am doing PhD next year, but I am working on mistakes and replenish my knowledge in computational neuroscience to be more compatible.

✏️ What I am doing next year depends on email from prof in computational lab. My fate for next year will be decided soon 😴😐🏏🍗🍀

See you soon at online meeting. I will try to schedule it for next week, most likely on Wednesday
Best
Olga Y. Salyp