For people who don’t know,

1. An UG/PG degree with a minimum of 65%
2. A research aptitude
   
   

   Marks really doesn’t matter much when you apply fot PhD, it’s majorly why you want to do a PhD and any experience in terms of any sort of research you conducted during UG/PG/Job experience.

         A student just after his/her bachelor’s can also apply for a PhD. Masters isn’t a compulsion for getting accepted for PhD.

To apply for a PhD, you need the following documents,

1. Transcript of past degree
2. Motivation Statement (Statement of
3. Purpose
   Letter of Recommendations
4. Research Proposal
5. Resume

Eligibility

Eligibility for PhD in general for UK is,

1. PhD stands for Doctor of Philosophy
2. A person can do PhD in any area of education and it basically is assumed that you will be an expert in that selected area. By selected area, I don’t mean like expert in whole History if you chose History or expert in everything in Electrical Engineering. It will be an extremely narrowed down area within a field of your choice.
3. A PhD in general is 3 yrs long, in some cases 4 as well.
4. There isn’t any sort of coursework in PhD, except a special 4 yr CDT, which I will explain later.
5. Your PhD will basically be like you will come up with a question yourself which has not been answered before, or not clearly explained or can be improved further and you will try to answer it by a continuous research, a lot of reading, experimental demonstrations (if required), etc.
6. There is no written exam to get a PhD. You are supposed to write a dissertation at the end which is generally 80,000 words or so, and then go for an oral defense in front of an external examiner (s) who are actual experts in that area. They evaluate your work, ask you questions and figure out if this is a real work and you haven’t just copied from past dissertations.

Types of PhD and How to Apply?

There are various forms of PhD in UK and multiple paths to apply for them.

As most of you will already be in UK doing a program, one simple way is staying in touch with professors who will be teaching you and accept PhD students as well. You can work under them during your bachelors or masters program as an assistant to gain some research experience which will later help you get a PhD.
Second way is check out available positions in different universities. You can visit findaphd.com or jobs.ac.uk/phd. These two websites advertise open PhD positions throughout UK along with funding status, last date, etc. If you find a PhD suitable to you, I would suggest you to drop an enquiry mail to the professor in the advertised position showing your interest in that position and discuss the idea before submitting your application. This increases chances of you getting accepted.
Another way is if you have your own idea, you prepare a proposal and start dropping enquiry mails to different professors working in that area in different universities asking if they are accepting PhD students.
There is another PhD called a 4-yr CDT PhD, which basically has 1 yr of coursework and then 3 yrs of research. These PhDs are funded by EPSRC (UK Research Council) and are 95% reserved for UK students only but are always worth a try.

Funding a PhD

Now talking about funding, a PhD can either be fully funded, partially funded or self funded.
Most of the PhDs are partially funded, very few fully funded for international students and self funded PhDs are easy to get but isn’t much valuable, because professors happily accept self funded PhD since you are going to pay for everything and they have to do nothing for you.
Fully funded PhD means you get your tuition fee waived off and a stipend of almost £1200 per month.
Partially funded generally is your tuition fee is waived off. No stipend.
Self-funded is you will pay tuition fee for 3 yrs and obviously no stipend.
Apart from already funded projects, there are outside orgnaisations and charities as well that fund research within PhD.
One of the most common one is Commonwealth Scholarship and Tata Trust. You can google about charities and organisations funding PhD to find out more about them. These fundings and scholarships are generally for people coming with new ideas and a new research proposal and extremely competitive, not at all easy to get.