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Scholarships for PhD or Research Masters Studies in Mathematics and Statistics

Maximise Your Chances

There are many rules and regulations surrounding scholarships and higher degree candidacy at La Trobe, but there are a few things applicants should do to maximise your chances of obtaining a scholarship for a research degree (PhD or Masters) in Mathematics and Statistics at La Trobe. Different rules apply to Australian and non-Australian applicants. Different rules also apply depending on the qualifications (eg, honours, coursework masters, etc.) you are using to gain entry to research studies. For these reasons, the the things you need to pay attention to depend on your background. The following paragraphs explain which categories of students need to do what.

1. Find a supervisor (everyone)

If we can't find anyone to supervise the area of research you have in mind, we can't even admit you as a student, so a scholarship is out of the question. If you are already a La Trobe honours student, you should already have some idea of the research interests of staff and you should simply approach appropriate academic staff directly to discuss possible research topics. If not, the easiset way to find a proposed supervisor is to contact staff whose research interests are closest to your own by email. The staff research interests page should help you to locate staff with interests closest to your own.

Tips on contacting supervisors:

• When approaching a potential supervisor, you should at least explain in general terms what area of Mathematics or Statistics that interests you. If you don't do this, staff may get the impression that you are sending out bulk emails indiscriminately to academics around the world, putting no real effort into choosing a research topic. Under these circumstances they may not feel it is worth putting much effort into your enquiry.
• If you have a specific idea of your own for a research project, that is even better, but be prepared to negotiate if your proposed supervisor doesn't feel he or she has sufficient expertise to supervise exactly what you have in mind.

2. Make sure you can meet the English language requirements (non-Australian residents only)

If you have completed university level studies in English in the last two years, you don't need to do anything else. If not, you will need to take an English test. The two recognised tests are TOEFL and IELTS and the standard required by our Faculty is presently IELTS 6.5 or TOEFL 575 plus TWE 5.0. Use the CourseFinder to obtain details of the required TOEFL and IELTS standards for the course of your choice.

3. Have your best piece of solo research translated into English (students without an Australian Honours Degree)

The most important stage in the process of deciding who gets a scholarship is the department's "ranking" of applicants. For students with an honours degree from an Australian University, this is very simple. We (almost always) just use the honours mark obtained by the student. Such students don't need to do anything further. Students with overseas qualifications or with Australian qualifications other than an Honours Degree (eg, Coursework Masters) need to do things to help us decide how your qualifications compare with a typical Australian Honours degree. To have any chance of getting a scholarship, you need to have written a major piece of research. Typically, students use a coursework Masters minor thesis, an overseas Honours thesis, undergraduate dissertation or something similar for this purpose. If these kinds of things aren't available, we can use a publication in a refereed journal, but you must be the sole author. Just to give you an idea of the scale of things, a typical Australian honours thesis in mathematics or statistics is between 30 and 60 pages typed. Eventually, we will need to have someone write a report on your work. For this purpose, we usually use the first two chapters. If your work isn't written in English, you will need to have someone translate the first two chapters. Since this may take some time, this is something you should think about early.

4. Get your application in on time (of course!)

This is particularly important for international applicants. As you can imagine from the above discussion, there is a fair bit of work for us in assessing the equivalence of your research work to Australian Honours degreee standard. If your application is late and we don't have time to do this properly, your chances of getting a scholarship may be reduced.

Postgraduate Coordinator