I had never thought of doing a PhD until when I started my honours year. Even as late as my bachelor’s year, I thought that I will only finish to an honours degree or at most a master’s. However, honours year showed me a lot of things; one of which is the fact that a master’s and a PhD is not really that much of a difference, maybe 50% more. Secondly, I will need a PhD if I ever wanted to continue my love for research. Hence, I gave it some serious thoughts and told Kevin that I am likely to continue a PhD if possible. That was as early as October 2003 – about 3 months into my honours.
My thought then was that doing a PhD is more of a business decision. If I had started working after my honours year, the salary that I can command after taxes will be about the same as my supposed PhD scholarship. This means that a PhD will be 3 to 4 years of secured salary and at the end of it, a doctorate degree and a coverted title. Should I fail to get my PhD, I will still be able to convert it into a masters degree, which is still a step more than my honours degree. Hence, I saw that I will never lose out by starting a PhD even though it will be emotionally tramatic if I failed. I decided to bet on it.
However, things were tough for me and Joel as we were mid-year intake students. This means that we will be out-of-sync with the normal scholarship cycle with Edwin and the rest of the gang enjoyed. By the time we submitted our honours thesis, all routine PhD scholarships had been given out. To make matters worse, my undergraduate results is not optimal and competitive enough for a good scholarship, certainly not IPRS. IPRS, or International Postgraduate Research Scholarship, is awarded by Australian government and is deemed as the most prestigious scholarship for international students pursuing a PhD. It covers stipends, tuition fees, healthcare insurance and even visa applications – amounting to a package of about AUD 180 thousand over the period of time.
In Melbourne University, PhD entry and scholarship is determined by a PhD entry score which is one-third of honours entry score (average of top 7 science subject in 3rd year) and two-thirds of honours results. PhD entry score has to be above 75 and at least a H2A for honours (second upper class) before I am even qualified to enter into a PhD candidature. Given my almost dismal honours entry score of 73, it will be a tough fight to even qualify for the doctoral programme, much less said about scholarship. The only consolation is my peer-reviewed paper in AUSCC, which adds 2 points to my PhD entry score.
On a side note, this calculation made me realised the importance of peer-reviewed papers. A peer-reviewed paper equated to 2 points in the PhD entry score, which is then equivalent to 6 points in the honours entry score as one-third of honours entry score goes into PhD entry score. Given that honours entry score is average of 7 final year modules, 6 points in the honours entry score will then be the equivalent of 42 points of raw final year marks. Thus, a peer-reviewed paper is almost equivalent to half of a final year module grades. The maximum bonus points that I can get for peer-reviewed papers is 4 points or 2 papers. I think disappointment is an understatement when I realized that my final year project back in my days as a student in Singapore Polytechnic may be publishable as there was no papers in PubMed mentioning anything about combining artificial neural networks with DNA fingerprinting. At the very least, some form of such work were published since 2000. This is the main reason why I tried my best to get my students to publish their project work when I was a lecturer back in Singapore Polytechnic from 2008 to 2010. The last thing I want for my project students is to be at the same disadvantaged situation as myself, years ago.
Nevertheless, there are lots of people with PhD entry score of 85 or more, so it is going to be very tough for me. I will need scholarships to even start a PhD programme, there is no way I can ask for 200 thousand from my family at all. It is just not even remotely possible.
Other than IPRS, there are 2 major postgraduate scholarships within the university. The Melbourne International Research Scholarship (MIRS) paid $18500 per annum for stipends or living expenses and there were 90 of such scholarship for the entire university. The Melbourne International Fee Remission Scholarship (MIFRS) paid the international student tuition fees and there were 60 of such for the entire university. Hence, it is possible to get MIRS without MIFRS, even for capable students.
I turned to Penny Fairbank for help. I still remembered I was telling her in her office – I had fought to go into polytechnic, fought to come to Melbourne, fought to get into honours, and now this… How many times must I be fighting? She said one thing that still etched in my mind – “Maurice, this is where the character is built.” Looking back, she is right. Through each trial, I became stronger to deal with more things.
Penny helped me to contact Andrew Howes, the faculty scholarship manager, to assist me with things and how the faculty can step in to help. That was around December of 2003.
Personally, I did not know what had transpired since then. The only thing I knew in concrete terms was by February 2004, 2 months before I was due to submit my honours thesis, my PhD stipend scholarship in the form of “Science Faculty Scholarship” had been signed off by an associate dean. The only condition was that I have to be eligible for PhD by myself. This means I must hit the PhD entry score of 75. This means that I have to get 77 for my honours, not accounting for the paper I published in AUSCC, or 75 if accounting for that paper. I will need a minimum of a 2nd upper honours to get in. The official requirement to get into PhD programme from honours is a 2nd class upper honours in addition to the entry score of 75. By and large, I was confirmed of my stipend scholarship and probably the only person I heard so far that got a PhD scholarship even before honours thesis submission.
The next issue was the tuition fees. As an international student, PhD tuition fee was 28 thousand dollars a year, with 3% increment every year. For this, I had numerous discussions with Mary and Kevin. Once, we even had Andrew Howes to come to Kevin’s office to explain the matter to us.
The life saver was the way PhD tuition fees got distributed. In very simplistic terms, the university will get half the amount and the other half will go to the research group and the department. As our group was funded by Dairy CRC, PhD candidates get another scholarship from the CRC rather automatically. This scholarship will give $5000 to the laboratory and a top-up of $9000 for stipends per annum.
Kevin had also talked to David MacMillian, Head of Zoology, on this issue and came up with a “rescue” package for me. The plan was that I will put my top-up of $9000 and Kevin will put up both his parcel of $5000 from the CRC and the tuition fees re-distribution to pay for my tuition fees. In addition, the department will put up $4000 from the tuition fees re-distribution into the package. This worked up to $23000 per annum. I will have to find the remaining $5000 and the 3% increment by myself. Things are looking up now. I managed to get the money from back home to finance this. As such, my primary scholarships are settled.
The next good news came in March 2005, 8 months after I had started my PhD. It was from Andrew Howes again. He told me that I had been awarded MIFRS to cover my tuition fees and he was able to back-date the scholarship to January 1, 2005. I was elated and called Kevin on his mobile phone immediately to let him into the news. Like what Edwin said, Andrew struck a very positive note as the bearer of good news. As such, I became one of the rare people that got a more competitive MIFRS without lesser competitive MIRS.
A few other things in terms of finances came towards me from then on. I was awarded the Postgraduate Overseas Research Experience Scholarship (PORES) for $4500 to fund me overseas attachment to BioInformatics Research Institute at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and Melbourne Abroad Travelling Scholarship (MATS) fo $1000 to fund my conference and travel to Taipei, ROC, and to Keio University in Japan. I had also gotten a total of $1900 in FH Drummond Funds for my conference travels. These were on top of all the other miscellaneous development funds I had gotten from the Dairy CRC for my conferences and the workshops I had attended.
All in all, I did a tally of my total scholarship awards. It amounted to about $235000 over my entire PhD candidature. This was 30% more than what I could have gotten from most prestigious IPRS.
I owed this to my thesis adviser, Kevin, who told me that whatever I need or want, I should just ask. The worst that can happen is a NO and I never lose anything to begin with.
I learnt 2 things during this. Firstly, scholarships can be pieced together. There is no need for a big monolithic or prestigious scholarship. Secondly, there is no need to go for the best. Sometimes, the second best is better. Formally, never go for Pareto Optimality, only go for Nash Equilibrium.
As a scene from A Beautiful Mind played out,
The Problem: You and three male friends are at a bar trying to pick up women. Suddenly one blonde and four brunettes enter in a group. What’s the individual strategy? Here are the rules. Each of you wants to talk to the blonde. If more than one of you tries to talk to her, however, she will be put off and talk to no one. At that point it will also be too late to talk to a brunette, as no one likes being second choice. Assume anyone who starts out talking to a brunette will succeed.
The Movie: Nash suggests the group should cooperate. If everyone goes for the blonde, they block each other and no one wins. The brunettes will feel hurt as a second choice and categorically reject advances. Everyone loses. But what if everyone goes for a brunette? Then each person will succeed, and everyone ends up with a good option.
--- Taken from http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2008/03/10/game -theory-tuesdays-the-problem-from-a-beautiful-mind-buying-new-or-used/