All PhD students must undertake a Stage Transfer Assessment (STA) in order to progress from Stage 1 to Stage 2 of the programme.
MD and MSc students who wish to transfer to the PhD programme must also participate in a STA.
The STA must be completed within five trimesters for a full-time student or seven trimesters for a part-time student.
A minimum of 2 RSP meetings must take place in Stage 1. Candidates must meet with their RSP within 2 months prior to their STA.
The School of Medicine STAs usually take place in Belfield in April and October every year. Students who are due to participate in a STA will be contacted 8 weeks in advance with detailed information.
Candidates are required to submit a written progress report and reports from two Research Studies Panel meetings.
Criteria upon which candidates will be assessed are as follows:
In addition, the candidate’s principal supervisor must submit a letter of progress using the below template.
Principal Supervisor _ Structured Statement Template
Students will give a brief presentation explaining the background to their project, the main overall aims of the project, the experimental approach, and progress made to date along with future plans.
Students will be interviewed for approximately 15 minutes by an assessment panel, consisting of at least three members of academic staff in the university who are independent of the Research Studies Panel.
Students who are not recommended for transfer the first time that they present may be recommended to present again in 6 months.
Additional information is available via the following resources:
Policy on PhD Transfer Assessments
Please contact medicine.research@ucd.ie if you have any queries.