A month ago I submitted a PhD studentship application to CSIRO, an Australian-based research organization. They had a phone interview with me this morning. It took 25 minutes, asking me why I want to do PhD in Australia, what I think about valuation and attitudes, and what I am going to do for my current MPhil project. They did not ask any tricky questions, except one that I was not well prepared to answer. It's more like they want to know a bit more about my present works and future plan. There were some questions about academic understandg. I think I won't be able to answer if I did not do any preparation. And it's great that I felt little difficulty in listening to native speakers on phone - I am very weak in English listening tests.
Twenty minutes after it was finished, the project leader called me back and talked about two things. The first is my availability - as I will not finish my MPhil until early 2009. The second is that he wanted me to pay a visit to Canberra to have a talks (I forgot to ask if there will be any formal interviews or presentations). That's great! Because they pay me the air tickets. I have been longing to go to Australia and now I get the chance for free! No matter I will finally be accepted or not, it is a valuable chance for me to meet a pretiguous scholar in this field and enjoy a nice journey with minimal costs.
3 comments:
Check your email!
Maybe we can meet up and have a chat face-to-face!
BTW, for the ones that don't know what CSIRO is, it is the acronym of Australia's "Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation".
I am using some of their commercialised products, like NatHERS, AccuRate, etc. I had also come across with their fire reports on buildings' smoke management systems, material or equipment test reports, etc.
Hey there - thanks for your interesting blog! I am from Taiwan, and now doing my masters in economics and environmental management in the US. I am also very interested in the field of ecological economics, and thus very happy to see that you have such similar interests with me. These voices are simply too weak in the economic growth obessed East Asia.
Anyway, it is a pleasure to find your blog, and I also invite you to visit mine at http://www.wretch.cc/blog/chungenliu. I hope I can be as prolific as you are.
And here is an interesting article to share with you.
http://www.awi.uni-heidelberg.de/with2/Discussion%20papers/papers/dp454.pdf
John
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