Your Master's degree may have given you valuable academic knowledge, professional experience or research exposure. Discover how your current profile could shape your pathway toward becoming Funding Ready for a fully funded PhD.
YOU HAVE A MASTER’S DEGREE. ARE YOU FUNDING-READY FOR A PhD?
Dear Master’s Degree Holder,
You already have something every PhD applicant needs: a completed graduate degree and the experience that came with it.
You may also be working—building your career, gaining professional experience, developing new skills, and wondering whether now is the right time to pursue a PhD.
The question is whether your academic and professional experience has been developed into a profile that can compete for PhD funding.
After more than a decade of studying graduate funding across the USA, Canada, Australia, Europe and beyond, our discovery is clear:
Graduate Funding Isn't Scarce. Funding-Ready Applicants Are.
Having a Master’s degree does not automatically make you funding-ready for a PhD.
And being a working professional does not mean you are too far removed from academic research.
What matters is how your academic background, professional experience, research exposure, skills, achievements and future research direction come together to demonstrate your readiness for doctoral study.
Ask yourself:
“Why should a university, department or professor in the USA, Canada or Australia fund my PhD?”
The answer is in becoming funding-ready before you apply—building a funding-ready profile and developing funding-ready application documents that clearly demonstrate why you are prepared for doctoral research and why your proposed direction deserves consideration for funding.
Your Master’s degree and professional experience may already give you valuable building blocks. The question is whether those building blocks are positioned strategically enough to support your case for PhD admission and funding.
The first step is to understand where your profile currently stands in relation to funded PhD opportunities.
What does your academic and professional experience already demonstrate?
Where are the gaps?
What do you need to build?
Before you apply. Before you contact professors. Before you write your SOP.
Know Where You Stand.
That's where the Free Graduate Funding Readiness Assessment comes in.
Your assessment will show you where you are now, the gaps in your profile, and what you need to build to become funding-ready.
CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE FREE GRADUATE FUNDING READINESS ASSESSMENT
WHILE YOU WAIT FOR YOUR ASSESSMENT REPORT,
Explore our Funding Intelligence Briefs created specifically for Master’s degree holders—including working professionals—who want to pursue a funded PhD abroad.
These briefs will help you understand how your Master’s degree and professional experience can fit into the broader PhD funding journey, challenge common assumptions about transitioning from professional work back into academic research, and begin thinking strategically about what it takes to become funding-ready.
EXPLORE THE INTELLIGENCE FOR MASTER’S DEGREE HOLDERS