Guidelines for applicants appointed as PhD student

Applicants for the PhD training that are appointed as PhD student, must have a Master’s degree in one of the following disciplines: Social and Behavioral Sciences, Technical Sciences, Mathematics or Econometrics. As a rule, at least one of the supervisors has to be a staff member of IOPS. In special cases, when the project clearly matches the research field of IOPS, but no supervisor is staff member of IOPS, the board may make an exception to this rule. A request has to be sent to the secretary.

Students within IOPS are financed by internal research funds of the participating institutes, NWO (Netherlands Foundation of Scientific Research) or European funding, or other external funds of third parties.

 Requirements for submission

  • The PhD student has to submit his/her proposal within one year from the start date of the project, by filling in the Registrationform.
  • The registrationform and a photo for the website and annual report (JPG) and, if applicable, an exemption request, have to be sent by email to the secretary of IOPS: secretariaat.iops@rug.nl
  • If you are of opinion that you qualify for exemption for one of the IOPS courses on the basis of courses you completed during your masters, you have to submit an exemption request. This exemption request consists of a short motivation letter, a copy of your diploma and grade list and a description of the master course(s) the request is based on.

The review process

  • The proposal will be reviewed by two staff members and two PhD students.
    Proposals accepted by NWO will only be reviewed by two PhD students and judged generally by the director.
  • The proposal will be approved or rejected by the reviewers. Only if the proposal is rejected, the PhD student has to write a response to the comments or revise the proposal if necessary. In that case, the response to the comments and/or the revised proposal will be sent to the reviewers for their final approval.
  • Not until the proposal is approved by the reviewers, the IOPS board will consider acceptance to the IOPS Graduate School.
  • After the board has reached its decision, the secretary notifies the candidate and his/her main supervisor of the decision.

When the proposal has been accepted, the PhD becomes a regular member of IOPS and a membership fee of €700 per year will be charged.