PhD in Australia: From NCKU to KCL to a Sydney PhD, ft. Darryl

Updated 2026/10/16

This post is an edited version of a podcast transcript. 👉🏻 Listen to the full episode (in Chinese).

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Hi, and welcome to “Jason’s Career Folder.” I’m your host, Jason, and I’ve been sharing content about careers and studying abroad for a long time. Here you can “open” the folder and explore people’s stories, and you can also “edit” it with me: add to your experience, pick up insights and learn something new!

🎤 Guest: Darryl
Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/darryl_tseng
Mentor, 2nd OfferLand Free Mentorship Program
BS in Mechanical Engineering, NCKU ➡️ MSc in Robotics, KCL ➡️ PhD, AMME, USYD (autonomous vehicles, coding)

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In this episode:

📂 When did he decide to do a PhD?
📂 Applying to UK master’s programs: how to do it yourself
📂 SOP, cover letter
📂 Why a gap year? How to plan it
📂 PhD applications and interviews in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland (top-100 schools)
📂 Life as a PhD student and life in Australia

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Jason: I’m really happy to have Darryl here today to talk about his master’s at KCL and the PhD he’s now doing in Australia. He did both the master’s and PhD applications entirely on his own and took a gap year in between, so his experience is very varied and well worth learning from.

Darryl: Hello to everyone listening to Jason’s Career Folder. I’m Darryl. I’m doing a PhD in Australia, and my research area is autonomous driving. One interesting thing is that my funding comes from the ARC (Australian Research Council) and is government backed, so it’s about the top source of funding in Australia. It also comes with its own restrictions and terms. Most people don’t run into this side of things.

When did you decide to do a PhD? Did you only want to stay in academia after your master’s?

Jason: We’re really glad Darryl agreed to this interview, because he’s done a lot. Let’s go in chronological order from the beginning, since that’s easier to follow. We’ll start with university. Darryl, you studied mechanical engineering at NCKU. When did you decide to do a PhD? Or was it only after your master’s that you wanted to keep going in academia?

Darryl: Hmm… In my first two years of university I didn’t really put my mind to my studies, mostly because of my mindset. I could have gone to National Taiwan University (NTU) but didn’t, and I couldn’t quite get over that. So I wasn’t very focused for those two years. In my third year, when the electives and required courses were at their heaviest, especially in NCKU’s mechanical engineering department, I started putting my energy back into school. We had prerequisite rules that block you from later courses, plus 144 credits to finish, so although I scraped through the earlier courses, my foundation wasn’t great. I spent a good amount of time catching up then, and I focused on the two areas I was most interested in: the control group and the convection group.

Those two areas later helped my grades too. Taking the courses, joining projects and getting hands-on work in the lab all gave me a lot of ideas, and I started building relationships with professors. That helped a lot later when I needed recommendation letters.

Did you only start studying seriously between your second and third year, once you wanted to apply for grad school?

My thinking back then was simple: I didn’t go to NTU for undergrad, so why would I go there for grad school? So I started looking into studying abroad. People from NCKU mechanical engineering love going to Germany, because tuition is cheap and it’s a powerhouse in mechanical engineering. But some seniors in my department told me German programs can make you retake courses you’ve already passed, so a two-year master’s can take three or four years. UK master’s programs are quicker, so I chose the UK. It also makes travel around Europe easy.

Your undergraduate GPA was only 3.0, but you got into KCL on your own. Can you walk us through the application?

I only applied to three schools: Imperial, King’s and Edinburgh. For doing it myself, I found the information online fairly transparent. I finished the applications in a week; I just sat in the library and got it done. UK applications put more weight on GPA, but I think NCKU’s reputation and my SOP helped a lot. UK schools may discount grades from NCKU to some degree, which is one reason I could get into KCL.

In university I took part in a lot of department projects, especially a robotics competition project in my third year. That project let me apply what I’d learned in my first few years to real hands-on work. These experiences gave me good material to show my abilities in my SOP, and they fit my later research direction, autonomous driving.

Did you join a lab or do research in university?

I didn’t join a lab, because I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I felt the time I’d spend in a lab could go toward raising my grades or doing things I was more interested in. If you only want a recommendation letter, professors will write one if you took their course and did well. When I applied for my master’s, my project experience was mainly that third-year course and a few other hands-on courses.

Overall, I think what matters in the application process is knowing what you want and showing your experience and abilities well in your SOP. Instead of hiring an agency, spend the time researching and preparing yourself. That’s how you actually figure out the direction you want.

Researching study-abroad applications on your own

Jason: Let’s talk about the application itself, since you only spent about a week on it from start to finish. I think the first problem most DIY applicants face is not knowing where to find information, or whether what they find is accurate and reliable. Where did you look for information back then?

Darryl: I was fairly sure from the start that I wanted to go to the UK, and I was also sure I wanted to do something related to robots, so I looked for robotics programs. There actually aren’t many in the UK. Imperial, for example, calls it control systems or mechanical engineering, which isn’t specifically focused on robotics. For robotics specifically, I remember King’s, then Southampton, and Edinburgh’s was more data science and AI, I think. So I started by choosing schools, and I only picked Edinburgh, King’s and Imperial. To filter information, first decide which field you want, and that gives you a list of schools. Then I looked at what each application required and just produced it.

I’ve seen some people weigh a school’s local reputation or job prospects back in Taiwan. I didn’t really have that problem, because the schools I picked had decent names and the programs were well aligned.

Jason: But generally speaking, the UK usually isn’t the first choice for STEM students going abroad, right?

Darryl: Compared with how most people think, I guess that’s where I’m different. Say someone wants to study a certain program at King’s. The program may be well regarded, but local British people might prefer Durham. I’ve seen a lot of people run into that problem, and I just happened not to.

Did you run into any difficulties writing your resume or SOP?

For the master’s, I think the resume was fine. I wrote it from an Overleaf template, which gives you a layout to fill in. You list your experience in chronological order and highlight what you think matters most. The resume part was fine. But when I look back at my SOP now and compare it with my template, I feel my PhD materials were probably much better than that SOP. I don’t know what I was writing back then, and I think that’s pretty normal. If you want to write a good one, there are lots of samples online, but in the end they aren’t yours. I’d suggest borrowing other people’s structure and writing your own content, and then having someone review the draft to check that it reads smoothly.

Did you face any difficulties studying at KCL? For example, was your English not fluent enough, or was the academic level especially high and hard to follow?

When I first got to London, since we’re all used to American English, I thought: is this English? Why can’t I understand it? The London accent was really strong. When I arrived, the UK lockdown had just ended and Taiwan’s was just starting, so people were starting to go out and make friends.

I joined the university weightlifting club. During a break, our coach asked if I wanted to come to a get-together he was hosting, so I went. Everyone there was a foreigner, I honestly couldn’t understand them, and I asked them to speak a bit slower. Accents were what I struggled with most at the start. I also often had to change flight bookings back then, and when I finally got through, the person on the line was usually Indian, and I wasn’t used to that accent either. You get used to it over time. Now Indian accents are totally fine for me; sometimes it’s Japanese or Korean accents I find harder. I think time takes care of this.

The teaching was manageable. What I learned in undergrad was really solid, so I didn’t spend a lot of time on coursework. In the term when I wrote my thesis, though, my life was basically shuttling between two places: I’d go out to eat and work out, then come back, write my thesis and code nonstop. The courses during term weren’t a big problem. I’d covered much of it in undergrad, and at most there were some extensions, now in English. My undergrad department taught basically everything in English anyway, so I didn’t need to adjust to the technical terms.

Do UK master’s programs require a thesis?

Darryl: Not necessarily. There are basically two kinds of master’s: a taught one and a thesis one. The thesis one seems to take a year and a half to two years, and the taught one about a year. You can choose whether to write one. It feels more like a final project report than a thesis in the usual format. If you want to write one, you can. I told my professor I thought I could do it, so I submitted a proposal first, and he asked whether I’d want to do a PhD. That was more or less how the PhD started. My master’s thesis got far enough that he figured, if I went on to a PhD, I could use it directly for my first paper, and all the work was done and ready.

Jason: So you only decided to do a PhD after you got there?

Darryl: Yes, fairly late, and he’s the one who got me thinking about it. At first I just wanted a one-year master’s so I could finish fast instead of spending two years. I’d be working either way, so one year was quicker, and I could experience the UK and have fun in Europe.

Jason: You mentioned the weightlifting club. Do Taiwanese students, or master’s students, join clubs? Do you think a high share of Taiwanese students do?

Darryl: Not many around me, but it’s hard to say, because my year happened to be during COVID, so I don’t know what it’s normally like. Vaccinations there went really fast; when Taiwan was just getting vaccines, they’d already vaccinated 70 to 80 percent of people. I was pretty reckless then too: unvaccinated and spending all day at barbecues and drinking with the locals, so my experience may not be typical. Not many people around me were in other clubs either, but I’d recommend it. When people go abroad, especially to popular countries and big cities in popular fields like computer science or finance, they’re basically surrounded by people from mainland China. If you want somewhere to practice English, I think clubs are a good choice, especially sports clubs. A lot of locals love them.

Jason: I think that’s pretty important. A lot of people go abroad and still stay inside a small Chinese-speaking bubble, and clubs make it a lot easier to step outside it.

Darryl: Exactly, and many students from mainland China stick together in groups. With locals, you also get to see different ways of living and values that are very different from yours. You can really experience how British people live and what their culture is like.

Jason: So you were in clubs that whole year? Did your English shoot up?

Darryl: My English shot up, and so did my alcohol tolerance. We’d work out and drink. Pretty much: after training we’d get coffee, and then the barbecue and drinks would start.

Jason: You had to take IELTS again for both the master’s and the PhD applications, right?

Darryl: For the master’s, yes. For the PhD, my previous degree was from an English-speaking country, so I didn’t have to retake it. They waived it.

Gap year: did the idea of a PhD grow while you wrote your master’s thesis? Did you go back to Taiwan for military service first and then prepare your PhD applications?

Yes. Because of the pandemic I deferred a term, so my master’s, which would have been 2020 to 2021, became January 2021 to January 2022. My military service happened to be February to May. I’d originally agreed with my supervisor to start the PhD in June, but then my scholarship didn’t come through. Halfway through my service, when the scholarship fell through, I talked it over with my family and decided to take a gap year and try again. If I didn’t do it then, I might never want to later. Timing matters: later in life you may have financial pressure, so it’s best to study while you have no obligations. A PhD puts you back in the life of a broke student. So I decided to take a year to apply, and the Top 100 scholarship application season happens to close before early December each year. After I finished my service there was a family matter to deal with, I got busy revising my Top 100 application materials, and then I worked as a research assistant. It was a remote position for a professor in the US who teaches at UCLA. I figured that if I did well, going to UCLA would also be a good option. The applications are different, but the theoretical background is the same. I had nothing else lined up. If I applied for a regular job, they’d ask when I could start. If I told the truth, that I was waiting on PhD results, I’d never get hired, but if I didn’t say it, quitting after I got in would be awkward. This research assistant opportunity came along at the right time, so I took it. Professors who open these positions usually welcome people who want to do a PhD. How long you work depends on what you negotiate. Some want at least a year or two, and others are fine with six months. If you want to do a PhD, it’s a good option.

How do you apply for a remote research assistant role?

It’s like applying for a job. You can apply remotely, they may interview you, and if you pass they pay you monthly. It’s a program from one of Taiwan’s ministries; I’m not sure which one. Anyway, Taiwan has a program called the Yushan Scholar program that gives overseas professors funding to support their research in Taiwan. That professor teaches at UCLA, but he had funding to pay me and listed me under NCKU. My real boss was him and I reported to him, while someone at NCKU ran the project day to day, a bit like having a big boss and a small boss. NCKU was the small boss and he was the big boss in the US. The pay is Taiwanese pay, so don’t expect too much.

Top 100 applications: does “Top 100” mean PhDs at schools ranked in the world’s top 100?

Yes. It’s the Ministry of Education’s Top 100 program (the Ministry of Education’s scholarship program with the world’s top 100 universities), and there’s a list of partner schools. In the UK, for example, that might be Oxford and Cambridge, and in the US something like UC Berkeley. Anyway, there’s a set list of schools. It’s a Ministry of Education program, and you apply both to the school and to the Ministry.

As I remember, the evaluation works like this: you apply to the school as usual and get an admission decision. If you get an offer, you report the result to the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry decides who gets the money, picking from the people who were admitted. The program doesn’t require you to return to Taiwan.

So it’s a normal PhD application plus a Ministry of Education review, and if you pass the review, the Ministry gives you funding?

Right, right. But it doesn’t raise your chances of admission. That’s a separate point. Still, if you’re in the US, you can tell a professor you bring your own funding, so they may not have to spend as much to support you. The Ministry of Education and the school split the cost, so the professor carries no funding burden. That may make it easier, after you’re admitted, to negotiate which professor you work with. But it won’t improve your admission chances. That’s roughly how it works.

How do you apply for the program? Through the regular application portal, or through the Ministry of Education?

Say I apply to several schools at once, like the University of Sydney, Cambridge and Oxford. If each application fee is NT$1,000, I have to transfer NT$3,000 to a Ministry of Education account, take a photo of the receipt, open an account on the Ministry’s website and upload the proof. You also submit a copy of the application materials you sent those schools to the Ministry. And you still apply to the schools themselves, so you do the same thing twice. That’s roughly how it works.

So all your PhD applications went through the schools?

Not all of them went through that system. Many came from European sites, such as scholarship.net and FindAPhD.

US positions show up there less often. For those it’s usually GradCafe or 1point3acres, since some US professors post there or people offer referrals. It also depends on how the application timeline works. Most US schools have deadlines before December each year, so they don’t usually post on these sites, since they have a fixed application process.

On sites like FindAPhD, UK-system schools work more like they’re opening a job. When a professor gets funding and wants a student, they post there. Normally the US system doesn’t do that. If it does happen, it’s usually lower-ranked schools or ones that aren’t traditional big names.

You mentioned applying through an Australian program. Is your funding from the Australian government?

Darryl: Yes, well, not exactly. That’s a professor I got in touch with through the Top 100 program.

I first planned to apply for the Ministry of Education’s Top 100 scholarship, but I didn’t get the funding. My supervisor said he happened to have some money he could use to support me, so I didn’t need to worry about Top 100. I was on the waitlist, and he said to forget about it, he’d cover me. The program is from the Australian Research Council, an Australian research agency that provides funding.

My project runs four or five years, and the agency gave him a bit over NT$100 million to run it. He sets aside part of that money to support me. So after I got admitted, my salary came from that project through my supervisor.

The RTB is about the highest scholarship in Australia. There are department and university scholarships, and national ones. The RTB is a national scholarship. The stronger you are, the better you rank for it, though the amount of money is the same. One perk of the RTB is that you can get a bus and train pass with your name and photo on it for discounted travel. But even after I asked about it for ages, they never mailed it to me, so I gave up.

Jason: I’ve heard government services in Australia are really inefficient, even worse than in the UK?

Darryl: That’s right. I still don’t get it. Life here runs at a very strange pace.

Career paths after a PhD

On the PhD itself: there are two career paths after it. One is staying in academia, maybe as a professor or postdoc, and continuing research. The other is going into industry. One of my seniors went back to industry, and he could have stayed in academia too. It depends on what matters to you at the time.

In autonomous driving, I wanted a PhD because Taiwan doesn’t have a fairly mature self-driving company. There are usually just two or three, their reputations aren’t great, and the pay isn’t great either. And without residency status, looking for work abroad is hard, and the economy hasn’t been good the past two years. So I thought I might as well do a PhD.

If you want to get residency or find a job in the self-driving industry, the seniors I talked to who had worked at Google and Amazon all agreed that without a PhD you get screened out right away. So I figured I’d just do it, because I need it whether I go into industry or academia.

You applied in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and Germany, plus the Netherlands and Switzerland, all on your own. How different are the applications across these countries?

I think the main question is whether it’s the UK system, so there are two systems: UK and US. The UK system asks for a proposal, and the US asks for an SOP. The SOP is a lot like a master’s application: you use a story to cover what’s hard to put on a CV. A research proposal is more like a three-to-four-page research plan where you lay out your research ideas and abilities. Later I found out they don’t really read it, and what you end up doing may not even relate to it. They just want to see how you think and what you can do.

The UK, Canada and Australia are similar. I’ve half forgotten the Netherlands; I only applied to the University of Amsterdam, which is strong in AI. Switzerland, the US and Germany don’t need a proposal the way UK-system schools do. You just send your CV and papers and write a cover letter.

How did you finally choose a country?

Jason: After applying to so many schools, how did you weigh which country to go to? A lot of STEM students put the US first when choosing a country, maybe because industry is more concentrated there. So why did you end up choosing Australia?

Darryl: First, I’m more used to UK-system countries. Second, at the PhD stage I don’t think you should care too much about school rankings. Put it this way: your first priority is funding; only people with money can afford to think otherwise. Next is whether your supervisor’s interests match what you want to do, and how much freedom they give you. In the US, a lot of funding packages include TA work as the condition for supporting you.

The package Australia offered me means I only have to do research and they’ll support me. If I want extra money by working as a TA, they don’t mind. So TA work is optional for me and doesn’t eat into the quality of my research. Also, in autonomous driving a lot of datasets require data-collection vehicles, which depends on whether the state or national government gives you the right to do it. It’s limited by region.

Our center has a license to collect this data, which is a big advantage for me. With the data, I can train models and produce better work. My supervisor also has a lot of connections in different places, so even if I want to go to the US or UK later, it won’t be a big problem. So I’d suggest putting funding first, then the supervisor’s topic, and the school after that.

The school really is secondary for me. I’ve never been someone who puts prestigious schools near the top of the list. Good enough is good enough. If I were, I’d have gone all out for NTU or Imperial from the start and wouldn’t have made these odd choices.

What are industry salaries like in Australia? Roughly what does a PhD graduate earn on average?

I haven’t looked into that yet. But here, blue-collar jobs pay more than white-collar ones, so not many people want to study. Someone doing Uber or Uber Eats deliveries might make around NT$2 million a year. Industry is so-so, because this is a country rich in natural resources. If I want to work on self-driving cars in Australia, I’ll probably have to take a more academic route, through government projects or the university track.

The other option is switching domains instead of working purely on cars. One of my seniors moved to harvesters and weeding robots, the kind of vehicle that harvests wheat. They have to change the application domain, so it isn’t purely about cars anymore. That’s not a big deal, though; it’s domain adaptation, switching back and forth. As for their industry, Australia has no auto supply chain of its own. The cars are all imported, and everywhere you look on the road there are cars like Toyotas.

The one upside I see is that since they don’t make their own cars, there are no tariffs on them, so cars cost about half what they do in Taiwan.

Jason: I’ve heard that in Australia, without a car you’re stuck, since getting around is inconvenient. Have you bought a car?

Darryl: Probably at the end of this year or next year. Right now I’m in the city center, still getting settled and trying things out, so I haven’t had time to go farther away. I think it’s fine, though; renting a car is easy too. It’s not like parts of the US outside cities where it’s inconvenient, so daily life here is actually pretty convenient.

What’s a typical day in your PhD like? You said you have a lot of freedom, unlike a US PhD where you have to teach as a TA. How do you feel about it?

I’ve only just started; I enrolled in October (a little over six months ago). It’s pretty chill. No one requires you to perform or do anything in particular. It’s entirely up to you how you spend these four years. As long as you’ve agreed things with your supervisor, it’s fine. My supervisor is very relaxed right now. A few days ago I was rushing a deadline, and he told me not to hurry and to take my time.

Sometimes he leaves at three and tells me to leave with him, because he thinks there’s no need to work that hard. As for the daily routine: usually on Monday morning there’s a big meeting for the whole group. Besides the PhD students, there are senior students, postdocs, the small boss and the big boss. We’re a big center, and we also have full-time technical staff, both software engineers and hardware engineers. We meet together, figure out what features you need, report on progress and see what suggestions others have.

After the meeting we go for coffee, then lunch. In the afternoon I make a bit of progress, and once that’s done I can leave. He doesn’t really care whether you work at the university or the office. Sometimes when I don’t want to go to a meeting, I can take the day off and catch up with him later, and that’s fine too. We don’t always even need to catch up, because he’s busy. My progress is basically in my own hands, and there’s not much time pressure.

Do you still have to take classes?

Our department changed the rules. It used to be two courses, and now you can graduate without taking any. In the US I think you have to take courses in the first year.

Yes, I remember talking to a US PhD student who said you take courses for the first few years, with fewer each year. The UK doesn’t seem to require much either, so the freedom here is really high; you don’t even need to take classes. That’s one reason I chose this place. I don’t want to take courses I’ll never use. If I need to learn something, I look it up online, where you can find everything. No wasting time sitting in class writing what they want you to write, plus commuting, for things you can handle with a computer.

You said four years to graduate. Do most people finish in four? Can you finish early or take longer?

From what I’ve seen it’s around four years. Everyone’s output in quality and quantity is a bit different, and it depends on your funding. One of my classmates is Vietnamese and has a regular scholarship, and I think he said he’ll graduate in four years. For Taiwan’s Top 100 program, I remember you can extend to four years at most; I think it’s three to four years, with a maximum of four. Finishing early depends on what you work out with your supervisor. If a scholarship gives you four years, some supervisors want you to use up the money before you leave.

My supervisor is pretty good about this. My project runs five years. He said that if I can graduate early, I could finish in three years and maybe do a two-year postdoc here to use up the project money. Another benefit is that a postdoc counts as a job with two years of employer sponsorship, and together with the time I’ve already spent, it could get me residency in Europe. That was another thing he suggested.

So your years as a student don’t count toward residency, and you have to be working before you start accumulating time?

I think so. There seem to be two routes: one is called the 485, and I forget the name of the other. Two years of employer sponsorship is enough, and the other depends on how long you’ve lived here; some even give extra points for regional areas. I don’t need to worry much, though, because the project I’m on and its funding come from the government, so sponsorship for a job isn’t really a concern. Parts of my project involve driving the car in rural domains, and Australia gives extra points for regional areas, so my work could count toward that. If I really want residency, it won’t be a problem.

Residency for international students in Australia

Jason: Since you brought up residency: a lot of people study abroad partly hoping to get residency. You chose to study in Australia. If you want to work in the US or UK later, can you?

Darryl: My supervisor said Australian PR lets you get a US E-3 visa, which converts your status automatically without an employer-sponsored visa. That’s the residency angle. If I really want to go to the US, it’s doable. I’m not sure about the UK, but at least the US works. Back to what I said earlier: picking a good supervisor is important, and then you follow their lead.

For example, the head of the robotics department at CMU is either his former student or his colleague, and the lead of Oxford’s mechanical engineering center was his classmate. So picking a good supervisor matters more. How you pick one is partly luck. They might say all the right things at first, and it turns out differently once you’re in. When I talked to another PhD student recently, he also said whether your PhD goes smoothly depends on your relationship with your supervisor and whether they’re a good person.

Jason: Your supervisor sounds great, willing to help you plan your career.

Darryl: He really is. Once in a meeting, someone had drawn a simple chart visualizing the paths the car could take, the kind of thing you can draw in ten minutes. When my supervisor saw it, he actually said, “Excellent, really good.” He’s very encouraging.

If you tell him you’re not feeling well and don’t want to go to a meeting, he’ll tell you to go home and rest. Or if he sees you look unwell in the morning, he’ll send you home to rest. He’s a very nice person.

PhD students vs. postdocs

Jason: You mentioned postdocs earlier. Is the difference between a PhD student and a postdoc just their status? A PhD student is still a student, while a postdoc does the same kind of work but more like an employed researcher. Is that the distinction?

Darryl: I’d say a postdoc is expected to contribute right away, while a PhD student is still positioned more as a student with time to figure things out. A postdoc is more like an office worker with matching responsibilities. Take the postdoc above me: his work isn’t only academic. He also takes on industry projects and handles funding matters.

Our funding always comes with some industry requirements, so he has to handle those projects. So I don’t think it’s as purely academic as it used to be, because there are also industry projects and product development needs.

Life in Australia (compared with the UK)

Jason: You said you still don’t get the pace of life in Australia. This is your first time there, right?

Darryl: Yes, that’s right.

How is Australia different from the UK? It seems like you pick places with strong accents: London for your master’s, and the Australian accent is really strong too.

Here’s a comparison: no matter how strong someone’s accent is in Mandarin, you can still roughly follow it. I think it mostly comes down to ability. In the UK I struggled at first, probably partly because I wasn’t used to speaking only English back then. Here I don’t really have trouble understanding people, but there’s some slang I don’t get. For example, they say “good day mate” or “have a great one,” mostly greetings, and at first I didn’t understand them. But you can just politely ask, or make a note when you hear them, and it’s not a big problem. They can tell right away that you’re a foreigner. Sometimes after using slang with me, they say they forgot I’m not from here, so they try to avoid it. You can still chat with them nicely about their expressions, though.

How are you adjusting to daily life and the food?

The food is definitely better and cheaper than in London. There are a lot of Chinese people here, so you can usually find any Chinese food you want. There’s also plenty of Korean and quite a bit of Japanese food, so it’s fairly convenient. It’s a bit more expensive than in Taiwan, and there are some Taiwanese shops too. Lately I’ve been eating Meet Fresh taro balls and shaved ice, which taste pretty close to what you get in Taiwan.

Your brain seems a bit fried lately. Is research wearing you out?

I’m rushing a paper. We split our papers into sections, each with a deadline, and you finish each one before its deadline.

Right. If you submit to a conference, there’s a deadline, and you need a matching version out before it. If you can’t make it, you might submit to the next one. Journals have no fixed deadline; you submit when it’s ready, and they’re a bit harder. But with conferences you get to travel, and I want to travel. Our funding comes from Taiwan. However much it is, they give you a lump sum. Whatever you don’t spend is yours, and if it’s not enough you ask for more. So yes, I want to go, and I can stop over in Taiwan on the way.

Where would you be going that you’d connect through Taiwan?

Lots of places, actually. Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere, so it works for anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. I connect in Taiwan and take a vacation at home at the same time. We get 20 days of paid leave a year, so it doesn’t matter. Normally if you don’t come in, you don’t need to request leave; you might only mention it to your supervisor if you’re flying somewhere. This week, for example, I only went in for the meeting and worked from home the other days.

It feels like I don’t even need to be there to do research now; I can just work from home. But it depends on what kind of research you do. We code, so we can work remotely. If you run experiments and need to be in the lab, it’s more of a hassle.

What’s the working atmosphere like in a PhD? Does it feel more like being colleagues than students?

Yes and no. It depends on your topic. My work uses things like SLAM. That’s hard to explain, so say there are four methods, A, B, C and D, and four of my classmates each handle one of them in their research. My topic is newer and broader, so I have to bring all four together. That means I sometimes need to work with them or ask them related questions.

It’s also limited by your funding. My funding comes from the state government, so I can only work on their project. For example, my topic is getting self-driving cars to run in rural areas, when the technology on the market today can barely drive in cities or on highways. My topic is restricted to that environment.

But people who bring in their own funding can work on whatever topic they want. There are pros and cons. So, are we colleagues? Sort of, but we don’t collaborate very closely. You know what I’m working on and I know what you’re working on, roughly like that. Whether we collaborate depends on the situation. It hasn’t happened yet, and I don’t know how my supervisor will see it later. Rather than collaborating internally, though, we tend to collaborate with other universities.

How does collaboration with other universities work?

Maybe I handle one part and you handle another, like co-writing a paper. For self-driving, for example, there are outdoor datasets, like the Bugsy dataset. We check how a method performs on my dataset and how it performs on yours, and whether it’s a good approach. Or I’m good at method A and you’re good at method B, so the paper is A plus B, each of us takes one part, and we’re both listed as authors.

How do you usually find people for cross-university collaboration? Through connections, or some special channel?

It usually goes through your supervisor. Reaching out on your own is a bit disrespectful to him. After all, you’re on his team. You can contact people yourself, but once you do, you still have to tell him who you’ll be collaborating with, or you’ll have trouble at the end. He’ll find out sooner or later, so you might as well ask him at the start. Recently a professor at a university in Taiwan introduced me to some very impressive professors, one with something like 50,000 citations. He was very nice and mentioned we could collaborate. I still told my supervisor, and there’s a good chance we’ll collaborate later.

What happens if your research “collides” with what a company is doing?

Jason: I have two more questions. You’re working on making self-driving cars work in rural areas. But what if big self-driving companies are quietly doing the same research in-house and release it before you finish? What would you do? Your research would basically get cut off.

Darryl: It could happen; that’s pretty normal. But as I said, in Australia you need a license to get the data, and right now only we have that license, so it won’t be a problem. At least not for now. If what you described happens in your field, you’re just out of luck. There’s really nothing you can do.

Jason: So you’d have to find a new topic to research?

Darryl: Yep, yep, there’s really nothing you can do. It’s just bad luck, ha.

PhD graduation requirements: do you need a set number of journal or conference papers?

As far as I remember, my supervisor doesn’t set one. As long as you both agree, that’s fine. One of my classmates loves asking this question, and the professor is tired of answering it. Every year there’s something like a defense, which here might be called a panel, once a year, or roughly every eight months. If things aren’t going well, you get cut and may have to leave the program. So this isn’t really an issue: if you pass every year, you usually graduate on time. We also have weekly meetings, so nobody falls badly behind.

Do you start these annual panels in your first year, or only when you want to graduate?

Darryl: There’s a panel every year, roughly every eight months. I started last October, so the notice I got says I’ll have my panel around May or June this year.

Jason: Oh, so there are three possible outcomes: you’re dismissed, you keep going and finish, or you’re ready to graduate?

Darryl: No, no, it’s just once a year. If you pass, you continue. At the very end, when you defend your thesis in front of professors, there’s a defense panel.

So a panel and a defense are different?

Different, yes. The panel happens every year and is basically an evaluation. For example, you start as a PhD student, and once you pass, in your second year you become a PhD candidate, a small step up in status. The salary doesn’t go up with it. It rises a little each year, but not much, maybe about A$1,000 a year.

Doesn’t your salary come from the funding? Why are there levels and raises?

Because salaries are adjusted every year. A PhD salary is basically enough to cover minimum living costs so you can get by. It goes up by a thousand each year, and that thousand isn’t really extra money. It’s a token raise, a small adjustment for inflation.

Cost of living in Australia and PhD salaries

Jason: Since we’re on money, I’d like to ask about living costs. PhD funding or stipends usually aren’t very generous; they might just cover living expenses. In your case, after your PhD salary, do you still have to put in your own money? Or how much money did you bring to Australia?

Darryl: Leaving salary aside, here’s what I spent at the start. Health insurance, their national health cover, cost maybe around NT$40,000. I forget the breakdown; I’d have to look it up. Then flights and housing. Housing needs a deposit, maybe a month’s worth, paid along with rent. Everything here works in two-week cycles: rent is paid every two weeks, and salary comes in every two weeks. The salary works out to about NT$60,000 a month, and rent takes a bit over half of that. For a reasonable place that’s not too expensive and not too bad, rent is over NT$30,000.

When I first arrived I lived in university student housing, a studio with its own bathroom and kitchen. It had no air conditioning, which was a deal-breaker, and it cost about NT$32,000 a month. Living off campus somewhere not right next to the university costs about the same and comes with air conditioning. So I moved out. You can find roommates for a 2-bed-2-bath or 2-bed-1-bath place, which is a bit cheaper.

You really can’t save money on a PhD, because the monthly salary is just over NT$60,000, rent alone takes half, and then there are living expenses.

Yes. Renting costs about the same as in Taiwan, but you don’t have as many exhausting extras on top. There are plenty of ways to save money, like the scholarship I mentioned at the start, where you don’t have to TA. If you want to earn a bit, you can work as a TA, which pays about NT$1,100 an hour before tax. I think that’s decent if you want to do it.

Also, PhD students in Australia get the same leave as full-time staff: public holidays, but no summer or winter breaks. A friend doing a PhD in the US can do internships during the summer and winter breaks. In Australia and the UK system you finish faster, maybe in three or four years. In the US it might take five, six or seven. But if you add up all those summers, we spend the same amount of time.

So you don’t do internships in the summer, and you have to keep doing research?

Darryl: Right. We don’t get summer off, and they do. So I think the total time it takes is about the same.

Jason: So the only difference is whether you have the flexibility to do an internship?

Darryl: Right, right. But internships bring in a decent amount of money. Interning in the US pays quite well.

How much tax do you pay in Australia?

Darryl: Australian tax has brackets based on your income. The tax year runs from July to July. Tax is withheld up front, and if too much was taken they pay it back. I remember very little was deducted from me, because student scholarships aren’t taxed. If you TA you may pay a bit of tax, but not much, no more than 30% at most.

Jason: 30% at most?

Darryl: I remember their tax rates being in the teens to 20%. They deduct it every July, straight from your money. Yes, part of it is withheld from your pay directly. A bit like Taiwan?

Jason: There are two options: you can have the tax withheld from your salary in advance, or not have it withheld and pay when you file your return.

Darryl: My TA pay is small, so I don’t have any tax filing issues.

If you’re interested in a PhD or in robotics, what should you do before applying?

For a master’s, if your grades can still be fixed, fix them first. If they can’t, find a way to convince the people reading your materials, and convince yourself first. In your SOP, work out how to tie the scattered things you’ve done into one thread and give a story people can accept. If you can’t change your grades, what else can you change? You can do side projects, or join a lab and get a professor’s recommendation letter.

If the school you want or the topic you’re interested in happens to be that professor’s specialty, they can help your application a lot. Say they have a friend at that school and tell the friend there’s a good student. Then your chances of getting in, for a master’s or a PhD, are very high.

I think luck matters a lot in applications. You hear plenty of stories. A senior of mine told me about a classmate who only got into MIT and UNC: one is number one in the world and the other is around 100, and he didn’t get into any of the schools strong in his specialty. That’s luck. Some cases may involve things happening behind closed doors, and you may not even know whether they did. If you later find out that they did, don’t take it too hard, because that’s just how it is and there’s nothing you can do. People with connections will have places where they can apply pressure. So I think luck really matters.

Settling down in Australia

This is a problem many people face when they move somewhere new, so just a sentence or two. At first I was actually very resistant; I didn’t want to settle down all over again. Every place has its hassles. Beyond adjusting to daily life, there’s opening a bank account, finding housing, furniture and so on. I think the hardest part is that you don’t know anyone or the place, your social circle is completely different from before, and even if you want to reach old friends, there’s a time difference.

Yes. Even if you have friends there, it still feels different; they aren’t your old crowd. And even if your old friends are studying there with you, it still feels a bit different. You’ll probably spend a lot of time studying alone and feel lonelier. I think it’s a good time to take stock of yourself and learn to be on your own.

So my advice is that during this period you can of course explore and join lots of activities, but you really need to make trade-offs with your time. Otherwise you’ll end up like me when I started, when everything felt new and I wanted to try it all. I think that’s mostly fine; you have to try things to know whether you like them. At the same time, planning your time matters a lot.

When I first got here there were lots of seminars, speakers and visitors. Our center is big, with many groups and students of different professors, and people were always making plans to do something. If you go to everything, you really won’t have time for your own work. So I think adjusting your mindset and planning your time matter a lot, especially when you’ve just moved somewhere new.