Doctoral School Contest

The Astronomy and Astrophysics Doctoral School receives 18 full doctoral contracts (1430 euros net per month for 3 years) from its different universities. These contracts are awarded through a joint contest that takes place every year.

Calendar of the 2020 contest

• Applications must be received before April 23, 2020.
• The files will be examined by the jury May 15th, 2020. Selection is based on academic grades, adequation of academic education with PhD project, reference letters.
• The selected candidates will be convened for a hearing that will take place on June 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 8th, 2020
• Some candidates will be able to propose a contract after the audition.
• The remaining contracts will be awarded by the final jury on July 1st, 2020.

Application

Applications must be posted through the website of the Doctoral School (application) from February 3rd to April 23th, 2020.

Course of the hearing

The hearing lasts 25 minutes. A 15-minute presentation should outline previous research experiences (their scientific objectives, the applied methods, and the results obtained) and how the applicant understand the PhD subject and how he or she intend to tackle the subject. Typically, the applicant should use 3 minutes to introduce his/her academic education, 7 minutes to describe his/her previous research experience (mainly the Master thesis), and 5 minutes about the PhD project and its stakes.

The presentation will be followed by 10 minutes of questions.

Auditions will be held at the Observatoire de Paris (map). Candidates are strongly advised to travel to be physically present
in Paris for this hearing. It is possible to conduct this hearing by videoconference, but after experience shows that it reduces the quality of the interaction.

Jury

The first jury can award up to 1/3 of the doctoral contracts available. Selected candidates are notified directly by email.

The final jury will award all the remaining contracts available and constitute a waiting list. The selected candidates are asked to respond quickly to this proposal in order to allow an adequate management of the withdrawals.