The forum helped me a lot during my application. So, now I would like to share my own experience.
Background:
When I applied, I was just a final-year AI PhD student outside UK with almost 0 year of experience (except for my internship). Fortunately, I have published >5 papers in top conferences/journals with ~160 citations. I will say, most of my evidence are around these publications.
Letters:
- PhD supervisor.
- Internship mentor.
- An outstanding peer in the same research field who works in the UK.
Evidence:
MC:
- Research overview. I simply provide the screenshot and link to my Google scholar profile. It will show the number of my papers and citations. I also provide the H5-index (easily obtained from Google scholar metrics) of the conference and journals as a proof of their reputations.
- Recognition of reviewers. I provide screenshots of some positive reviews of my papers. keywords: novel, inspire future work, significnat impact, etc.
- Award for excellence during studying. I provide screenshots of my PhD offer letter (fully funded) and outstanding graduate (undergraduate).
- Award for excellence during internship (15 months). I provide screenshots for my outstanding intern award at a big IT company.
OC2:
For promise, only one evidence need to be considered valid. Honestly, I think 2-4 are weak, but serving as reviewer is a strong evidence.
- Serve as reviewer. I have reviewed more than 30 papers for top confs/journals. I provide the screenshots of email invitations. Highlight your name and the name of the publication.
- Talks. Honestly, I am not sure whether this evidence is valid. I uploaded my video presentations for the papers to youtube. Most of them got more than 100 views.
- Github. I am not sure whether this evidence is valid, because all repos are the code for my papers. One major repo got more than 220 stars.
- Teaching assistant. I volunteered as a teaching assitant during my PhD. It is about C++, which is the elementary course of computer science. I provide the syllabus of it, and the questionaire from students of that class.
OC4:
Since I have several papers, so I don’t worry about this part.
- Conference publications.
- Journal publications.
Timeline:
One week to collect evidence.
One week wait for letters.
June 26, 2024 submitted
Aug 1, 2024 endorsed (on the day before it I emailed tech nation about the status)
Stage 2 is trivial and it only costs 2 weeks.
Summary:
Be brave. I am not either a CEO or experienced engineers. I am just a final-year phd student with some papers. I almost have NO employment experience (~0 year of experience) except for the 15-month intenrship. Some evidence may be kind of duplicated, like research overview and publications. But don’t be afraid. You can describe them from different aspects.
Other notes:
If time allowed, I still suggest PhDs apply under the academic route, in which either promises or talents only need 3 years to apply for ILR. But for tech nation, promise needs 5 years.
Don’t care too much when you select promise or talent at the beginning of the application. I select talent, but I was finally downgraded to promise. I guess it is due to my limited years of experience.
Useful cases that have a similar AI phd background: