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Writing your PhD research proposal

Find guidance on how to write your PhD research proposal and a template form for you to use to submit your research proposal.

By asking you for an outline  research proposal we hope to get a good picture of your research interests and your understanding of what such research is likely to entail.

The University's application form is designed to enable you to give an overview of your academic experience and qualifications for study at postgraduate level. Your outline research proposal then gives us an idea of the kind of research you want to undertake. This, together with information from your referees, will help us assess whether the Moray House School of Education and Sport would be the appropriate place for you to pursue your research interests.

At  the application stage you are unlikely to be in a position to provide a comprehensive research proposal; the detailed shaping up of a research plan would be done in conjunction with your supervisors(s). But it is important for us to appreciate what you are hoping to investigate, how you envisage carrying out the research, and what the results might be expected to contribute to current knowledge and understanding in the relevant academic field(s) of study. In writing your proposal, please indicate any prior academic or employment experience relevant to your planned research.

In your research proposal, please also ensure that you clearly identify the Moray House research cluster your proposal falls under, as well as two to three staff members  with expertise in this area. We also encourage you to contact potential supervisors within your area of proposed research prior to submitting your application in order to gauge their interest and availability.

How to write your research proposal

The description of your proposed research should consist of 4-5 typed A4 sheets. It can take whatever form seems best, but should include some information about the following:

• The general area within which you wish to conduct research, and why (you might find it helpful to explain what stimulated your interest in your chosen research field, and any study or research in the area that you have already undertaken)
• The kind of research questions that you would hope to address, and why (in explaining what is likely to be the main focus of your research, it may be helpful to indicate, for example, why these issues are of particular concern and the way in which they relate to existing literature)
• The sources of information and type of research methods you plan to use (for example, how you plan to collect your data, which sources you will be targeting and how you will access these data sources).

In addition to the above, please include any comments you are able to make concerning:

• The approach that you will take to analysing your research data
• The general timetable you would follow for carrying out and writing up your research
• Any plans you may have for undertaking fieldwork away from Edinburgh
• Any problems that might be anticipated in carrying out your proposed research

Please note: This guidance applies to all candidates, except those applying to conduct PhD research as part of a larger, already established research project (for example, in the Institute for Sport, Physical Education & Health Sciences).

In this case, you should provide a two- to three-page description of a research project that you have already undertaken, as a means of complementing information given in the application form. If you are in any doubt as to what is appropriate please contact us:

Contact us by email: Education@[email protected]

All doctoral proposals submitted as part of an application will be run through plagiarism detection software.

Template form for your research proposal

All applicants for a PhD or MSc by Research are required to submit a research proposal as part of their application. Applicants  must   use the template form below for their research proposal. This research proposal should then be submitted online as part of your application. Please use Calibri size 11 font size and do not change the paragraph spacing (single, with 6pt after each paragraph) or the page margins.

How to write a research proposal

What is a research proposal.

A research proposal should present your idea or question and expected outcomes with clarity and definition – the what.

It should also make a case for why your question is significant and what value it will bring to your discipline – the why. 

What it shouldn't do is answer the question – that's what your research will do.

Why is it important?

Research proposals are significant because Another reason why it formally outlines your intended research. Which means you need to provide details on how you will go about your research, including:

• your approach and methodology
• timeline and feasibility
• all other considerations needed to progress your research, such as resources.

Think of it as a tool that will help you clarify your idea and make conducting your research easier.

How long should it be?

Usually no more than 2000 words, but check the requirements of your degree, and your supervisor or research coordinator.

Presenting your idea clearly and concisely demonstrates that you can write this way – an attribute of a potential research candidate that is valued by assessors.

What should it include?

Project title.

Your title should clearly indicate what your proposed research is about.

Research supervisor

State the name, department and faculty or school of the academic who has agreed to supervise you. Rest assured, your research supervisor will work with you to refine your research proposal ahead of submission to ensure it meets the needs of your discipline.

Proposed mode of research

Describe your proposed mode of research. Which may be closely linked to your discipline, and is where you will describe the style or format of your research, e.g. data, field research, composition, written work, social performance and mixed media etc. 

This is not required for research in the sciences, but your research supervisor will be able to guide you on discipline-specific requirements.

Aims and objectives

What are you trying to achieve with your research? What is the purpose? This section should reference why you're applying for a research degree. Are you addressing a gap in the current research? Do you want to look at a theory more closely and test it out? Is there something you're trying to prove or disprove? To help you clarify this, think about the potential outcome of your research if you were successful – that is your aim. Make sure that this is a focused statement.

Your objectives will be your aim broken down – the steps to achieving the intended outcome. They are the smaller proof points that will underpin your research's purpose. Be logical in the order of how you present these so that each succeeds the previous, i.e. if you need to achieve 'a' before 'b' before 'c', then make sure you order your objectives a, b, c.

A concise summary of what your research is about. It outlines the key aspects of what you will investigate as well as the expected outcomes. It briefly covers the what, why and how of your research. 

A good way to evaluate if you have written a strong synopsis, is to get somebody to read it without reading the rest of your research proposal. Would they know what your research is about?

Now that you have your question clarified, it is time to explain the why. Here, you need to demonstrate an understanding of the current research climate in your area of interest.

Providing context around your research topic through a literature review will show the assessor that you understand current dialogue around your research, and what is published.

Demonstrate you have a strong understanding of the key topics, significant studies and notable researchers in your area of research and how these have contributed to the current landscape.

Expected research contribution

In this section, you should consider the following:

• Why is your research question or hypothesis worth asking?
• How is the current research lacking or falling short?
• What impact will your research have on the discipline?
• Will you be extending an area of knowledge, applying it to new contexts, solving a problem, testing a theory, or challenging an existing one?
• Establish why your research is important by convincing your audience there is a gap.
• What will be the outcome of your research contribution?
• Demonstrate both your current level of knowledge and how the pursuit of your question or hypothesis will create a new understanding and generate new information.
• Show how your research is innovative and original.

Draw links between your research and the faculty or school you are applying at, and explain why you have chosen your supervisor, and what research have they or their school done to reinforce and support your own work. Cite these reasons to demonstrate how your research will benefit and contribute to the current body of knowledge.

Proposed methodology

Provide an overview of the methodology and techniques you will use to conduct your research. Cover what materials and equipment you will use, what theoretical frameworks will you draw on, and how will you collect data.

Highlight why you have chosen this particular methodology, but also why others may not have been as suitable. You need to demonstrate that you have put thought into your approach and why it's the most appropriate way to carry out your research. 

It should also highlight potential limitations you anticipate, feasibility within time and other constraints, ethical considerations and how you will address these, as well as general resources.

A work plan is a critical component of your research proposal because it indicates the feasibility of completion within the timeframe and supports you in achieving your objectives throughout your degree.

Consider the milestones you aim to achieve at each stage of your research. A PhD or master's degree by research can take two to four years of full-time study to complete. It might be helpful to offer year one in detail and the following years in broader terms. Ultimately you have to show that your research is likely to be both original and finished – and that you understand the time involved.

Provide details of the resources you will need to carry out your research project. Consider equipment, fieldwork expenses, travel and a proposed budget, to indicate how realistic your research proposal is in terms of financial requirements and whether any adjustments are needed.

Bibliography

Provide a list of references that you've made throughout your research proposal. 

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Research Proposal Example/Sample

Detailed Walkthrough + Free Proposal Template

If you’re getting started crafting your research proposal and are looking for a few examples of research proposals , you’ve come to the right place.

In this video, we walk you through two successful (approved) research proposals , one for a Master’s-level project, and one for a PhD-level dissertation. We also start off by unpacking our free research proposal template and discussing the four core sections of a research proposal, so that you have a clear understanding of the basics before diving into the actual proposals.

• Research proposal example/sample – Master’s-level (PDF/Word)
• Research proposal example/sample – PhD-level (PDF/Word)
• Proposal template (Fully editable) 

If you’re working on a research proposal for a dissertation or thesis, you may also find the following useful:

• Research Proposal Bootcamp : Learn how to write a research proposal as efficiently and effectively as possible
• 1:1 Proposal Coaching : Get hands-on help with your research proposal

FAQ: Research Proposal Example

Research proposal example: frequently asked questions, are the sample proposals real.

Yes. The proposals are real and were approved by the respective universities.

Can I copy one of these proposals for my own research?

As we discuss in the video, every research proposal will be slightly different, depending on the university’s unique requirements, as well as the nature of the research itself. Therefore, you’ll need to tailor your research proposal to suit your specific context.

You can learn more about the basics of writing a research proposal here .

How do I get the research proposal template?

You can access our free proposal template here .

Is the proposal template really free?

Yes. There is no cost for the proposal template and you are free to use it as a foundation for your research proposal.

Where can I learn more about proposal writing?

For self-directed learners, our Research Proposal Bootcamp is a great starting point.

For students that want hands-on guidance, our private coaching service is recommended.

Psst… there’s more!

This post is an extract from our bestselling Udemy Course, Research Proposal Bootcamp . If you want to work smart, you don't want to miss this .

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• How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates

How to Write a Research Proposal | Examples & Templates

Published on October 12, 2022 by Shona McCombes and Tegan George. Revised on November 21, 2023.

A research proposal describes what you will investigate, why it’s important, and how you will conduct your research.

The format of a research proposal varies between fields, but most proposals will contain at least these elements:

Introduction

Literature review.

• Research design

Reference list

While the sections may vary, the overall objective is always the same. A research proposal serves as a blueprint and guide for your research plan, helping you get organized and feel confident in the path forward you choose to take.

Table of contents

Research proposal purpose, research proposal examples, research design and methods, contribution to knowledge, research schedule, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research proposals.

Academics often have to write research proposals to get funding for their projects. As a student, you might have to write a research proposal as part of a grad school application , or prior to starting your thesis or dissertation .

In addition to helping you figure out what your research can look like, a proposal can also serve to demonstrate why your project is worth pursuing to a funder, educational institution, or supervisor.

Research proposal length

The length of a research proposal can vary quite a bit. A bachelor’s or master’s thesis proposal can be just a few pages, while proposals for PhD dissertations or research funding are usually much longer and more detailed. Your supervisor can help you determine the best length for your work.

One trick to get started is to think of your proposal’s structure as a shorter version of your thesis or dissertation , only without the results , conclusion and discussion sections.

Download our research proposal template

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Writing a research proposal can be quite challenging, but a good starting point could be to look at some examples. We’ve included a few for you below.

• Example research proposal #1: “A Conceptual Framework for Scheduling Constraint Management”
• Example research proposal #2: “Medical Students as Mediators of Change in Tobacco Use”

Like your dissertation or thesis, the proposal will usually have a title page that includes:

• The proposed title of your project
• Your supervisor’s name
• Your institution and department

The first part of your proposal is the initial pitch for your project. Make sure it succinctly explains what you want to do and why.

Your introduction should:

• Introduce your topic
• Give necessary background and context
• Outline your  problem statement  and research questions

To guide your introduction , include information about:

• Who could have an interest in the topic (e.g., scientists, policymakers)
• How much is already known about the topic
• What is missing from this current knowledge
• What new insights your research will contribute
• Why you believe this research is worth doing

As you get started, it’s important to demonstrate that you’re familiar with the most important research on your topic. A strong literature review  shows your reader that your project has a solid foundation in existing knowledge or theory. It also shows that you’re not simply repeating what other people have already done or said, but rather using existing research as a jumping-off point for your own.

In this section, share exactly how your project will contribute to ongoing conversations in the field by:

• Comparing and contrasting the main theories, methods, and debates
• Examining the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches
• Explaining how will you build on, challenge, or synthesize prior scholarship

Following the literature review, restate your main  objectives . This brings the focus back to your own project. Next, your research design or methodology section will describe your overall approach, and the practical steps you will take to answer your research questions.

To finish your proposal on a strong note, explore the potential implications of your research for your field. Emphasize again what you aim to contribute and why it matters.

For example, your results might have implications for:

• Improving best practices
• Informing policymaking decisions
• Strengthening a theory or model
• Challenging popular or scientific beliefs
• Creating a basis for future research

Last but not least, your research proposal must include correct citations for every source you have used, compiled in a reference list . To create citations quickly and easily, you can use our free APA citation generator .

Some institutions or funders require a detailed timeline of the project, asking you to forecast what you will do at each stage and how long it may take. While not always required, be sure to check the requirements of your project.

Here’s an example schedule to help you get started. You can also download a template at the button below.

Download our research schedule template

If you are applying for research funding, chances are you will have to include a detailed budget. This shows your estimates of how much each part of your project will cost.

Make sure to check what type of costs the funding body will agree to cover. For each item, include:

• Cost : exactly how much money do you need?
• Justification : why is this cost necessary to complete the research?
• Source : how did you calculate the amount?

To determine your budget, think about:

• Travel costs : do you need to go somewhere to collect your data? How will you get there, and how much time will you need? What will you do there (e.g., interviews, archival research)?
• Materials : do you need access to any tools or technologies?
• Help : do you need to hire any research assistants for the project? What will they do, and how much will you pay them?

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Methodology

• Sampling methods
• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

Once you’ve decided on your research objectives , you need to explain them in your paper, at the end of your problem statement .

Keep your research objectives clear and concise, and use appropriate verbs to accurately convey the work that you will carry out for each one.

I will compare …

A research aim is a broad statement indicating the general purpose of your research project. It should appear in your introduction at the end of your problem statement , before your research objectives.

Research objectives are more specific than your research aim. They indicate the specific ways you’ll address the overarching aim.

A PhD, which is short for philosophiae doctor (doctor of philosophy in Latin), is the highest university degree that can be obtained. In a PhD, students spend 3–5 years writing a dissertation , which aims to make a significant, original contribution to current knowledge.

A PhD is intended to prepare students for a career as a researcher, whether that be in academia, the public sector, or the private sector.

A master’s is a 1- or 2-year graduate degree that can prepare you for a variety of careers.

All master’s involve graduate-level coursework. Some are research-intensive and intend to prepare students for further study in a PhD; these usually require their students to write a master’s thesis . Others focus on professional training for a specific career.

Critical thinking refers to the ability to evaluate information and to be aware of biases or assumptions, including your own.

Like information literacy , it involves evaluating arguments, identifying and solving problems in an objective and systematic way, and clearly communicating your ideas.

The best way to remember the difference between a research plan and a research proposal is that they have fundamentally different audiences. A research plan helps you, the researcher, organize your thoughts. On the other hand, a dissertation proposal or research proposal aims to convince others (e.g., a supervisor, a funding body, or a dissertation committee) that your research topic is relevant and worthy of being conducted.

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The PhD programme

at The Faculty of Humanities

• About the programme
• Qualification requirements
• Application procedure

Project description

• Other options
• Visiting PhD students

Read more here about what a good project description should contain. Please note that you should always refer to the specific PhD fellowship advertisement and its requirements.

Requirements for the length of the project description

The project description must not exceed 12,000 characters (5 pages of 2400 characters each) including title, table of contents, characters, spaces, schedule, figures, footnotes and references etc. but excluding bibliography. Content of the project description

Overall, the project description must:

• Be well structured and have a clearly defined focus and goals
• Be centrally located within the research profile of the department you are applying to
• Explicitly relate to the specific fellowship posting
• Demonstrate a broad knowledge of the existing research in your field
• Be theoretically and methodologically sound
• Contribute to current research, e.g. by providing new perspectives and/or expanding existing knowledge
• Be innovative 

Introduction

The introduction should include

• A precise and interesting project title
• Your motivation for the project: relevance, topic, contribution to research
• A delimitation of the project in terms of theme, history, geography, institution, etc.
• Project type: empirical, theoretical, etc.
• Problem statement 

State of the art

In this section, provide an overview of the existing research in your field of study. You should outline the most important research in the field, both nationally and internationally, and explain how your project relates to existing research. If you have previously conducted research in the same field, this should also be included.

You must also argue in favour of the societal relevance of your project and suggest which research environments your project can become part of – again, both nationally and internationally.

Theoretical framework for project

Present and substantiate your choice of theoretical framework.

Choice of methodology 

Provide a brief description of the methods you will use. For example, quantitative and/or qualitative approaches, discourse analysis, literature analysis, interviews, media ethnography, etc. You should also explain your choice of data (documents, films, interviews, focus groups, archives, etc.) and your approach to your data (e.g. do you need access to archives or consent to use interviews?). You should also assess whether there are any ethical considerations related to your methodology and clarify them here.

Project schedule

It is crucial that your schedule reflects that this is a thoroughly prepared project that can realistically be completed in 36 months. The schedule is also a great management tool for you. During your PhD programme, you can use the project management schedule to keep track of whether you are reaching your goals or if the project has changed direction.

Provide a clear overview of how you intend to spend your six semesters of PhD study, i.e. when you will attend courses, conduct your data collection and analyses, write your thesis, when you will carry out your dissemination activities and your change of environment. Feel free to lay out your schedule in a table. If you anticipate special expenses related to the project (questionnaires, fieldwork, extended stay abroad, special equipment, etc.), specify these in the application form.

Anticipated results 

Discuss the anticipated outcomes of your project and how they will benefit society or research. In this respect, you should also explain how you will disseminate your results, i.e. whether you will write a monograph or anthology, as well as any other plans for dissemination.

Bibliography

Include a bibliography of all the literature you refer to in your project description. The bibliography is the only thing that does not count towards the 12,000 characters that the project description can take up.

Tips and advice 

Lastly, we have brought together some useful general tips and advice:

• Be precise, concrete and understandable
• Write clearly and concisely
• Write in such a way that non-specialists can understand your project description. The application is often evaluated by researchers from very different disciplines
• Emphasise innovative elements of your project in comparison to previous research
• Be ambitious and realistic: it is better to research one thing excellently than many things unexceptionally.

Facts about the programme

Admission to the Doctoral School

Enrolment in the Doctoral School requires employment at or affiliation with a department: See qualification requirements

See PhD vacancy postings

Application form

Download application form

We are ready to help

• Contact The Department of Culture and Language
• Contact The Department of Design, Media, and Educational Science
• Contact The Doctoral School

If you have any doubts about the general academic entry requirements, you are welcome to contact the Doctoral School administration. If you have questions about the requirements for a specific job posting, you should reach out to the designated contact person stated in the job advertisement. For inquiries regarding employment or affiliation with a department, you should contact the respective department.

Expert Tips for Writing a Project Description With Free Templates

By Kate Eby | May 25, 2021

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A strong project description provides a roadmap for stakeholders and communicates the vision without getting bogged down in details. We’ve compiled expert tips and sample project descriptions to help you get started. 

In this article, you’ll find a project description outline , steps for writing a project description , expert tips , and examples of project descriptions by industry .

What Is a Project Description?

A project description is a high-level overview of why you’re doing a project. The document explains a project’s objectives and its essential qualities. Think of it as the elevator pitch that focuses on what and why without delving into how. 

You typically draft a project description early on, during the project initiation phase of the project management lifecycle.

The project manager often writes the project description. However, if you are working for an agency that seeks grant funding or writing a research proposal, you might need to learn how to write a project description in a project proposal.

The project description should include an overview of the following:

• Project goals and objectives
• Stakeholders and their roles
• Metrics for measuring success
• Estimated budget

The tricky part is figuring out what doesn’t belong in the project description. The description should focus on goals, objectives, and the overall approach, but you don’t need to include lists of tasks, an extensive background, or research analysis. In general, the project description is broad; you’ll include more detail in the project plan.

Project Management Guide

Your one-stop shop for everything project management

Ready to get more out of your project management efforts? Visit our comprehensive project management guide for tips, best practices, and free resources to manage your work more effectively.

View the guide

Project Description Outline

The parts of a project description will vary depending on the type of project. However, your project description should contain the following elements:

Parts of a Project Description Outline

• Project Title: Aim for a short, unambiguous, and memorable title. 
• Overview: This is a high-level summary (no more than one or two paragraphs).
• Project Justification: Explain the problem or opportunity and why the project is necessary.
• Objectives: Set specific and measurable project goals.
• Phases of Work: Break down the project into phases that describe the desired outcome for each.
• Metrics for Evaluating and Monitoring: Include the metrics you’ll use to evaluate the project’s success. 
• Timeline: Outline the timeline for each phase, including the basic tasks that you will accomplish, with start and end dates.
• Estimated Budget: Include the budget and projected costs.

How to Write a Project Description

Although writing a project description will vary somewhat depending on the type of project, the basic process is the same. The following 10 steps are key to writing a good project description.

• Summarize: Write a one- or two-paragraph explanation of what the project aims to accomplish. Avoid delving deep into background or past projects. A good project summary will not only serve as your elevator speech, but will also help you clarify larger issues with your plan.
• Define: Describe the problem or opportunity and how the project will address it.
• Specific: Answer who, what, when, where, and why.
• Measurable: Include metrics for defining success.
• Achievable: Set goals that are possible to accomplish with the available resources.
• Relevant: Goals should be aligned with your organization’s mission.
• Time-bound: Include intermediate and final deadlines for each goal.
• Explain: Briefly explain your methodology. Include any key technologies or project management techniques you’ll use and why they’re appropriate.
• Measure: Identify the project deliverables . How will you measure success and evaluate the project?
• Schedule: Include a general timeline, with project phases and milestones. Be sure to note any important deadlines.
• Budget: Include the total estimated cost of the project and how much you have budgeted. (Note that this shouldn’t be a line item budget.) Use a project budget template for a more detailed breakdown of budgeted and actual project expenses.
• Get feedback: Seek feedback from key stakeholders, customers, and anyone impacted by the project for feedback. Ask them to explain the project in their own words to get a sense of how clearly you’ve communicated the vision.
• Proofread: Have someone else proofread the project description. In addition to spelling and grammatical errors, ask them to look for missing details that are significant to the project.
• Revise: Update and revise the document as the project progresses. Treat the project description as a living document.

A 10-Step Checklist for Writing a Project Description

Now that you know how to write a project description, use this checklist to help you focus on the key details.

Types of Project Descriptions With Examples

In this section, you’ll find a variety of free, customizable project description templates. We’ve completed them with sample information so that you can get an idea of how to write a description that fits your needs. You can also download a free project documentation template to help you track its progress.

Architectural Project Description Template

Download Architectural Project Description Template

Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF | Google Docs

An architectural project description should start with a summary that explains the need for the project. Briefly identify the site, any key design features and aesthetic considerations, and a broad timeline. Keep it simple, and write for the general public. Here’s an example of an architectural project description summary for a downtown parking garage:

After you summarize the project, use the architectural project description template to create a customizable action plan. Include a breakdown of work by phases. Note any communications and approvals needed to ensure success.

Client Creative Project Brief Template

Download Client Creative Brief Template

Microsoft Excel | Smartsheet

Create a client creative project brief  to ensure a project strategy aligns with client goals. Creative briefs are frequently used for projects involving graphic design, videography, or marketing campaigns. Start by briefly describing the project, objectives, and deadlines. The following client creative project brief provides an overview of a holiday marketing campaign.

The format will vary based on the type of project. In the client creative project template example above, you’ll find a number of kickoff questions about the campaign’s target audience, key components, and messaging. If this template doesn’t meet your needs, check out other Smartsheet client creative briefs and marketing project plan templates .

Grant Project Description Template

Download Grant Project Description Template 

Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF  

When you’re applying for grant funding or planning a grant-funded project, it’s essential to identify the target population and how they’ll benefit from project activities. Focus on why the project is necessary, rather than on the needs of your organization. The following example describes a grant project for a program seeking funding to combat childhood hunger:

This grant project description template breaks down the description into separate sections for the problem to be addressed, goals and objectives, target population, project activities, and key staff. It provides additional space for background information, measurable outcomes, and a timeline and budget, and it includes separate columns for income sources and expenses.

Interior Design Project Description Template

Download Interior Design Project Description Template

Microsoft Word | Google Docs

An interior design project description is similar to a client creative project brief. You’ll use the project overview to spell out a vision for the project that syncs with the client’s needs. The following interior design project description summarizes a residential kitchen remodel project.

Use the remainder of the interior design project description template to document the client’s likes and dislikes in greater detail. The template includes space to note the client’s preferences for general style, as well as colors, patterns, textiles, furnishings, and more. You’ll also find space to include measurements, a floor sketch, a project schedule, and a budget.

IT Project Description Template

Download IT Project Description Template

Microsoft Excel | Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF

An IT project description should start with a basic summary that condenses key background information and what the project entails. Keep it simple, and explain the project in lay terms. The following IT project description summary provides an overview of a plan to develop a mobile ordering app for a fast casual restaurant:

This IT project description template includes space for goals, assumptions, measurements of success, and risks. Additionally, the template includes space for a breakdown of the scope of work, including processes impacted by the project, milestones, costs, and resources.

Software Project Description Template

Download Software Project Description Template

Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF

A software project description should start with an overview that explains the type of software that will be developed, the problem it will solve, and the benefits to users and the business. The overview shouldn’t focus on the technical aspects of the project, but instead on the final product and its benefits. This software project description example gives an overview of a point-of-sale (POS) system under development for a brewery.

Once you’ve completed the overview, use this software project description template to explain purposes and goals in greater detail. The template includes sections for obstacles, risk factors, hardware compatibility, and software employed. Other features include a detailed breakdown of the project’s timeline and cost structure.

For other project description templates, please refer to our Free Project Description Templates article .

PMP Project Description

If you’re a project manager seeking the Project Management Professional certification, you’ll need either 36 or 60 months of professional experience leading projects, depending on your education level. 

The Project Management Institute (PMI) requires you to submit each project as its own entry on the application and include the following:

• A one-sentence project objective.
• Your role in accomplishing project deliverables in each of the five phases of project management : initiating (IN), planning (PL), executing (EX), monitoring and controlling (MC), and closing (CL).
• A brief description of project outcome.

You can use this PMP application project description example for guidance:

• Objective: Redesign Company XYZ’s website to improve lead generation by 25 percent.
• Project Deliverables: I was the project manager for Company XYZ’s redesign. I drafted the project charter and recruited a team of four IT staffers to complete the project (IN). I created the work breakdown structure, timeline, and budget, and I met with stakeholders to assess project contingencies and risks (PL). I coordinated between departments, provided quality assurance, and managed the four-person team throughout the project (EX). I conducted risk audits and communicated results to stakeholders (MC). I obtained stakeholder feedback, archived project documents, and held multidepartment training once the redesign was completed (CL).
• Outcome: Company XYZ’s website redesign was completed $10,000 under budget and two weeks ahead of schedule. Lead generation increased by 30 percent within six months.

How to Write a Project Description in a CV or Resume

Writing a project description for successful past projects can give you an edge when you’re a job candidate or looking for new clients. When writing a project description for your CV, resume, or portfolio, clearly state the project objective, your role, and the outcome.

Continuing with the example above, here’s a project management project description sample to avoid in your resume because it’s vague. The second project description is a more effective example. It also highlights the most significant accomplishments and responsibilities first.

Project Description Before Example

IT Project Manager, Company XYZ Project: Website redesign

• Managed a highly successful redesign
• Provided leadership throughout the project
• Updated key stakeholders in a timely manner
• Coordinated communications and staff trainings
• Completed the project under budget and ahead of schedule, resulting in improved sales

Project Description After Example

IT Project Manager, Company XYZ Project: Website redesign with goal of increasing lead generation by 25%

• Managed website redesign that resulted in a 30% increase in lead generation
• Completed the project $10,000 under budget and two weeks ahead of schedule
• Recruited and managed a team of four IT staffers
• Created the work breakdown structure, timeline, and budget; assessed project contingencies and risks
• Communicated with key stakeholders throughout the project; trained staff across departments once the project was complete

Tips for Writing a Good Project Description

To write an effective project description, draft early in the process. Keep it high-level without going into too much detail or background. Use the description to generate interest among a broad audience. Keep it brief and free of jargon.

• Clear: Keep writing straight to the point and don’t include unnecessary jargon. 
• Concise: Focus on the project itself, rather than on background information.
• Complete: This can be a challenge when you’re also aiming for concision. Regardless, the description should include the key points your audience needs to understand the project. 
• Credible: Only cite authoritative sources and the most up-to-date information.
• Draft the Project Description Early in the Process: Gregory Carson, PMP, is a biomedical engineer, attorney, and patent agent with more than 20 years of project management experience and who owns Carson Patents . Carson suggests drafting the project description early, ideally as soon as the idea occurs to you or your team. The description will serve as the summary roadmap to refer back to throughout the project. “All of the other details have some direct relationship to the project description, so having the project description well drafted before you begin the execution planning can save you time and frustration, in particular as changes need to be included,” Carson says. At the end of the project, you’ll want to refer back to the document to show that the project fulfilled the goals and objectives.
• Make a Memorable First Impression: Alan Zucker, PMP, is a project manager with more than 25 years working with Fortune 100 companies and founder of the website Project Management Essentials . He says that a project description should motivate. The goal is for people to understand and support the project after reading the description. “When crafting your pitch, remember that most people will form their initial impressions about the project within the first 30 seconds. Lead with a strong statement and a powerful image of the project’s benefit,” Zucker says.
• Write for a Broad Audience: A common mistake when writing a project description is targeting too narrow of an audience. “There is usually no lack of attention on the stakeholders that are funding the project, and they are important audience members for the project description to focus on,” Carson says. “But particular attention focused on the stakeholders who will benefit from the project often leads to helpful insights for the project.” Getting feedback on the description from a broader audience is also helpful. Zucker suggests reviewing the description with key stakeholders, customers, and those impacted by the project. “After reading your description, see if they can restate it in their own words,” Zucker suggests. “Was the restatement what you intended? If not, then continue to revise the description based on the feedback.”
• Avoid Excessive Details, Especially Early On: Your project description should convey a vision, rather than provide a detailed implementation plan. Don’t worry too much about planning out details in the description phase —  Zucker suggests that you simply make sure there’s a clear understanding of the project’s goals and why you want to proceed. “The description will evolve as we learn more about the project,” Zucker says. “Don’t worry about committing too early. Part of that evolutionary process is sharing the description and getting feedback on it.” Keeping a high-level focus will help generate buy-in for the project. Carson says it’s key to describe the project so that others “can understand and appreciate your marvel.” “You don’t want to pontificate to the point where people stop reading or get confused about any of the goals and objectives,” he says.
• Ask Someone to Proofread Your Project Description: Proofreading and editing are essential when you finalize your project description. But if you wrote the description, recruit someone else to edit it. “Too often as we write, we ‘remember’ what we were writing about and can miss little details, even spelling and grammar, that can impact the meaning and importance of a project and its description,” Carson says. Don’t be surprised if you need to revise and rewrite a few times. It’s all part of the process of crafting your message.

How to Write a Brief Description of a Project

Focus on the project and the problem it addresses. Avoid delving into background info or referencing other projects. Emphasize the what and why without excessive detail about the tasks it requires. This can be your pitch to sell the project.

What Is a Project Description in a Project Proposal?

A project description in a project proposal is a brief summary of the goals, the objectives, and the need for the project. It shouldn’t be more than one or two paragraphs. The project proposal will provide more detailed information.

What Is a Project Description in a Thesis?

A project description in a thesis outlines the research you’re undertaking, typically as part of graduate studies. It includes your working title, your research goals, basic methodology, and why the research is needed.

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Project description

What are you planning to do.

Presenting a convincing project description

Many funding bodies provide guidelines or forms for preparing a proposal. Hence, every proposal will be structured differently and emphasize varying features. However, there are aspects that every grant proposal covers. On this page, we outline elements that are required for every successful grant proposal. 

The information provided here does not replace a personal conversation. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you are interested in receiving feedback. We will gladly read drafts of your proposals.

Is this your first grant proposal?

Good and successful proposals are the result of a lot of hard work. In addition to the good ideas you already have, the secret to success is good preparation .

Before you start writing a proposal, you should consider the following issues: Where do I want this project to take me? What do I hope to achieve? What do I need to conduct the project? Do I have the necessary infrastructure and people at hand? Am I at the right place? Answering these questions will also help you identify the right funding body for your project.

Study the regulations of the funding organisations carefully. An empty page can be intimidating, but the guidelines an organisation provides can help you to structure and organise your writing. We suggest that, while you write, you keep in mind how a reviewer will read your text. Reviewers only have the information that you provide - they will not know that you have access to a specific data set or that you are well-trained in a certain methodology, unless you tell them. Further, keep in mind that reviewers are usually very smart, very nice, and very busy. Make it easy for them: Spell out what you want to do and do not assume that they will know how you will do something. Provide specific, detailed information on your project und be clear concerning any risks that the project might entail. It is a lot more convincing to address potential problems than to hope they will not come up.

What makes a good proposal?

You will receive many different answers to that question. For some, a good proposal is one that is funded. However, there are also good proposals that are not funded and proposals that are only funded after they have been revised. We do not believe that there is a formula for the perfect grant proposal. Still, there are elements that every proposal should include.

Research question

What do you want to find out? What is the problem that you want to solve? Ideally, you pose a clear question that guides your project and is included in your introduction.

State of the Art

What do we already know about the problem you are researching? In this section reviewers should learn that you know the relevant researchers and literature in your field. A solid overview over existing scientific knowledge also allows you to emphasise the relevance of your approach and to identify the gap you intend to fill with your research.

Why is your topic important? The relevance of your topic will be obvious to you, but you will need to convince the reviewers why your research is interesting and worthy of funding.

Aims and objectives 

What are the aims of your project and how do they relate to its content? Focus on describing the specific content you will be exploring in your research, not on the output such as publications or books. The most important factor for the scientific community is to learn something from your project.

It may be useful to define a general aim as well as subordinated aims. Along this structure you may guide your work programme and the individual work steps.

Work programme

The work programme is the heart of the proposal. You should describe in as much detail as possible what you want to do when: When are you going to do fieldwork or run experiments? How long will it take? The work programme should tie in with the previously defined aims and objectives - a well-defined aim will allow you to outline the work that is needed to reach that aim.

Your work programme should include all activities that you plan to do, including conferences. At what point in the working process would you like to present your research? Furthermore, make sure that you are clear on who is doing what - if you apply for staff salary for people other than yourself, it should be very clear who will be assigned which tasks.

Work programmes and timelines change. Maybe some parts of what you have envisioned doing, will not work out. Experiments may fail or people you wanted to interview will not agree to talk to you. Your work programme should take these risks into account and point out alternatives, a "plan b".

How are you approaching your research subject? Every grant proposal should include a section on methodology. Methodology may refer to a general approach or may refer to a very specific set of methods that you need to study a phenomenon. This section should show that you have chosen the right approach to your topic and that you are the right person to study it. Make sure to spell out what kind of training you have received if you are proposing a very specific methodology. After reading this section, a reviewer should be confident that you know what you are getting yourself into and that you are the right person to do it.

A section on impact is compulsory for applications within the European Union. Other funding organisations do not necessarily ask for a statement on impact, it may nevertheless be useful to consider it.

How do we define impact? We suggest two possible areas in which impact is an important factor. One focuses on your (sub)discipline: will your research change the way the community thinks about a core concept or phenomenon, i.e. does your research have an impact in your discipline beyond the specific question that you pose and answer?

 Another way of thinking about impact focuses on the broader societal effects of your research project: who will be affected by the results of your research and how? Will you be able to answer a question that is only of interest to people in your subdiscipline or to a larger group of people as well? In other words: An agency that asks about the impact of your work may also be interested in the "return on investment" - what does society get back from your research in return for funding it? Hence, the impact section will be very different for each grant proposal and there is no one single right way to present it.

Every grant proposal needs a budget. We have compiled information on how to present a convincing budget on a separate budget page . Here, we want to stress the importance of having a budget that "fits" the proposal. A well-designed budget shows the reviewers that you know your project well and that you can realistically estimate what it will cost. Of course, you will need to be aware of the funding organisation's regulations and only apply for items that it will principally fund.

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Artistic research - phd - ntnu - project description.

• About the PhD programme

Project description

• Programme structure
• Learning objectives

Background The applicant must document appropriate understanding of the field, both nationally and internationally. The proposal must describe how the originality of the project, its innovativeness and relevance to the field will contribute to new knowledge. The applicant must briefly describe the research question(s) and the planned project, as well as describe how different theories and methods may inform the project’s development. The applicant must also describe which methods can be used to document the process and result.

Project plan The project must be an independent artistic work of a high standard, particularly as it relates to expression, coherence and communication of results. The candidate must demonstrate how the project can be completed in the designated time frame, i.e. 3 years full-time study, including ½ year of coursework.

Relevance The project must be placed academically at the institution and in a national and international context.

Ethical considerations The candidate must consider whether there are any ethical questions related to the implementation of the project. If that is the case, the applicant must describe how these will be addressed.

Dissemination and progress plan The applicant must describe how the artistic result will be made public, in terms of both time schedule and format. The applicant must also account for how the critical reflection will be communicated, in terms of both media and form.

Equipment and budget The applicant must account for necessary equipment and infrastructure to complete the artistic research project.

Template for project description at HF (.docx) Template for project description at HF (.odt)

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How to Write a Project Description: A Quick Guide

A project description seems self-explanatory, but don’t underestimate a well-written project description as it sets your project up for success. It acts as a communication tool for stakeholders and shares the project vision in a clear and actionable fashion.

Let’s talk a look at what a project description is, why it’s so important and how to write an impactful one. Then we’ll throw in some free project management templates that can get you started and show how project management tools help turn the project description into a reality.

What Is a Project Description?

A project description outlines the details of one project, including all its phases and processes involved, in a single document. It addresses the problem that initiated the project and the desired goals and objectives.

But it doesn’t have to stop there. The project description can also go into planning, including the activities that the team will execute, the timeline and even the location of the project. The benefits of the project are also outlined in the project description.

This is done at the initiation phase of the project and will be referred to throughout the project as a refresher. The project manager is responsible for writing the project description and helps guide the project manager and their team throughout the life cycle of the project.

In a sense, the project description is the setup and the project execution is the delivery. But a project description, as helpful as it is, will not manage and track your project to help it stay on schedule. What you need is project management software.

ProjectManager is online project management software that helps you plan, manage and track your project in real time to make more insightful decisions. Turn your project description into an actionable plan with our robust Gantt charts. Organize tasks on a visual timeline, link all four dependencies and filter for the critical path. Then set a baseline and track project variance to better manage cost and time. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

Project Description vs. Project Proposal

The project description is part of the larger project proposal. While the project description covers a lot of ground, it’s really more of a high-level view of the project. While some expand on the description to include more planning with the objectives, it’s still a cursory look.

The project proposal is a more expansive document. In this context, the project description is just a summary of what is to come in the larger project proposal, which will flesh out that outline. The project proposal will sometimes refer to the project description as an executive summary . Whatever it’s called, it’s the lead into the bigger picture.

Naturally, a project proposal goes more in-depth. There are sections on the background or history of the previous projects, requirements for the project, the approach, such as techniques and skills in executing the project and, finally, who the decision-makers in the project are.

Project Description vs. Project Summary

A project description isn’t a project summary, though they might sound the same. As we’ve discussed, a project description is more of a high-level overview of the project being proposed. It’s usually the opening of the project proposal when a project is being pitched.

The purpose of the project is explained in the project description. It also briefly describes how the project will run and what it plans to achieve. A project summary is far more detailed. It’s very much like the project proposal defined above in that it goes into background, processes and more.

However, these terms are often used to describe different things. A project summary is more commonly used as a project description as an introduction to the project proposal . Whatever you call it, in this context, they share the same definition of being a brief overview of the project.

How to Write a Project Description: 6 Key Steps

Writing a project description is more difficult than it might seem. Yes, it’s brief, but that means every word must count. To accomplish this, you need to understand the project inside and out, from its purpose to its scope . But the project is described simply without leaving out any key details.

That said, everything that’s critical to the project plan should be included. You don’t want to leave out anything relevant or leave anything that’s out of date. Everything in the project description should connect to the purpose of the project. Now you’re ready to write the project description, which should follow these six steps.

1. Summarize

Begin with an outline that should only be a few lines long, but answers the who, what, where, how and why of the project.

Explain the reason for the project, such as the problem it solves or the niche it fills. This will define the purpose of the project.

Show your project stakeholders why this project is worth the investment. Prove that they’ll get a good return and explain your metrics if necessary.

4. Evaluate

Make a cost-benefit analysis and show how you plan to measure those gains against the cost of the project.

5. Explain the Project Approach

Here you want to briefly explain how you’ll meet the project goals and objectives. Describe the project management methodology and resources that will be used.

6. Estimate the Timeline

Forecast the duration of the project, including the working hours and resources for each phase of the project’s life cycle.

When Should You Write a Project Description?

Now that you know the why and the how for a project description, it’s time to explore the when. Obviously, the project description is one of the first things that you’ll write as it’s often the lead to a project proposal.

Writing the project description is part of the initiation stage of the project life cycle. This is the point at which a project is defined, evaluated, and, possibly, authorized by the project sponsor.

It’s best not to write the summary until you’ve done the groundwork of defining key deliverables, risks, an estimate of costs and resources. The amount of work this takes is dependent on how big or complex the project is.

Why Is It Important to Write a Project Description?

The project description is the opening in your attempt to prove the validity of the project and its return on investment (ROI). It should make the reader, whether they’re a customer, sponsor or stakeholder, understand the project and why it’s right for them.

It also acts almost as a blueprint or roadmap for the project. The project description contains important information about the project. This includes a brief look at costs and duration, all of which will make clear what it’ll take to implement the project .

What you’re doing isn’t only selling the project but also setting realistic project expectations. It’s critical that the stakeholders know the key objectives and the time and costs associated with achieving them. That way, if the project is approved, it’ll be easier to manage stakeholder expectations because you’ve already created a baseline.

Free Project Management Templates

In order to help you write a thorough project description, ProjectManager has free templates to give you a head start. Our site features dozens of free project management templates for Excel and Word that cover all the phases of a project. The following are just a few that relate to our topic.

Executive Summary Template

The executive summary is very close to a product description. It covers similar ground and can even be interchangeable with the project description. Using our free executive summary template for Word will lay out everything you need to fill in for a thorough project description.

Project Proposal Template

The project description or executive summary is the first section of any project proposal. Since you’ll need to write a description and a proposal, our free project proposal template for Word includes the intro and all the other important information you’ll need to include to get approval.

Project Budget Template

You’ll have to estimate the cost of the project in your project description. Our project budget template for Excel is more detailed than what you’ll need but all that work will come in handy if the project is approved and you have to create a budget.

How ProjectManager Turns a Project Description Into a Project Plan

The project description ideally leads to an approved project. Now you’ll have to turn the elements that you touched on into a workable project plan. ProjectManager is online project management software that has real-time tools to help you meet your objectives without going over schedule or budget.

Use The Tools You Want

While the Gantt chart is great for project managers to visually plan their schedule, it’s not the best for the team when assigned tasks to execute. That’s why we offer multiple project views, all of which are updated together in real time. Now teams can choose the tools they prefer to work with, whether that’s our robust task lists or the visual workflow of a kanban board.

Monitor Progress and Performance in Real Time

Giving teams the freedom to work how they want doesn’t mean you can’t manage them. Our real-time dashboard automatically gathers data on time, costs, workload and more. It then calculates and displays these metrics in easy-to-read graphs and charts. Best of all, there’s no setup required as with lightweight competitors. It’s plug-and-play.

Of course, your stakeholders are also going to want to stay updated on progress. They won’t need the high-level view of a dashboard, which is why we also have customizable reports that can provide greater detail. It just takes a couple of keystrokes to generate status reports, project variance reports and more. Then easily share them with stakeholders.

Related Project Description Content

We’ve touched on executive summaries, project proposals and more. If you want a more in-depth look at them, below is some related content. Remember, ProjectManager is more than empowering software. We’re also the online hub for all things project management, publishing blogs weekly and offering free guides and templates.

• How to Write an Executive Summary: A Quick Guide
• How to Write a Project Proposal (Steps & Template Included)
• Project Planning Guide
• Project Scheduling Guide
• 7 Steps for a Successful Project Budget

ProjectManager is award-winning software that helps you plan, manage and track your projects in real time. Our risk management, task management and resource management features keep you on schedule and budget. Join teams at Avis, Nestle and Siemens who are using our software to deliver success. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

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Preparing a PhD Project

When applying for admission to a phd degree programme at the faculty of arts, you need to write a project description. you must also meet certain formal requirements..

The most important part of the application for admission to a PhD degree programme at the Faculty of Arts is your own project description. The project description explains the research project you propose to conduct as a PhD student in some detail, and it outlines the research plan.

On this page you can read more about presenting your idea for a PhD project and about expanding and using your network in the application process to get valuable feedback on early drafts of the application.

Graduate School of Arts

Before you start working up your application, we advise that you keep yourself informed about the PhD degree via the Graduate School of Arts (GSA) website:  http://phd.arts.au.dk/ The GSA has their own  step-by-step guide  to new applicants and have administrators who can help you with all your questions and who will guide you through the application process in relation to all the formal requirements.

As a rule of thumb, the go-to person for applicants should be the Team Leader of the PhD Section. You can find the list of who to contact here:  http://phd.arts.au.dk/about-us/contact/

Requirements and programmes

The Graduate School of Arts offers  two degree programmes , the 5+3 and the 4+4 programmes. One of the programmes is aimed at students who have not yet completed a Master’s degree (the 4+4 programme), while the other aims at applicants who have completed their Master’s degree (the 5+3 programme).

In the video below, an international PhD student explains why she thinks it is so important to be informed about  the faculty’s PhD degree structure  before applying.

Further, you may apply through the Industrial PhD programme, if you consider to do your PhD as part of a collaboration with the industry. To read more about the Industrial PhD programme, please access this link:  http://phd.arts.au.dk/applicants/industrial-phd-programme/

The content of this page was written by Charlotte Albrechtsen, Tine Wirenfeldt Jensen and Søren Smedegaard Bengtsen from Centre for Teaching Development and Digital Media, Arts, Aarhus University.

Presenting your idea for a PhD project

The project description is the main part of the application. this is where you present your own idea for the phd project you propose to undertake..

The requirements for the content of the project description may vary. Read the  call for applications  carefully to find out if any special requirements for the project description are mentioned.

Most project descriptions, however, should meet a number of general requirements or guidelines, which are described at the GSA website here:  http://phd.arts.au.dk/applicants/how-to-apply/

The core of the project description

The core of the project description is your own idea for a PhD dissertation. In the video below, two international PhD students express their views on the importance of having a great idea. The idea must of course be closely related to previous research in the field.

Where there was a stronger tradition earlier on for individually conceived PhD projects, there is today a stronger focus on calls for more defined PhD projects within certain fields and topics. If you are in doubt whether as to formulate your own project from scratch, or to align more closely with a declared interest from a specific PhD programme or Department, you can always contact one of the PhD Programme Directors at Arts, who can help and guide you with your decision (see the section ‘The importance of networking and feedback’ below). To read more about the differences between open and specific calls for PhD projects, please access this link:

http://phd.arts.au.dk/applicants/open-and-specific-calls/

The project description must be easy to understand, also for non-specialists, as the application is likely to be evaluated by committee members from a variety of subject areas.

The typical content of a PhD project description within the humanities at Danish universities is presented in the slides below.

To help you write your description you can use one of AU Studypedia’s writing tools on the page  Writing your academic paper . Here you'll find tools to:

Kick-start your writing by using the Free Writing exercise .

Explore different perspectives of your idea with the Cubing technique .

Integrate your thoughts about the research question with theory, method and sources by using the tool  Scribo .

Meeting the requirements

A starting point for assessing a PhD proposal is the assessment procedure in the application guidelines. Be sure to meet the requirements stated and read the application guidelines carefully. The content varies somewhat depending on which kind of general programme you apply for. Also, please note that the project description should not exceed a certain number of characters.

If your application fails to meet the formal requirements, it will not be accepted. In the video below, an international PhD student shares his experience of the formal requirements for PhD applications.

Different types of dissertations to consider

When working out your application, and especially your research timeline, you should consider if you conceive your PhD dissertation to be written and submitted as a monograph or as an article-based dissertation. Read more about the difference at Copenhagen University’s website: https://www.sociology.ku.dk/phd-studies/phd-thesis/ .  Different disciplines and research fields may have certain expectations and preferences in relation to choice of dissertation type and in some research fields it’s up to the individual. For more advice, contact the PhD Programme Director from the PhD programme you apply within (see below).

The importance of networking and feedback

Use – and expand – your network before applying for the phd to get valuable feedback on early drafts of the application..

One of the most important steps you can take when applying for a PhD at the Faculty of Arts is to reach out to potential supervisors before you hand in your application. This will serve two purposes: you will expand your international network in the field you wish to do research in, and, perhaps most importantly, you may obtain invaluable feedback on a draft of your project description. Getting feedback from a local academic within your field should be viewed as a key step in the application process, and will provide you with knowledge of what is expected in your discipline that you cannot obtain in any other way.

This form of feedback may also come from current PhD-students, or junior researchers (postdocs or assistant professors), who have themselves been through the process recently, and have come out successfully.

Initial contact

There are 8 PhD Programmes at Arts that cover all the disciplines and departments. Your initial contact should be to one of these. Your application will be assessed by the most relevant of the 8 PhD programmes and your application should therefore fit into one of the programmes You can read more about the different PhD Programmes here: http://phd.arts.au.dk/about-us/programmes/

Some PhD Programmes arrange events for students and candidates who consider applying for a PhD. At these events the potential applicants have the opportunity to speak to the PhD Programmes Director, current PhD students within the programme, and administrators from the Graduate School of Arts. Contact the relevant PhD Programme Director to learn more about upcoming events.

Further, you might take a look at the university’s website to find professors or associate professors who work in your field. Then contact them with a brief initial description of your project and ask them if they can provide feedback or possibly refer you to one of their colleagues. Make sure to do this early on in the process as most professors are very busy and cannot be expected to respond at short notice. Also, as providing feedback on PhD applications is usually not a part of the work tasks of academic staff, you should expect that some will not have time and opportunity to provide the requested feedback.

Each PhD Programme has its own Director, who is the one responsible for the programme. The PhD Programme Director will be able to guide you through your application process and to provide you with suggestions and advice about whether to respond to an open or a specific call for PhD projects. The list of PhD Programme Directors for all programmes are accessible through this link: http://phd.arts.au.dk/about-us/contact/

"Become a part of the community"

It’s important to network and getting feedback on your research idea and early drafts of your application before applying.

If you want to apply for a PhD scholarship at Aarhus University it’s a good idea to be enrolled in one of the PhD Programmes at Arts and become a part of the local academic community. While you expand your network you will get an impression of what is going on in the field and who is who.

If you are unable to come here and study before applying for a PhD, contact the PhD Programme – preferably a potential main supervisor. In any case, you should try talking to a researcher in your area and ask for feedback on your drafts for the project description. Contacting the PhD PRogramme in question before applying helps clarify whether the project you are proposing is in line with the research carried out there.

From a student's perspective

In the video below, an international student at the Faculty of Arts talks about his own experience of the importance of contacting the relevant PhD Programme, and even department, in advance.

Feedback from your fellow students and peers who are not specialists in the subject area may also be valuable – for instance, to ensure the clarity of your proposal. AU Studypedia has a guide for giving and receiving feedback on the page  Group Work & Feedback .

Further considerations

When applying for a PhD, you may consider certain other issues besides the formal requirements of the application itself. It would be a good idea to become informed about employment conditions and expectations. For example, typically it would be expected for the PhD student to spend a semester at a foreign university. For some students, this means bringing their own family with them - with all the practicalities of finding accommodation, child care opportunities, schools, etc.

Should you wish to know more about these or related issues, you can always contact the GSA for more information and guidance:  http://phd.arts.au.dk/about-us/contact/

Also, some PhD-students become pregnant and start their own family during the PhD, which also may affect the process and work conditions. And even for some PhD students coming from a professional context or the industry to do a PhD, the PhD salary (or funding more generally) may be relevant to know more about as well.

The content of this page was written by Søren Smedegaard Bengtsen from Centre for Teaching Development and Digital Media, Arts, Aarhus University.

Useful links:

Relevant handbooks about the phd education.

The following handbooks provide a thorough, helpful, and realistic perspective on the PhD experience and generic challenges and opportunities in relation to undertake a PhD:

In English:

Cryer, P. (2006). The Research Student’s Guide to Success. Berkshire: McGraw-Hill, Open University Press

Petre, M. & Rugg, G. (2010). The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research. Berkshire: McGraw-Hill, Open University Press

Philips, E.M. & Pugh, D.S. (2012). How to get a PhD. A handbook for students and their supervisors. Berkshire: McGraw-Hill, Open University Press

The Craft of Research . Booth, Wayne C.; Colomb, Gregory G. and Joseph M. Williams, University of Chicago Press, 2nd edition, 2003.

And in Danish:

Andersson, J.E. & Hein, H.H. (2002). Ph.d.-processen. Kom godt i gang. Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur

From, U. & Kristensen, N.N. (2005). Proces og struktur i ph.d.-forløbet. Om at leve og overleve. Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur

The content of this page was  written by Charlotte Albrechtsen, Tine Wirenfeldt Jensen and Søren Smedegaard Bengtsen from Centre for Teaching Development and Digital Media, Arts, Aarhus University .

CS231n: Deep Learning for Computer Vision

Stanford - spring 2024, final project, important dates.

• Collaboration Policy

Late Policy

Final report.

• Final Presentation

The Course Project is an opportunity for you to apply what you have learned in class to a problem of your interest. Potential projects usually fall into these two tracks:

• Applications. If you're coming to the class with a specific background and interests (e.g. biology, engineering, physics), we'd love to see you apply vision models learned in this class to problems related to your particular domain of interest. Pick a real-world problem and apply computer vision models to solve it.
• Models. You can build a new model (algorithm) or a new variant of existing models, and apply it to tackle vision tasks. This track might be more challenging, and sometimes leads to a piece of publishable work.

One restriction to note is that this is a Computer Vision class, so your project should involve pixels of visual data in some form somewhere. E.g. a pure NLP project is not a good choice, even if your approach involves ConvNets.

• Spring 2017
• Winter 2016
• Winter 2015

To inspire ideas, you might also look at recent deep learning publications from top-tier conferences, as well as other resources below.

• CVPR : IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
• ICCV : International Conference on Computer Vision
• ECCV : European Conference on Computer Vision
• NIPS : Neural Information Processing Systems
• ICLR : International Conference on Learning Representations
• ICML : International Conference on Machine Learning
• Publications from the Stanford Vision Lab
• Awesome Deep Vision
• Past CS229 Projects : Example projects from Stanford's machine learning class
• Kaggle challenges : An online machine learning competition website. For example, a Yelp classification challenge .

For applications, this type of projects would involve careful data preparation, an appropriate loss function, details of training and cross-validation and good test set evaluations and model comparisons. Don't be afraid to think outside of the box. Some successful examples can be found below:

• Teaching Deep Convolutional Neural Networks to Play Go
• Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning

ConvNets also run in real time on mobile phones and Raspberry Pi's - building an interesting mobile application could be a good project. If you want to go this route you might want to check out TensorFlow Mobile / Lite or Caffe2 iOS/Android integration .

For models, ConvNets have been successfully used in a variety of computer vision tasks. This type of projects would involve understanding the state-of-the-art vision models, and building new models or improving existing models for a vision task. The list below presents some papers on recent advances of ConvNets in the computer vision community.

• Image Classification : [Krizhevsky et al.] , [Russakovsky et al.] , [Szegedy et al.] , [Simonyan et al.] , [He et al.] , [Huang et al.] , [Hu et al.] [Zoph et al.]
• Object detection : [Girshick et al.] , [Ren et al.] , [He et al.]
• Image segmentation : [Long et al.] [Noh et al.] [Chen et al.]
• Video classification : [Karpathy et al.] , [Simonyan and Zisserman] [Tran et al.] [Carreira et al.] [Wang et al.]
• Scene classification : [Zhou et al.]
• Face recognition : [Taigman et al.] [Schroff et al.] [Parkhi et al.]
• Depth estimation : [Eigen et al.]
• Image-to-sentence generation : [Karpathy and Fei-Fei] , [Donahue et al.] , [Vinyals et al.] [Xu et al.] [Johnson et al.]
• Visualization and optimization : [Szegedy et al.] , [Nguyen et al.] , [Zeiler and Fergus] , [Goodfellow et al.] , [Schaul et al.]

You might also gain inspiration by taking a look at some popular computer vision datasets:

• Meta Pointer: A large collection organized by CV Datasets.
• Yet another Meta pointer
• ImageNet : a large-scale image dataset for visual recognition organized by WordNet hierarchy
• SUN Database : a benchmark for scene recognition and object detection with annotated scene categories and segmented objects
• Places Database : a scene-centric database with 205 scene categories and 2.5 millions of labelled images
• NYU Depth Dataset v2 : a RGB-D dataset of segmented indoor scenes
• Microsoft COCO : a new benchmark for image recognition, segmentation and captioning
• Flickr100M : 100 million creative commons Flickr images
• Labeled Faces in the Wild : a dataset of 13,000 labeled face photographs
• Human Pose Dataset : a benchmark for articulated human pose estimation
• YouTube Faces DB : a face video dataset for unconstrained face recognition in videos
• UCF101 : an action recognition data set of realistic action videos with 101 action categories
• HMDB-51 : a large human motion dataset of 51 action classes
• ActivityNet : A large-scale video dataset for human activity understanding
• Moments in Time : A dataset of one million 3-second videos

Collaboration

You can work in teams of up to 3 people. We do expect that projects done with 3 people have more impressive writeup and results than projects done with 2 people. To get a sense for the scope and expectations for 2-people projects, have a look at project reports from previous years.

You may consult any papers, books, online references, or publicly available implementations for ideas and code that you may want to incorporate into your strategy or algorithm, so long as you clearly cite your sources in your code and your writeup. However, under no circumstances may you look at another group’s code or incorporate their code into your project.

If you are combining your course project with the project from another class, you must receive permission from the instructors, and clearly explain in the Proposal, Milestone, and Final Report the exact portion of the project that is being counted for CS 231n. In this case you must prepare separate reports for each course, and submit your final report for the other course as well.

See the late policy on the home page .

Project Proposal

The project proposal should be one paragraph (200-400 words). Your project proposal should describe:

• What is the problem that you will be investigating? Why is it interesting?
• What reading will you examine to provide context and background?
• What data will you use? If you are collecting new data, how will you do it?
• What method or algorithm are you proposing? If there are existing implementations, will you use them and how? How do you plan to improve or modify such implementations? You don't have to have an exact answer at this point, but you should have a general sense of how you will approach the problem you are working on.
• How will you evaluate your results? Qualitatively, what kind of results do you expect (e.g. plots or figures)? Quantitatively, what kind of analysis will you use to evaluate and/or compare your results (e.g. what performance metrics or statistical tests)?

Submission: Please submit your proposal as a PDF on Gradescope. Only one person on your team should submit. Please have this person add the rest of your team as collaborators as a "Group Submission".

Project Milestone

• Title, Author(s)
• Introduction: this section introduces your problem, and the overall plan for approaching your problem
• Problem statement: Describe your problem precisely specifying the dataset to be used, expected results and evaluation
• Technical Approach: Describe the methods you intend to apply to solve the given problem
• Intermediate/Preliminary Results: State and evaluate your results upto the milestone

Submission : Please submit your milestone as a PDF on Gradescope. Only one person on your team should submit. Please have this person add the rest of your team as collaborators as a "Group Submission".

Your final write-up is required to be between 6 - 8 pages using the provided template , structured like a paper from a computer vision conference (CVPR, ECCV, ICCV, etc.). Please use this template so we can fairly judge all student projects without worrying about altered font sizes, margins, etc. After the class, we will post all the final reports online so that you can read about each others' work. If you do not want your writeup to be posted online, then please let us know via the project registration form.

The following is a suggested structure for your report, as well as the rubric that we will follow when evaluating reports. You don't necessarily have to organize your report using these sections in this order, but that would likely be a good starting point for most projects. Refer to Ed for more fine-grained details and explanations of each separate section.

• Abstract : Briefly describe your problem, approach, and key results. Should be no more than 300 words.
• Introduction (10%) : Describe the problem you are working on, why it's important, and an overview of your results
• Related Work (10%) : Discuss published work that relates to your project. How is your approach similar or different from others?
• Data (10%) : Describe the data you are working with for your project. What type of data is it? Where did it come from? How much data are you working with? Did you have to do any preprocessing, filtering, or other special treatment to use this data in your project?
• Methods (30%) : Discuss your approach for solving the problems that you set up in the introduction. Why is your approach the right thing to do? Did you consider alternative approaches? You should demonstrate that you have applied ideas and skills built up during the quarter to tackling your problem of choice. It may be helpful to include figures, diagrams, or tables to describe your method or compare it with other methods.
• Experiments (30%) : Discuss the experiments that you performed to demonstrate that your approach solves the problem. The exact experiments will vary depending on the project, but you might compare with previously published methods, perform an ablation study to determine the impact of various components of your system, experiment with different hyperparameters or architectural choices, use visualization techniques to gain insight into how your model works, discuss common failure modes of your model, etc. You should include graphs, tables, or other figures to illustrate your experimental results.
• Conclusion (5%) Summarize your key results - what have you learned? Suggest ideas for future extensions or new applications of your ideas.
• Writing / Formatting (5%) Is your paper clearly written and nicely formatted?
• Source code (if your project proposed an algorithm, or code that is relevant and important for your project.).
• Cool videos, interactive visualizations, demos, etc.
• The entire PyTorch/TensorFlow Github source code.
• Any code that is larger than 10 MB.
• Model checkpoints.
• A computer virus.

Submission : You will submit your final report as a PDF and your supplementary material as a separate PDF or ZIP file. We will provide detailed submission instructions as the deadline nears.

Additional Submission Requirements : We will also ask you do do the following when you submit your project report:

• Your report PDF should list all authors who have contributed to your work; enough to warrant a co-authorship position. This includes people not enrolled in CS 231N such as faculty/advisors if they sponsored your work with funding or data, significant mentors (e.g., PhD students or postdocs who coded with you, collected data with you, or helped draft your model on a whiteboard). All authors should be listed directly underneath the title on your PDF. Include a footnote on the first page indicating which authors are not enrolled in CS 231N. All co-authors should have their institutional/organizational affiliation specified below the title.
• If you have non-231N contributors, you will be asked to describe the following:
• Specify whether the project has been submitted to a peer-reviewed conference or journal. Include the full name and acronym of the conference (if applicable). For example: Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS). This only applies if you have already submitted your paper/manuscript and it is under review as of the report deadline.
• Any code that was used as a base for projects must be referenced and cited in the body of the paper. This includes CS 231N assignment code, finetuning example code, open-source, or Github implementations. You can use a footnote or full reference/bibliography entry.
• If you are using this project for multiple classes, submit the other class PDF as well. Remember, it is an honor code violation to use the same final report PDF for multiple classes.

In summary, include all contributing authors in your PDF; include detailed non-231N co-author information; tell us if you submitted to a conference, cite any code you used, and submit your dual-project report (e.g., CS 230, CS 231A, CS 234).

Poster Session

Details to be announced later in the quarter.