Deadlines for each of the activities described below appear in the Postgraduate Timetable.
Your tasks this year fall into two key areas:
Research - at the direction of your supervisor.
Research Skills - Essential training, Progress Monitoring and Seminars and Colloquia.
Some students may also wish to engage with a further two areas:
Teaching - for those of you who commit to teaching tasks.
Physics Graduate School - formal physics training at an appropriate level.
You will need to balance your time between these tasks, remembering that some are more concentrated in university term time. Specific tasks for the year of the MSc include:
Research
This is your primary, day to day occupation and should be considered a commitment equivalent to a full-time job. Most students will benefit from working in the departmental environment (office or lab) most of the time - here there is guidance from supervisors, postdoctoral researchers and collaborators, and peer learning and support opportunities from other students and members of the department.
Research will primarily be at the direction of your supervisor, who will advise on project direction and progress. You will also have a feedback supervisor responsible for overseeing your skills and training, who can be an independent advisor on other matters. Pastoral matters (i.e. problems not directly related to the research) can be discussed with your supervisor, with Wellbeing services, or with the Director of Graduate Studies (who acts as a departmental senior tutor for research students). Key components of research may include lab or computational work, reading academic literature, writing reports or papers, attending seminars or conferences and contributing to research culture.
The Progress Monitoring category has four key components with details as follows:
Within the first week, each student will receive an outline of their research project and a project plan, identifying achievable milestones. The outline should be discussed with your supervisor, who will also provide a list of reading matter of relevance to the project. This will comprise some highly project-specific material and some background material of general relevance to your project.
By week 4 you are required to submit the outline and list of agreed key texts. This will contain:
Project Title
Brief outline of the project (~200 words)
Introductory reading list: to include at least 5 key texts( e.g. review papers, specialised scientific papers, chapters of text-books, previous theses on related topics) to introduce the general field of research and get the student to start thinking about their project (bearing in mind their undergraduate background).
Initial tasks: a list of those things the student will actually do in the period Oct-Dec. These may include such things as learning new experimental or mathematical techniques, programming languages, sample preparation or changing pump oil.
Confirmation that risk assessment and essential training tasks have been completed.
Milestones that should be met, to enable the student to gauge their progress.
This plan should be agreed between the student and supervisor; submission will be taken to mean agreement has been reached. Where the plans are not satisfactory the Director of Graduates may require the student to submit a revised version and/or attend an interview.
You should submit your project outline in SkillsForge once feedback has been received from your feedback supervisor.
A progress report of about 2000 words is to be submitted after three months. The report should clearly indicate the progress to date and may contain material that could be used in the introductory chapters of your MSc thesis. The report will:
briefly review the chosen project field including the key texts, putting the work in context
report on the research work completed
show what still needs to be done to complete the MSc research
contain a draft thesis plan
include a draft timetable for completion of the research
After discussing your report and plan with your Supervisor, you should submit your Progress Report & Thesis Plan to your Feedback supervisor by email, copying PhysicsPG@warwick.ac.uk, by 19/12/2025
After six months (usually Easter or equivalent date) you should submit a brief update on the thesis plan. By this time most of the experimental work / calculations should be complete. The update will:
contain a description of research work completed to date with appropriate report of results (~1-2 page)
contain a revised draft thesis plan, with detail of the contents down to sub-heading level, an indication of page numbers and the state of completeness of each section
include a detailed timetable for completion of the research and writing the thesis.
After discussing your report and plan with your Supervisor, you should submit your Progress Report & Thesis Plan to your Feedback supervisor by email, copying PhysicsPG@warwick.ac.uk, by 20/03/2026
Following completion of your Progress Report Update, there will be a short interview to discuss your progress towards completion of the MSc with the Director of Graduate Studies and your feedback supervisor, which will normally take place in the second week of May.
Physics Graduate School and Doctoral Skills
Students are encouraged to attend any relevant graduate or undergraduate lectures that may be beneficial to their project work. The series of graduate lectures are offered as part of Physics Graduate School, which although they are specifically aimed at PhD students may also be of use to Masters students. In addition, frequent use is made of Physics undergraduate lectures and graduate lectures in Departments across the university.
In some cases attendance will be obligatory if stipulated either by their supervisor(s) or by the Director of Graduate Studies. Supervisors must notify the Director of Graduate Studies of any prescribed lectures and, if it is considered appropriate to monitoring your progress, you may be examined on these. Note that there is no requirement for MSc students to take a particular number of modules as these will be prescribed according to individual needs.
MSc students are also welcome to access and complete the Doctoral Skills tasks available via the DSM1 module on Skillsforge but are not expected to complete all the tasks (which are compulsory for PhD students).
Opportunities for teaching are limited for MSc students due to the short duration of their projects. However there may be opportunities for exam invigilation, payment for open day demonstration, or some problem class teaching. The postgraduate coordinator (PhysicsPG) may be able to advise on this and there will be emails at relevant times during the academic year.
MSc students should contact their supervisor, the postgraduate coordinator or the Director of Graduate Studies if any aspect of the course regulations are unclear.
