Design

Your portfolio is a showcase of your work as an artist or designer and can be made up of images, videos or writing examples. Your portfolio helps us to better understand your application and allows you to show evidence of your ability and motivation to undertake a given programme.

Generally, we’re looking for you to demonstrate your:

• Creativity, imagination and innovation
• Ability to articulate the intentions of the work
• Intellectual engagement in areas relevant to the work
• Technical skills appropriate to the work
• Potential to benefit from the programme

Please submit a portfolio with no more than 10 projects that illustrate your practices and capabilities supporting your research proposal (20MB PDF max). These can be drawn from a wide range of project types as some applications may come from diverse disciplines. When submitting group projects please describe your own role clearly.

Please provide a 300-word written personal statement that addresses the following points:

1. Introduce yourself, your interests and your motivations for applying to the Royal College of Art, and to this programme in particular.
2. Briefly summarise any educational background and professional experience to date that will support your application.
3. Tell us what you want to do in the future.

As part of your application, you must upload a two-minute video recorded on your phone or laptop, speaking to us directly. High production qualities are not needed. We will review the work in your portfolio, so keep your video simple.

Please tell us about your background and motivation for undertaking a PhD; and clearly state why your research should be situated within the School or Centre you are applying to. What do you bring to the research you are proposing (e.g. research expertise and/or professional experience) and tell us how the PhD will help you develop your future interests and aspirations. What might you offer the programme and broader research community? Briefly summarise your proposed research project keeping in mind we have read your application – and highlight your key motivations and aspirations for the research. What do you hope the research will contribute to the chosen field of study?

The research proposal is central to your application to undertake a research degree. As a description of your proposed topic, it should enable the selection panel to evaluate the scope and importance of your project. You should read the following guidelines carefully to ensure that your proposal includes the information we need to assess your application. The proposal should be up to 1,000 words in length, including a short bibliography.

The aim of the research proposal is to demonstrate that you have a project worth doing and that this is manageable within the timescale of the degree for which you are applying. To be worth doing, your project must be well-founded, and must also make a significant contribution to understanding in its field.

To make clear that your project is manageable within the relevant period, you need to show that you understand the scale of the issues and problems you are addressing.

Your proposal should include:

Title

A title summarising the proposed research. (This will be provisional at this point, and can change).

Introduction

Identify the field of study in broad terms and indicate how you expect your research to contribute to the field. Use this section to introduce the questions and issues central to your research.

Research background and questions

Use this section to expand your introduction:

• What are the key texts and approaches in the field, and how does your proposal differ from existing lines of argument?
• What does your project contribute to existing work in the field?
• How does it extend our understanding of particular questions or topics?

You need to set out your research questions as clearly as possible, explain problems that you want to explore and say why it is important to do so. In other words, think about how to situate your project in the context of your discipline.

Research methods

This section should set out how you will achieve what you propose. This will depend very much on your research topic.

• What resources will you use or need?
• Is your study interdisciplinary?
• What theoretical resources do you intend to use and why?
• What forms of textual, historical or visual analysis are relevant to your topic/field?
• What forms of practice will you use and why?
• How will you set about answering your research questions?

Schedule of work

Use this section to show that you have a realistic plan for completion of the study within three to four years (full time).

You might want to think here about dividing the proposal into sections (not necessarily chapters at this stage) and giving an indication of how you plan to research and write up each section.

Bibliography

Include a bibliography, in a standard format such as Harvard, listing the books and articles to which you refer in the proposal.

Some of these sections will be easier to write than others at this very preliminary stage. The selectors who read your proposal know that it is a provisional statement and that your ideas, questions and approaches will change during the course of your research. You should treat the proposal as an opportunity to show that you have begun to explore an important area of study and that you have a question, or questions, that challenge and develop that area. It is also necessary to demonstrate that you can express your ideas in clear and precise English, accessible to a non-specialist.

If you are not a national of a majority English-speaking country, MPhil candidates will need the equivalent of an IELTS Academic score of 6.5 with a 6.5 in the Test of Written English (TWE). PhD candidates will need the equivalent of an IELTS Academic score of 7.0 with a 7.0 in the Test of Written English (TWE).

You are exempt from this requirement if you have received a 2.1 degree or above from a university in a majority English-speaking nation within the last five years.

If you need a Student Visa to study at the RCA, you will also need to meet the Home Office’s minimum requirements for entry clearance.