🧭 Resource · ~10 min read · Updated 7 September 2026 · By Dr. Deepak Malik

Structured PhD programme or individual position — how to tell which one fits you

I get asked this every week, usually in a slightly confused way. A student sends me two links — one is a graduate school with an application portal and a November deadline, the other is a single advertised position in one professor's lab — and asks which one is the "real" PhD. They are both real. They are two genuinely different routes into the same degree, and they reward completely different kinds of applicants. Almost nobody explains that, so students apply to both the same way and do badly at both.

In short: an individual position means one supervisor hires you onto one funded project — you find the person, you convince the person, and you start on the research in month one. A structured programme (a graduate school, an IMPRS, a Marie Curie doctoral network) means you apply to a committee through a portal, usually once or twice a year, and you get coursework, a supervision panel, a cohort of peers and a fixed selection round. Neither is better. The individual route rewards a sharp, targeted approach and a clear fit with one person. The structured route rewards a strong general profile and patience with deadlines. Below is how to work out which one you are.

Understand what actually differs — it is not the degree, it is the machinery around it

The doctorate you end up with is the same doctorate. What changes is everything around it. In an individual doctorate you work largely on your own thesis, in consultation with one supervising professor, and any extra courses or workshops are usually optional. In a structured programme there is a taught element: compulsory seminars or lecture attendance, credit points, interim assessments, transferable-skills training, and a supervision panel — typically two or three people — rather than one professor holding your whole fate. In Germany the individual route is still the more common of the two, which surprises students who have only ever seen the glossy graduate-school websites. Both routes lead to the same title from the same university.

The application is a completely different exercise, so stop sending the same email to both

This is the practical mistake I see most. For an individual position, the decision maker is one human being with a project and a budget, and you reach them by writing to them directly. Your job is to show that you have read their work and that you fit this specific project — nothing else moves the needle. Our resources on emailing a professor and whether to contact professors before applying cover exactly how that first message should read. For a structured programme, there is usually no professor to email first at all. You apply through a portal, a committee reads you against every other applicant in that round, and your academic CV and statement of purpose do all the work before any human has an incentive to like you. Sending a warm, personal "I loved your 2024 paper" email into a structured programme's admissions inbox does nothing. Sending a generic portal-style application to a single professor does worse than nothing.

Timing is the difference nobody prices in

Individual positions are advertised the way jobs are advertised. They appear when a grant lands, they close when someone good applies, and they open all year round. You can find one in March and start in June. That is why our live board of funded PhD positions is worth checking weekly rather than seasonally — the whole point of that route is that the door is open at unpredictable times. Structured programmes run on rounds. Some graduate schools take applications once a year with a deadline months before the start date; others run two or three calls a year. Miss the date and you wait for the next one. So the honest calculation is: if you need to start within six months, the individual route is usually your only realistic option. If you have a year to plan, you can run both in parallel — and you should.

Ask what you are actually being paid on, in both cases

Do not assume structured means funded and individual means unfunded. It cuts both ways. Plenty of advertised individual positions in Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia are employment contracts with a payslip, tax, pension and social insurance. Plenty of structured programmes fund their students on a scholarship or stipend instead — which is often tax-free and sounds generous, but is not employment, so it usually does not build pension entitlement or unemployment cover, and health insurance works differently. Neither is a trick; they are just different arrangements with different consequences. Our resource on how PhD funding in Germany actually works walks through the contract-versus-stipend difference in detail, including the questions to ask before you sign. Ask, in both routes: is this a contract or a stipend, how many years is it written for, and what percentage of full time?

Know the third category — international doctoral networks with their own rules

There is a route that sits slightly outside both, and it is worth knowing because it is unusually good for internationally mobile students. The EU funds Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Networks: consortia of universities and companies across several countries that recruit doctoral researchers into a shared training programme, typically for up to 36 months. They come with an EU-set living allowance adjusted by a country coefficient, plus a mobility allowance, and they are advertised as jobs on the partner institutions' pages. There is one hard rule that catches people out: you must not have lived or done your main activity in the country of the recruiting institution for more than 12 months in the 36 months before you are recruited. So if you did your Masters in Germany, you generally cannot be recruited by the German partner in the network — but you can usually apply to the Spanish or Dutch one. Read the mobility rule before you spend a week on the application.

Now judge honestly which one suits how you work

Here is the part that is about you rather than about the systems. Choose the structured route if you want a cohort, if you know you work better with deadlines and scheduled milestones, if the idea of one professor holding your entire progress makes you nervous, or if you are moving into a slightly new field and would genuinely benefit from taught courses. Choose the individual route if you already know exactly what you want to work on, if you can self-manage without someone setting your calendar, if you need to start soon, or if there is one specific researcher whose work you want to be inside. Be truthful with yourself. I have watched independent students chafe badly at compulsory seminars they found beneath them, and I have watched students who needed structure drift for two years under a distant supervisor. Whichever route you pick, the supervisor still decides most of your daily life — our resource on choosing the right supervisor applies just as much inside a graduate school as outside one.

What to do this week

Do both, deliberately, with different material. Open the position board and shortlist five live individual positions you could apply to now — that costs you nothing and teaches you what the market actually wants. Separately, list three or four graduate schools or doctoral networks in your field and write their next deadline in your calendar, because those dates will not come to you. Then build the two documents that both routes need: a strong academic CV and, for the individual route, a real research proposal. If you want a structured way to get through that, our free 7-day PhD challenge takes you through it one step at a time, and the rest of our free resources cover each document in turn. And if you would rather have someone look at your shortlist with you, our PhD mentorship pairs you with a mentor from our network of active researchers — people who applied through one of these routes themselves and can tell you which one your profile actually suits.

⚠️ What I see students get wrong here

Assuming a structured programme is more prestigious, or more "official," than an advertised individual position — the degree is the same
Emailing a professor to ask about a place in a structured programme they have no say over, and reading the non-reply as rejection
Applying only to graduate schools, then losing a whole year to a single missed annual deadline
Hearing "fully funded" and never asking whether it is an employment contract or a scholarship, and what that means for tax, pension and health cover
Ignoring the Marie Curie mobility rule and applying to the one partner institution in the country they already live in
Choosing the route that sounds impressive rather than the one that matches how they actually work

FAQ

Is a structured PhD programme better regarded by employers than an individual doctorate?▼

In research hiring, no — what people look at is your publications, your supervisor and the group you trained in, not the administrative route you entered through. Both give you the same doctoral title from the same university. Where a structured programme does help is slightly indirect: the taught element, the cohort and the built-in training often mean you leave with better presentation skills, a wider network and fewer gaps, and the selection round itself is competitive, so getting in signals something. But I would never advise a student to turn down a strong individual position in an excellent group in order to hold out for a graduate school with a weaker fit.

Can I apply to both routes at the same time?▼

Yes, and you should. They draw on different documents and different timelines, so they do not really compete for your effort — the individual route needs targeted emails and a project-specific proposal, the structured route needs a polished general application submitted by a date. In much of Europe there is no application fee and no standardised test to pay for, so running both costs you time rather than money. The one thing to keep clean is your material: never send a portal-style personal statement to a professor, and never send a chatty personalised letter into a committee's portal. Our resource on writing a statement of purpose covers how to adapt the same core content to each reader.

If I get into a structured programme, do I still choose my own supervisor and topic?▼

It varies more than people expect, and this is the single most important thing to check before you accept. Some graduate schools admit you first and then run a rotation or matching period where you meet several groups and settle on one. Others admit you directly onto a specific advertised project with the supervisor already fixed. And some ask you to name a prospective supervisor in the application itself, which effectively makes it an individual application wearing a portal. Read the programme's own admission page carefully, and if it is not explicit, email the coordinator and ask plainly: am I matched to a group after admission, or before? The answer changes how you should write the whole application.

Want me or one of our mentors in your exact research field to look at this with you, one on one? The first conversation is always free.

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