What are the eligibility requirements for PhD application In Australia?

What is the highest academic degree you can get in your life? The answer to this question is PhD (Doctor of Philosophy). However, everyone in this world can not achieve this degree because there are limited quotas available for PhD plus you should have excellent competences to get scholarship. As PhD is all practical and research based study it is therefore highly expensive if you thinking about to pay tuition fee yourself. In many cases, PhD is not even open for students who wants to pay fee because it is clear fact that student won't be able to pay fee. Therefore,.many rounds of application open every year in many countries.  Every year many students apply for PhD scholarship all around the world. Today, I am taking an example of Australia and discussing about how to apply for PhD in science in Australia. 

A. Eligibility

As PhD scholarship is highly competitive in Australia because of limited fund available and heavy volume of student want to apply for PhD scholarship. The ratio of funding organizations to universities  is low which mean there is limited fund available but many students want to pursue PhD. Therefore, every university has their eligibility criteria to screen most competitive students to provide scholarship in PhD. 

First eligibility is Academic eligibility. It means, applicants applying for PhD should have either undergraduate with honours (1 year research program at 4th year of undergraduate) and/or masters by research (2 years research in post graduate) and/or masters by course but having at least a year of research. All applicants applying for PhD scholarship should have to have 'Thesis' component as main examination component in their undergraduate and/or post graduate. The thesis should be in between 1500 - 3000 words and thesis itself should have at least 25% of your course weightage in that year (if you have 4 courses in your research year and you must have at least one course is research course with 'Thesis' as main examination component). Applicant if had done 'Thesis writing' but did not meet the thesis weightage criteria and if it's not main examination component then they would not be considered eligible candidate. 

Putting 'Thesis' a mandatory requirement is to understand how well the applicant know about research and paper writing. It is considered that 'Thesis' writing will prepare student for PhD,  so it would be easy for them to understand how to go with PhD research. 

Beside the thesis, most of the universities look at your thesis grade/score. In Australia, to be eligible for PhD application, you must have at least minimum thesis score set by university as eligibility criteria. The range of thesis score varies from 70% - 85% for instance La Trobe University Australia has 70% thesis score as eligible score and The University of Melbourne has 75% as eligible score. Your score for other subjects do not matter and only score matter is the 'Thesis' score.  

Being just eligible does not always mean you will get scholarship, remember it is competitive and Universities will prefer to choose applicant having the highest score. These days, The University of Melbourne getting application with 85% score in average in agricultural science, so score matters. 

Second eligibility is professional eligibility. If you hold undergraduate/postgraduate degree but you do not have honours and/or any 'thesis' component, you could still be eligible if you have peer reviewed publications in relevant international journals. If you are working with research organizations and have excellent papers in international journals then you will be eligible for PhD application in Australia. Depending on the universities the number of papers for eligibility with publication varies, for instance with The University of Melbourne, if you have at least 4 peer reviewed publications in reputed international journals you will be considered as eligible for PhD application.  

B. Does academic background matters?

The simple answer to this question is 'no' but not always. The undergraduate (honours) and postgraduate (master research) research/thesis is considered as training for student to understand research and basic components of thesis. So, whatever the background in undergraduate and/or postgraduate such as agricultural science, medical science or even engineering, you still can apply for any field of study in PhD. It is because, you do not know everything of you filed (whatever you studying) in undergraduate/postgraduate (masters), it is just a training. It would be still easy to train applicants in different field of study in PhD regardless of their background, I have mentioned above that undergraduate/postgraduate is just a training  . However, if you are working for a long time in research area and you have many publications then you may not be eligible to apply for PhD in different study areas. It is because, publication is being masters of the subject area you publishing and you are the expert of that subject area. Therefore, you can do very well in you own subject area as you know most of it. Changing subject area will take a lot of effort to understand changed subject. 

The academic background in general does not matter but not everywhere and not in every university. Therefore, it is always better to check university website. 

Good luck in your application