graduate admissions - What kind of PhD proposals should I read?

I am finishing up my master's in mathematical finance and am hoping to pursue a PhD in stochastic analysis.

I was given a sample PhD proposal from an education office that helps people apply for universities in the UK and some other countries (some of those countries require specifically a PhD proposal so you can tell that the US is not one of them). I was told I should look at PhD proposals outside of my field and thus was given something in Chemistry.

Relevant links at this point:

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   No. 5 here: With a background in mathematical finance and desire to apply for a mathematics PhD in another field, do I need a second master's?

   
   


2. 
   

   How do mathematicians conduct research?

   
   

As mathematicians do not really collect data or conduct experiments for their research, I think I should countersuggest something in theoretical physics, theoretical computer science or something of the sort. Do you think that's okay? What would you suggest?

Answer

Ask them the purpose of not providing a mathematics proposal. A hard science looking at a similar science might get tunnel vision, but I doubt a mathematics PhD would face the same problem seeing as they're less experimental method than other fields.

PhD proposals, unlike theses, also seem to be much more readily accessible online. A quick search for theoretical physics phd proposal on Google, even without Scholar, yields a decent amount of samples that provide a significant amount of differing examples in sufficiently different subjects from math that the content can be differentiated from the style.