1. Due to the high demand of reference requests, I am afraid that I will have to say no to most of the requests.
2. I am happy to write letters but only for people I know enough so that my assessment of them is evidence-based. I will not write only purely subjective opinions about people in the reference letter. If you have worked with me, there can be easily evidence in the letter; otherwise, it is hard for me to write a convincing letter. Believe me, you do not want such a letter.
3. If you think I can write a letter for you, please email me with your draft and the information of what you will apply for. You could also email me with other information about you such as CVs, transcripts, awards, etc. But please realise that it indicates that I do not know you well if you need to send me a large amount of information. My letter will not be useful if it simply summarises your CVs and transcripts, which all will be in your application anyway.

1. Yes. PhD scholarships are won through the competition among all the PhD offer holders. So it is difficult to predict how difficult it will be as it depends on who applies.
2. In the past, the winners always had good GPAs from top universities in the world, and first-authored publications in the top venues in their fields. This is especially so for International students.
3. My impression seems to be that the PhD funding competition among the Home students is slightly easier, but I have no statistics to support this.

1. Yes. I have had experiences with good students who have publishable research.
2. These students are normally strongly motivated as they need to invest a lot of time and effort to research, in addition to their already overloaded academic and social activities.

1. My statistics based on my career indicates No.
2. Not winning a scholarship does not necessarily indicate a weaker background and certainly not a reliable indicator of the future performance during the PhD.
3. In the past, I have had self-funded PhDs publishing top-tier conference/journal papers.

1. Yes. I do accept self-funded PhDs. The answer is Yes and No regarding whether it makes it easier.
2. The key indicator I am looking for in PhD candidates is whether they will be able to do good research. Where the funding comes from is separate. Of course, not having to win the scholarship in the competition makes it easier for the candidate. But the bar for acceptance stays the same.

1. Generally, good research can be classified into two types: it is a new problem, it is important but nobody has done research on it (Type I); or it is an old problem but your proposed method is much better than existing methods. (Type II)
2. Type I tends to be the best kind of research. It does not have to be a completely new problem but a problem under a new setting which nobody has investigated.
3. Most papers are Type II. Since a research proposal is about something you have not done, a common high-risk kind of proposals is ``I will solve an old problem A. The novelty is existing methods use methods B,C,D but I will use E''. It is risky because you do not know whether E will work until you try it, which can take long time. A better proposal would be ``I want to solve an old problem A. While existing methods only consider factor B-D, but I will consider a new factor E.''
4. The last point is why you are the best person to solve the problem. You have relevant background, experience?