The PhD courses

The ABCPhD Program asks you to plan at least 30 ECTS of courses (and a maximum of 60). Ten of these credits must be taken from the PhD School Training  that is a huge, very interesting and useful set of transferrable and soft skills Courses. 
PhD-School Courses must be planned and booked as soon as possible, because some of them may be asked by many of the more-than-one-thousand PhD candidates @polimi. 
How to choose your PhD courses? The rule is simple: only what you need.
Since PhD may be one of your last occasions to enrich your culture, you may be tempted to spend time roaming among different disciplines and cultures. Do it, if you feel this need, but take care: three years are only apparently a long period, the pace is set (see the following paragraphs and you will see!) and the products to be realized, semester after semester, need a lot of work. The tip is to explore moderately, soberly and thrifty and in those fields that will for sure enrich, not only your culture, but also your PhD Thesis.
In any case, explore at least the offer of courses, their content, their plan and training aims given by the PhD School and by all the other PhD Programs. Explore, also, out of Politecnico di Milano, if needed (in this case, ask for authorization, also if they are free of charge).
Few tips:

MILESTONE ONE - The "State of the Art" (SoA&Biblio)

The first milestone

The first semester of Candidate’s work is – usually – devoted to exploration, to Doctoral Courses, to the Research Conferences organized by ABC Department and to other basic training activities. In the first semester, the Candidate is expected to identify the possible field of work or Research Topic and to obtain a deep understanding of the State of the Art of the research activities about that topic.
Within the end of the first semester, the Candidate will be invited to submit and to present the State of the Art (SoA) of the Research Topic under investigation and the related Reference Bibliography, to the Board.
SoA and Bibliography will be continuously updated and upgraded during the whole PhD course of study, together with their R&T Plan