MSc Oral Examination

When all course requirements have been met and the Supervisory Committee has read and approved the thesis, students may schedule an MSc Oral Exam.

MSc Oral Exams should take place 2 to 2.5 years after first registration (see “Time Limits for Writing the MSc Thesis” section below). This examination is a formal defence of a thesis based on original scientific research conducted in the Department as well as a test of the student's general scientific knowledge and abilities.

Requesting Permission to Write the MSc Thesis

Permission to write an MSc thesis is given at a Terminal Supervisory Committee Meeting. A detailed outline of the proposed thesis (generally in point form and 1-2 pages in length) is presented at this meeting. The detailed outline should also be included in the student’s Committee Meeting progress report that is distributed to Supervisory Committee members at least seven days prior to the Terminal Committee Meeting. Note that Committee members can also post-date this form up to six weeks after the date of the Terminal Committee meeting should experiments be completed within that timeframe. If experiments take longer than six weeks, another Terminal Committee Meeting must be scheduled by the student upon completion of all experiments.

Students may begin writing parts of their thesis at any time, but after formal ‘permission to write’ is given, the student should be writing their thesis full-time and should not conduct additional experiments until the "Request to set up an MSc Oral Examination" form has been completed by all relevant parties. The Graduate Program Coordinator will record the date that the Supervisory Committee gave the student permission to write their thesis.

Time Limits for Writing the MSc Thesis

Students must defend within four months of receiving permission to write.

Within this, they are allowed three months for both writing and obtaining approval of the thesis draft from the Supervisor and Supervisory Committee.
The three months include time for the Supervisor and Committee Members to critique the thesis, which should take no more than four weeks in total (two weeks for the Supervisor and two weeks for Committee Members). Students must also allow enough time to make the required changes after the Supervisor has critiqued the thesis and then again after the Supervisory Committee members have critiqued the thesis. This means students have 2.5 months for writing and making changes.
The MSc Oral Exam Request form must be submitted at least three weeks prior to the agreed-upon date of the examination. Note that final copies of the thesis are no longer required for this form, so the form can be submitted at any point after the Supervisor has approved the full thesis draft.
The final version of the thesis must be sent to the full Examination Committee at least two weeks prior to the examination.