PhD Oral Examination
The Department expects that the typical PhD student will take about 5.5 years after first registration to complete the PhD-related research, course work and thesis writing (see “Time Limit for Writing the PhD Thesis” below). It is the Department’s expectation that a PhD thesis will contain one to three complete data chapters. The PhD thesis exam is a formal defence of a thesis based on original scientific research as well as a test of the student's general scientific knowledge and abilities.
Requesting Permission to Write the PhD Thesis
Permission to write a PhD thesis is given at a Terminal Supervisory Committee Meeting. A detailed outline of the proposed thesis (generally in bullet point form and typically longer than a page) is presented at this meeting. The detailed outline should be included in the student’s Committee Meeting progress report that is distributed to Supervisory Committee members at least seven days before 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 devoted full-time to thesis writing and should not conduct additional experiments until the "PhD Oral Exam Request" form has been submitted online. Exceptions to this guideline can arise over the course of the writing period. For example, reviews from a submitted manuscript might compel the student to perform additional experiments, or holes in the thesis may become apparent during the writing process that necessitates additional experimentation. The student’s discretion should be applied here. Under no circumstances, however, should new experimental avenues be explored at this point in the program. The Graduate Program Coordinator will record the date that the Supervisory Committee gave the student permission to begin writing the thesis. (See “Commitments that Conflict with the Completion of a Student’s Degree”) 65
Time Limits for Writing the PhD Thesis
Students must defend within six months of receiving permission to write.
- Within this, they are allowed 4.5 months for both writing and obtaining approval of the thesis draft from the Supervisor and Supervisory Committee. The PhD Oral Exam Request must be submitted within four months of receiving permission to write via the Committee Meeting evaluation.
- The 4.5 months include time for the Supervisor and Committee Members to critique the thesis, which should take no more than six weeks in total (three weeks for the Supervisor and three 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 three months for writing and making changes.
- The PhD Oral Exam Request form must be submitted at least eight weeks prior to the agreed-upon date of the examination. Failure to meet this deadline will likely result in the exam request being denied. 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 External Examiner at least six weeks prior to the examination by the Supervisor. Students must not contact the External Examiner themselves.
- The final version of the thesis must also be sent to the full Examination Committee at least four weeks prior to the examination.