Hi there CP, I don't think they will just turn around and say 'fail' for some typos. My corrections experience is a little different. We don't have a viva but we do have presentations before submission for examination, then the thesis is examined and the reports are sent back to your internal committee 'panel chair', who pass the results on to your supervisors and the admin staff. My result was a pass with no corrections and a pass with something between minor and major corrections. No one would actually write down or say what it was, even when I pressed them.

Anyway the corrections required from the second examiner included some typos regarding commas on a specific type of APA reference, using a semi colon consistently for the word 'socio-economic', and a couple of other typos. The major bits were I did not include a couple of references that my examiner would have regarded as his and another's seminal work. (I didn't choose my examiner but I am pretty sure I now know who it is and I have included the seminal work). I did include work from my examiner, but not these specific references as my thesis had a different sort of focus. This person also wanted me to expand on some aspects of my lit review (a couple of paragraphs in specific sections). There were some suggestions or requests also that were clearly not relevant, and on my table I outlined why I would not be making these. I was given 6 months as a part time student, being told that it would be 3 months if I were full time, and it really took me probably around a fortnight to complete and return to my internal panel chair. So I am currently waiting to hear from the Grad Research people as to whether it is all good. So a part of me wonders whether everything is okay and another part of me is relatively relaxed about waiting for the panel chair's response.

I do think the process is hard-all of it. I think the worst parts for me were data collection and having to rework so many types of data collection, given participant disasters, but actually all of it has been hard. I am now past the age where I want an academic career and I have a successful career in Education, which is very fulfilling (and equally stressful, including the management of students, staff and parents who may be struggling or challenging to work with). However, I think the process has made me a stronger person and one less likely to agree or accept other's unsubstantiated opinions. It is hard though. Many best wishes for the rest of this process.

Fantastic result for you AC, congratulations and well done! :)

Hi Jamie, hope your corrections are okay-just about there-or there.

I've just submitted mine to panel chair (used a table as discussed earlier). Now just for the wait to see whether these are all good. I've decided that once the whole thing is accepted (fingers crossed this is soon), then I will probably leave the forum.

Job is getting very busy and once thesis is completely done and dusted, my postgraduate career will be at an end, (although not my professional career and I plan to continue to write in this capacity rather than as an academic).

Will post a final post on the hall of fame once I do have the final okay that corrected thesis is all good from my panel chair, and I am definitely on route to that grad ceremony.

Best wishes in the meantime Jamie, , hope you don't mind me posting this on your thread-just didn't want to start another one. Thank you for the encouragement and best wishes for your corrections and to everyone else.

All bots aside, to the original OP, I'm just a little curious. Do you mean publishing outside of the journal articles and conference presentations, that you would normally write during your PhD (or alternatively articles on your PhD that you write and submit at the end of completing your thesis)?

My understanding is that most PhD's are more commonly published nowadays as journal articles and conference proceedings.

With some PhD's in specific areas, such as history or literature studies, for example, they may be published, as books after the PhD is completed, once substantially revised and packaged into a publishable format. It would depend on the nature of your PhD and how interesting your subject matter was to a potential mainstream audience or academic publisher.

Yes, this was part of one of a series of mandatory milestones for completing a PhD at my university. We all had to defend a poster at a conference as a component of our confirmation of candidature process around the 1 year mark. For many of us, the poster was based on our proposal, lit review, methodologies and pilot data. Good luck with it Dunham. I found this process useful for getting feedback and for consolidating some of my ideas.

Hi there, congratulations! Great result. You do not need to do all of the corrections listed provided you provide a good reason and argue your case.

With your university, does a minor corrections result require you to show your corrections to your panel chair (or equivalent). If so, you would generally make a table that lists the corrections, lists where you have made corrections, and then indicates the page or section and you would then provide them with this table and the corrections made.

You should have received a written email or letter that outlines what you have to do along with your results from your department admin personnel.

If you are making most of the corrections and have a good argument as to why you can't make one, then this should be okay.

However, what do your supervisors say? Are you expected to meet with them to decide which corrections you will make and which you will argue? (When I say argue-I don't mean write an essay on it, I mean make a short but relevant point on the table under that item that refutes the need for that correction, and explains very briefly why it does not apply to your study.)

Hi there EL92, I agree with ToL's response in general, and specifically with regard to your prospects for a successful new application given you have currently not passed probation to extend your MPhil into a PhD.

Instead, is it possible to complete your MPhil project with your current university, and then apply for a PhD that explores one of your outliers, or recommendations. My experience with social sciences/education theses, is that they inevitably point out further extensions or areas for study, which are closely related to your primary topic. Perhaps after completing your current study, you might be better placed to apply for that PhD.

The other option might be to look at what the benchmarks are for passing probation and carefully addressing these. Is funding going to be an issue do you think? Perhaps you have funding for your current degree though and this impacts on your choices?

How is your relationship with your current supervisors? Are they helpful and what advice are they giving? Do you think that the advice they are giving might help with the probation issues?

Best wishes-it is a tough process.

Best wishes for a really positive interview Cat123.

Hi Johannes, I think when you are going through your thesis and checking everything you do go through your citations and check that they match up to a reference in your references section correctly, and if you can't remember the reference once you have seen the title, then you go back and check the abstract or article, or your notes, to ensure that citation is correct.

There will be many that you know inside and out, and there will be others that you are less sure of, so it doesn't necessarily take as long as you think. As you say, 2-3 days set aside for this is reasonable.

I did this and no citations/references were queried regarding content or relevance but I noted that my examiners were very aware of the references and picked up any anomalies.

(In my case this amounted to a small number of references, where I had included a terminating comma with a book chapter reference. In the case of book chapters there are no terminating commas but with journal articles there are and in my final checks with a particular book which included several different chapters written by different authors, cited a few times for the different chapters, I had automatically included a comma on this set of book chapter references when there should be none and omitted a comma with a small number of journal references.

I didn't use referencing software as it caused problems with my document btw, so the mistake was my error-overlooked- I really couldn't see it because I was very tired by that time when I was doing final checks. Overlooked by my supervisors as well but picked up by a sharp eyed examiner. I had originally used referencing software but had to completely remove it when it became problematic so this became another issue...)

In addition, because the book chapter reference was copied and pasted in part when I repeated the reference in the refs section, I replicated my error inadvertently).

Maybe they have a very shy personality or similar-it may not be done intentionally to make you feel uncomfortable.The thing is not to worry too much about it all and just to do what you think is polite and then move on.

Great result Kamali! :)

Hi there, on the topic of speaking, similarly to yourself and ToL (post above), I often struggle to express complex and new ideas coherently on the spot. For professional presentations or even general defences, I write up and clarify, ensure my train of thought is logical and rehearse before formal presentations generally. I think many of us do and we learn to use different strategies to improve any public or professional communications.

When we are stressed, often we go into flight, fight or freeze responses-our body shuts down parts of our thinking brain and floods us with adrenalin so we can run away, fight our corner or sometimes we just freeze. It may well be that your stress symptoms bring on one of these responses, and as Tru pointed out, you may also be depressed (another condition which can impact negatively on how we think). These changes are not permanent but they can be frightening when one is undergoing them.

Tudor suggested, in addition to supporting your question about seeking counselling, seeking further clarification and support from your advisors-and this may be helpful not only in helping you source support, but perhaps letting your panel advisors know you need just a bit of moral support right now to help you through this.

Personally, I think if you can access counselling, then this would probably be very reassuring for you and an effective counsellor will help you work through the key issues and develop some supportive strategies to address them. You may not need much, just one or two sessions may be enough to get you through this. Many people use counselling for a range of life situations and find it very helpful. A psychiatrist is usually someone who you would see if you had a significant mental health condition and generally you need to be referred to one by a medical doctor or psychologist first, so counselling would most likely be more helpful and accessible through your university. Best wishes though, it is a hard process and being highly stressed is not your fault; it does seem to come with the territory.