The external cannot have been involved in your research in anyway. Usually, the Uni will have their own additional specifications, such things as the examiner not being registered for a research degree themselves, needing to have examined at the required level previously, having not examined a PhD at your institution in recent years et cetera. Read the relevant section in your research student handbook or ask the postgrad office for the procedures for selecting an examining team.

Burgerking is picking up on your lack of a decimal point i.e 700 EUR is approximately 469 GBP. However, £469 would not go far in the UK. It would be very difficult to live on £469 per month if that was all you had to rent somewhere to live, feed and clothe yourself.

When Vince said that PhD students didn't 'earn', he meant that they are not usually given a salary, instead they (the lucky ones) are awarded a stipend or bursary to enable them to complete their studies. Entitlement to stipends/bursaries will depend on the funding body.

Ending the thread?!! What kind of sacrilegious talk is this?!!

It will depend on the type of work you are doing i.e. if it's a lab based PhD then you'll be spending most of your time in the Uni. There will always be somewhere you can work but you may not have the luxury of your own desk, you may have to 'hot desk' with other students/share a general postgrad area.

I had 3 examiners and had never met any of them, not even the internal (who worked at a different site). I do understand your nerves, anyone who has been in your position knows what you are going through. I honestly don't think it would be helpful to you to know about their viva style. All vivas are different.

Before my viva, I forced myself to get forget the 'scared student meets expert panel for intense grilling' mind set and made myself view the viva as a meeting of like-minded peers. You are 'one of them' now, you have completed your PhD and it's true that no one will know your work better than you. Be aware of the flaws in your thesis (every thesis has some flaws), and be prepared to talk about these (in particular why they were unavoidable, what else you could have done had you been able, what you would do in the future). Believe or not, you may actually enjoy your viva once it starts, I did!

Happy Saturday morning everyone!

I definitely wouldn't contact him directly. I would advise that you turn your energies to positive viva preparations i.e. make sure you know your work inside out and know the the examiners' work well too and most important (IMHO), get your supervisors to give you a mock viva. Pre-viva is an agonising time and I hope I don't sound unsympathetic, it's very natural (and wise) to want to 'know your enemy'! However, I think you can do this by learning as much as you can about the examiner in their professional capacity, and worrying less about other people's opinions of them (esp. if they are not positive!). Read the examiners' papers, even if not directly relevant, as this gives you an impression of their approach to research. Best of luck.

The 500th post!!!!

I can't resist...

The key thing to note is that bursaries are not taxed, but salaries are, even if you are a full-time student. I did my PhD as a salaried research assistant and paid the normal rate of tax on my monthly earnings (bah!)

But you might want to kiss him before he eats a pepperoni pizza and garlic bread...

I also know of a mol biology PhD thesis of 100 pages. AFAIK, it's because the methods used are so established that they are simply referenced (it's only the application of the methods that is novel). Hence there is no requirement for a massive methods chapter (NB I'm not a molecular biologist so could be wrong about this!)

Hi Tina

My overall discussion (Summary and Future Work) chapter was about 7 pages. However, my results were discussed in depth in each individual chapter.

Does your Uni run a 'preparing for viva' workshop? Most do, find out because they can be very helpful, if only to reassure you that all pre-viva students are freaked out about the same things! Also, get your supervisors (or anyone suitably qualified) to give you a mock viva (or vivas!), this is really important I think. Good luck!

"Does the examiner write to you and ask when to do the viva? Or is it managed by the university?"
The director of studies (your main supervisor) sometimes acts as the person who contacts the examiners to arrange a mutually convenient viva date. Sometimes it is the internal examiner who does this.

"Would they actually bother setting one up if the examiner thought that the thesis needed major changes?"
Not usually, if one of the examiners really thought that the thesis simply wasn't up to scratch, they might return it to the uni with recommendations to re-write before re-submission - this is very rare and the thesis would have been be especially lacking.