Hi All,

These comments have been really helpful/reassuring ... thank you everyone!

:)

To be honest, I have a huge amount of admiration for anyone who goes through all of this, culminating in the viva. PhD candidates often get a bad press and are talked down, so to hear these stories really gives a completely different picture

Do you know during the viva if you are going to get minor corrections? Do they point out things they would have done differently all the way through, or do you find out at the end when they have had a private discussion?

They pointed out stuff all the way wrong (as part of the discussion) but I had no idea of the outcome until after the private discussion. I do know of people who have been told the outcome at the start of the viva but that is totally against the rules!

Matt82,

i think anyone who goes through this phd thingy-whatsit is either mad at the start, but definitely mad at the end of it. (this includes me). i have no admiration for phd students at all - worst people on the planet if you ask me.

If you're work's good it's not uncommon for examiners to say afew words of encouragement with the pleasantries at the start - something like "I enjoyed reading your thesis, very well written". Something suitably vague that doesn't tell you the exact outcome but at least lets you know you've not totally f**ked up. Fluffy is right, the outcome should not be disclosed at the start of the examination - someone could submit a brilliantly written and argued thesis but may not have written it themselves!!

Put down to basics, the purpose of the viva is to -
1. establish that YOU'VE written it
2. the you UNDERSTAND what you've written
3. that the work makes an original contribution to knowledge in your field

This has been so helpful to me. Pathetically, the viva was one of the reasons I didn't want to do a PhD. I feel quite a bit better now, thanks everyone, another thread to print off and put in the filofax

Hi all
I am quite far away from my viva, but from most people I hear that the examiners go over the thesis page by page and ask questions...

I am wondering, if you have to resubmit with major corrections, do you have to have another viva?

There was a guy on another thread who isn't having a 2nd viva but has major corrections

To be a pedant....
if the examiners tell you something is wrong, will you have to correct it? Can they tell you minor things are wrong and you still get no corrections?

Evidently its much different in the U.S. My manager is also one of my externals (we have 3 internals, 2 externals - varies per college) and what she has told me is that by the time you defend dissertation, all the work is done; defense is a time for you to celebrate your work, any major revisions have to be done prior to this point, otherwise the committee really has not done its job. They also are open to the public. One of our profs got his PhD at Oxford and said it was completely different there, you truley did not know going into the defense if you would come out with your PhD in hand. I'm banking on what she's said, but plan to attend quite a few defenses during the next year to get my own idea.

Hi all Compsci - I think (in the UK at least) having to re-present yourself for another viva (even in the case of major amendments)is very unusual. I've only every heard of once case, in which a student wrote a very good thesis that did not need much doing to it, but had somehow gone through the whole PhD process without making presentations and becoming used to talking about his work (don't ask me how!). Therefore he did not verbally defend it well as he hadn't anticipated what to defend (if you get what I mean.) He was asked to come for another viva.

CC - you're not being pedantic! "optional corrections" IS an outcome that can occur! I've known two people get this, it generally pertained to things that were really minor (like punctuation) but meant that the thesis was still OK if it stayed as it was.

To clarify, here are the outcomes listed at my uni (taken directly from my viva report page!)

- Pass : no corrections required
- Pass and permit minor errors (the “optional corrections” thing)
_ Pass but insist on minor corrections (specifying time limit) – [This is what I got]

- Refer with permission to resubmit within {specify time period}
(a)with/without further oral examination,
(b)after further research
- Fail but recommend the award of Masters degree with/without corrections
- Fail with no further recommendations

Just wondered...how common is the last option, the 'fail no further recommendations'? Seems to me that if a student gets to his final viva without even masters quality work with corrections then someone hasn't been doing his job (the student obviously but also the supervisor and anyone who sat in on the 2nd year progress viva).

What would be considered 'original work', how many peer reviewed papers would confirm your work to be of adequate quality and original ? Is that how it is judged ?

You don't need papers to pass a Ph.D.
Which is lucky
I have a book somewhere on how to get a Ph.D. that has about a page of examples about what is original, it is a lot easier than you would think. You can present minor bits of other people's work if it has not been presented anywhere before, or make a minor change to an existing method. Can't remember what the book said.