He isn't going to get a certificate for staying on the PhD for 3.2 years. He needs to submit some type of thesis for that.

Options are:
1. quit and leave with nothing
2.Suspend, seek help and come back later when able to do so
3. ask if he can submit a masters thesis instead (shorter, he might have enough results for it)
4. Persevere somehow and submit a PhD thesis, assuming he has enough results.

He needs to discuss this with someone ie HOD of someone in the admin team, as you mentioned.

Consequences? Depends if had a loan etc to repay if doesn't succeed. If paid by UK research council or university then this doesn't need to be repaid. He might struggle to get onto another PhD if he decides he wants to in the future. He might struggle to explain "gap" in his CV for future jobs.

Hard to say. Could be that you are usually insecure? In which case, I'm not sure what will change? If you're usually confident in your abilities, then it's probably just a blip and we all have those days/weeks/months.

And I agree with what Bong said.

I don't know anything about a PGDM, other than, by its very name, it's a diploma, so it cannot be true that a MBA (masters) is the same as a PGDM (diploma).

I agree with all you've said Bong.

I've seen pm133's post on another thread about the strikes.

What are other people's opinion on them? Has anyone been directly affected? Is anyone on here striking?

Personally I support them because I think it's wrong to slash pre-agreed pensions, but I'm not in the union so I'm not striking myself.

I've been affected as lots of training sessions I've signed up for have been cancelled, but that's a good thing because it actually frees up my time...

haha Pjlu, I read that and wondered what on Earth you were on about!

It might be in social sciences etc, but in science, more people can be a good thing because it shows collaboration as pm133 said.

If they do, I don't reckon they've done the PhD properly :P

My supervisor totally rewrote an abstract I'd written once.

I was glad. Mine was written really quickly and was crap. His was awesome - he's a great writer.

So, sometimes it's nice. Saved me having to do it and got me a better abstract than I could have written.

I'm not as particular about ongoing work as pm133 is - in my field it's unlikely anyone is going to pip me to the post with what I'm doing. But I would just want to send the abstract in, so that's what I would do.

You'll be absolutely fine! Don't worry about these minor errors - they will just tell you to correct them. You can still get a decision of "pass" with small typos to correct; they often don't bother to give "minor corrections" for this.

Hang in there, you're so close to the finishing line!

It doesn't matter how many other authors there are besides you in first or last place, that's true. It does eventually matter whether some papers are without your PhD supervisors.

When you say early, how early? Many universities have stipulations that you can not submit earlier than 2.75 years. If you've gone past that requirement, then it's up to you when you submit.

But I would urge caution if your supervisors are not recommending you submit early. They do have more knowledge than you about these things.

But then again, if you've got no more funding then you've got no choice. Sounds like you have quite a lot of results, so probably worse case scenario is major corrections/R&R asking you to do more experiments, which you would have to do on evenings and weekends around a FT job presumably. I know someone who took the option to submit when they weren't ready knowing they would get major corrections and it worked out ok for them in the end.

pm133, it's not usual for people such as technicians and field assistants to be added to papers. What Tudor_Queen is describing is totally normal IMO.

Anyway, I have decided I will add the student's name to the poster. I'm still not convinced they should be included, but it doesn't really matter whether they are on there or not this time.