It depends, but if your last chapter is so weak to the degree that it fails to provide a clear summary of your work/your area of research, then it might give examiners a wrong impression, and they may doubt if your thesis is indeed your own work.

And a very very poor viva performance may reinforce their wrong impressions, and I would expect only in such cases, a mphil become possible

So IMO, for you, the best strategy for your viva is: making sure you know your thesis very well, e.g. you should be able to give logical explainations to any key decisions you made in your thesis and you should be well prepared to answer their questions regarding some famous related works in your area.

As long as you show them your thesis is indeed your own work, there is 0% chance that you fail your viva.

I think the most likely outcome for you is redo your last chapter, which may mean either a major correction without viva or even minor corrections, depend on your performance in your viva.

But I will definitely rule out the possiblity that you end up with a MPhil, judging by the feedbacks from your sups/examiners.

Just be very familiar with your thesis, be prepared to answer some very elemental questions in your area of research, they may ask you some of such questions to test your knowledge, and of cause, don't forget to bring your confidence with you, good luck.

I prefer using "the author" instead of "I".

Never bother to waste your time on making long-term plans.

When I started my PhD 4 years ago, I planned to get it done within 2.5 years, but too bad, things turn out to be I have been way too lazy to accomplish that goal...

But of cause, at least in my area (something to do with numerical analysis/computing), it is definitely possible to get your PhD within 3 years, as long as you are not very lazy (never underestimate the difficulities of being not very lazy).

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In the UK system, the transfer-exam/mini viva is by no means serious business,

I have never heard of anyone in my graduate school(usually considered top 1 or 2 in my area of research) who has failed it, you dont need to put near half of your efforts to get a pass.

Based on my rather limited experience (I am an oversea student), I think in this country, for a PhD programme, the only thing that matters is your PhD thesis/final viva.

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As long as you know your thesis well, it should be OK:

I have not had any discussions/meetings with my supervisors after thesis-submission (not like it would have been very helpful since they are not even remote to be the experts in my area of research anyway), I have not attended any mock viva, actually I have not spent much time on the viva and I am an oversea student, I still passed the viva without much difficulties.

So you should be fine, afterall you have spent years on your topic so you should have known well about your thesis and usually it should be you, not the examiners, be the more experienced one in your area of research, so take it easy and be confident, you can handle the examiners and their "amateurish" questions well.

Well, I think UCL is more famous.

Not to be critical, but it seems to me that you have not done enough ABCs about your work.

Try finding these highly-citied journal papers on your topic from top journals which have been published recently (e.g. within 3-10 years, depend on your area of research), and try reading them (especially the introduction parts of these papers) very carefully.

By doing this, you will get a good idea about whats going on there, and by then you should have already known the possible approaches to tackle the problems as well.

Btw, don't expect too much help from your supervisors, its too often that your supervisors basically have no idea about the topic you are doing (otherwise they wouldnt have been so keen to  pay you to do the work in the first place) and sometimes their "detailed" advices can be misleading (yes, it does happen, actually more often than you may think) which may even lead to potential viva disasters.

So just learn to work on your own and take "advices" from these highly-citied peer-reviewed journal papers, good luck.

Are you talking about a PhD thesis? For a PhD thesis, 40000-50000 words seems normal for a science/engineering major, and a little bit too short for an art/law major.

I am a PhD student who is just a few weeks away from getting the "Dr" title, to be honest, in my area (which is something to do with applied mathematics and computing), unless you are really enjoying the research, you should take a job in industry, its much less demanding and much better paid, and you can get more respect as well, since most guys in industry are less educated than you do so you will automatically get some respect from others there,  but in academic community, a PhD title means nothing, and you are the easy push-overs until maybe 10+ year later when you yourself become another "bully".

The choice for me is obviously.

Not sure about film/arts through.

I am an oversea student at Imperial college.

I have passed my viva, made the corrections and I just submitted the final version of my thesis to the system 2 days ago, usually how long it takes for me to get my PhD degree awarded? can I get my degree by the end of this year?

Many thanks in advance!