Hi,

I'm interested in the different award classifications across universities to award PhD. I wrote on here a while back about how I got Resubmission but at Manchester University any revisions over one month is automatically classed a Resubmission. I recently gave a talk on viva preparation to some postgrads where I currently work at newcastle and the window for revisions is up to 6 month. Had a look at a couple of universities' guidelines and they are widely divergent (4 weeks to a year!)

Basically this seems a bit of an odd one in that the same qualification can be assessed so differently across institutions and I wondered if there was any link that showed the differences across universities and why they exist. Surely it's in no one's interest to have different criteria-students or universities?

Any help much appreciated

Hi Jimmynew

Is what you outline a grading system, or an administrative system?

Ultimately, the award is 'PhD'; it is not differentiated like first degrees (you have a PhD, not a PhD [resubmission]). The differences you mention are, therefore, administrative variations between universities while the ultimate awards are, perhaps arguably, identical.

Unless I have completely misunderstood it ... always possible! :p

P.