Hi all,

So if you submitted, have had a few months between submission and your viva, have not thought about PhD at all.... how long would you spend preparing for the PhD viva. Is a weekend enough? two weekends? three weekends? etc

Thanks!
Sam

Well, you must receive a letter from your university inviting you to attend the viva. It's not usually short notice. I would say 10 days are more than enough. After all you have written the thesis - you know it inside out anyway.

Thanks for the reply. 10 days solid?

It depends on how long and complicated your thesis is. I would say 10 days - but do a little bit of work every day if you progress fast. Don't leave it too late, otherwise you may get stressed thinking that you haven't got much time to revise.

However long you need to be able to defend it.

I think it's less a case of time spent, as a case of being ready to answer the likely questions!

Does your institution offer Viva prep training? We had a handout given that listed likely questions and I used that to prep. It was similar material to the viva prep books that you will find in your uni library. So for example:

Why did you do a PhD?
Why this PhD?
What would you do differently?
Why this methodology?
What are the implications of your findings?
What's changed in the field?
What next?

So refreshing your memory on why you made decisions at each stage. You have time in the viva to flick through the thesis, so it isn't a memory test of what you wrote. Be ready to answer questions on what and why, including if you would do things differently in hindsight.

My response is from a science and engineering perspective. For humanities, this is different. But basic advice is don't panic.

I was told by to prepare for whatever I was expected to know. Basically, this included the thesis, the related literature, related science and also methodologies used during the experimental phase of my PhD.

I submitted just before Christmas and had a period of 2.5 months between submission and viva. I had a short break over Christmas and started again straight after, revising and reviewing the thesis itself and related periphery subjects up to viva day.

The above is not as onerous as it sounds, except in the days before viva as the related literature I already knew from write-up. As regards literature, it was a case of it staying fresh in my head and didn't take too much effort.

Methodologies I'd used during experimental work wasn't too bad, as it was just a matter of ensuring basic science stuck in my head (TEM, SEM, XRD, etc.). Deep theory was unlikely, so doing enough to discuss with relevance to the doctoral work was all I needed.

This left me clear to concentrate on periphery science, this being a little trickier as some aspects I'd not looked at since first degree and I thus had to dig into text books and literature proper here.

In retrospect, I don't know if I needed to krevise material for 2.5 months. However, come viva I was well prepared. In the end, my external examiner didn't go beyond the thesis itself. However, on another day she might have so better to be prepared as my supervisor suggested. He all but said to prepare for hell, however, in the end I came through the four hours with little trouble and just very minor corrections.

I did get a chance to proof my thesis for grammar and spelling ensuring errors in the hard bound thesis were at a minimum.

Ian

Thanks all..... I've only a few days and I've not started preparing.... Best get cracking!! I really didn't anticipate people would suggest viva prep is so much work

As I commented, it may well depend upon the subject. Previous posts on here suggest a different approach if you're humanities. Bilbo Baggins is probably a good person to ask if this is the case as she withdrew from a science PhD and later did a humanities PhD.

I think my approach may have been on the extreme side, though supervisor and predecessor did succeed in putting the frighteners up me. However, as I said I went in well prepared as a result.

Ian

It really depends on how well you know your thesis inside out. A friend had to have an emergency viva - she didn't expect to have it that early and later she was told that she would have it in 5 days time as they were racing time for her to graduate in December. So she only revised her thesis for 4 days. Eventually she passed with minor corrections.