My thesis was submitted about two months ago. The results should be released very soon.

i have been reading my thesis about two to three pages every day after the submission, and just realised that every single page should be revised...

Thus, whether the examiners recommend major revision or minor revision, has anyone revised every page in the thesis? Perhaps, i am the only one here who feel so bad about the thesis?

I am not sure how many typos and errors I corrected after submission.. it was quite a few ! which I corrected as I couldn't just leave them there - even though the examiners made no reference to typos, spelling, grammar, referencing, formatting etc. ! I had a friend who had a list of 100 + things to change (minor corrections). It is likely your examiners will not pick up on all of these things you have noticed as you will have read your thesis far more times than they have! (assuming they are mainly typographical) .. and in any case they can be easily fixed. If they are more substantial corrections then it worth making a list, so that (if asked) you can evidence that you plan to address and amend them following the viva.

Firstly, everyone in the world feels bad about their thesis after submission! All you can see is the massive mistakes you have made all the way through (which in reality aren't massive at all and most wouldn't even be noticed by other people).

You say that 'the results should be released soon'. Does this mean that you won't have a viva? If you do, then do as suggested by psychresearcher and make a list of all the errors now. You can even start working through them, and then if the examiners mention them during the viva then you can say that you have already corrected them. This may help sway them towards minor rather than major corrections. However, DO NOT MENTION THE ERRORS UNLESS THEY DO! As they probably haven't even noticed half of them and you will just be pointing them out!

The difference between major and minor is usually to do with timing, i.e., how long they think you will take to complete them. You are usually given a month to correct minors and 3-6 months to correct majors, depending on your university. If you are on the border between minor and major, they may make a decision based upon your personal circumstances - for example, I have heard of people being given the verdict of 'major' even though they only had a few corrections to make, as they had a full time job and so the examiners wanted to make sure they had enough time to complete the corrections properly.

Finally, nearly everyone on this forum fears the worst whilst waiting for their results, but it very rarely happens. Have a look through the threads on here and read the stories - the vast majority of people are convinced theirs is the worst thesis ever and they will outright fail ( and I include myself in that!), and nearly every single one of them (yes, even me!) came out with minor corrections. The waiting is the worst bit. Best of luck :)

I agree everyone hates their thesis after submission!

I think it depends what these revisions are, and what corrections you get.
I got pass with typos. They picked up about 15. I found close to 100! I was told I could only make changes to typos and not change anything else. There were quite a few places where I felt the use of grammer was clunky or I wanted to re write sections to make it clearer, but in the end had to leave things as they were.

Best of luck with the outcome :)

Smoobles sums it up nicely, but I'll repeat the piece she posted in bold.

DO NOT MENTION THE ERRORS UNLESS THEY DO!!!

If you do, they may delve deeper and ask themselves what other errors they may have missed. You may be encouraging major corrections.

Correct the minor typos (commas, spelling, grammar, etc.) as you go through and wait to see what they list as more significant errors.

Ian (Mackem_Beefy)

Hi catalinbond, Mackem_Beefy, psychresearcher, Smoobles,

Thanks for the comments. Recently, one retired professor shared with me a lot of his experience in academia.
According to him, major revision may mean the thesis is not of high quality.
It may also mean the examiner is very critical or there could be politics between someone...
But major revision could be blessing in disguise when there are many suggestions for improvement.

On the other hand, minor revision or correction may mean the thesis is of high quality.
It may also mean the examiner is not very thorough or there could be excellent relationship between the supervisor and the examiner.
But minor revision could be unfortunate when many weaknesses in the thesis are overlooked or they were not revealed as good gestures...

If we read many theses carefully, it is not really difficult to discover errors or weaknesses. However, it seems that errors or weaknesses in thesis are rarely cited in papers. But we cannot be sure.

I am expecting 100 + corrections(major + minor). One of the examiners is known to be very critical. In a sense, my thesis supersedes his work. In a sense, it is so dangerous to select an examiner who is also our competitor for similar research work.

A very good point. My expectation was major corrections to be submitted after 6 months (probably without a new viva), when I re-read the thesis between submission and viva.

In all honesty, I believe my discussion did not tie my findings to literature strongly enough and it needed a critical element in relation to literature added. I don't believe the internal had read the thesis through and was relying on the external examiner (friendly with my supervisor) to cover for this. However, the rest of the thesis was solid with quite a lot of new findings, so I don't think even the most critical examiner would have failed it outright.

I was let off with minor corrections (three typos), which surprised me. However, my supervisor had a record of not allowing submission unless he was 99% sure a candidate was going to pass. So perhaps I'm being over-self-critical and the perfectionist in me is comng to the surface here. :-)


Ian (Mackem_Beefy)

Hi Ian,

It is uncommon to have minor corrections (three typos). During the discussion between the examiners and your supervisor, they are probably impressed not only with your thesis, but your character, attitude and the hard work you put in… The skill and hard work in preparing the specimen may not be easily obvious or noticeable to some examiners.

However, I have a glance at your thesis, just a few minutes. It seems that your SEM micrographs are usually in 20 kV (There is no mention of tilting angle). But in Page 114, one of the SEM micrographs is 22kV, then page 116 two SEM micrographs are 18 kV. A nasty examiner may question the inconsistency of voltage, as the penetration depth may vary. Also there is no mention if the specimen for EDX was coated by gold or carbon as well as the duration… Alternatively, some nasty examiners may question why SIMS or AFM were not carried out… Probably nasty examiners may ask anything under the sun.

Okay MeaningLife - my defence against those questions would have been as follows. ;-)

The potential difference had to be varied as although the base samples were metallic, sometimes metallic debris, sometimes oxide debris was generated during relative sample sliding previously during my test runs depending upon sliding environmental conditions (speed, temperature, load, etc.). It was this debris we needed to analyse. Variation was necessary to avoid overcharging (evident as a glowing effect) developing on the produced images on areas of high oxide (i.e. non-conducting). There was in effect a balancing act, between applying sufficient potential difference to produce a usable image and applying too much such that the glowing effect occurred.

This charging 'glowing' effect could have been overcome if I had 'gold or carbon' plated the samples. If I had plated the samples, however, I'd not have been able to conduct EDX or EDS (electron dispersive X-ray spectroscopy) on them. I'd have instead obtained the spectroscopic analysis for the plating layer. Plating to enhance imaging would also have meant further analysis would have been compromised - it was often necessary to return to previously analysed samples.. The samples had to potentially undergo further analysis, including X-Ray Diffraction and Cross Sectional EDX.

AFM (Atomic Force Microscopy) and STM (Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy - the latter preferable due to electrical conductance in the samples) was only just becoming readily available during my PhD and some samples were indeed characterised. Examples of STM on selected samples along with TEM (TEM turned out to be more useful) are presented and discussed at the end of both my results and discussion section. Through such techniques, we were able to determine that the grain sizes of the tribologially generated (due to sliding wear) oxides being produced was as little as 2 to 10 nm across. From this we were able to elucidate on the initial formation processes of the oxides generated during sliding, which turned out to be one of the original findings of the work conducted.

I've probably lost half the forum with the above!!! :-)

Ian (Mackem_Beefy)

Thanks for the technical explanations. ;-)

My point is to illustrate *nasty* examiners. Just imagine the examiners insist you have to re-prepare the samples such that the SEM micrographs are consistently in 20 kV. (By the way, sometimes 1 kV could be carried out to avoid charging, but the image is less sharp.)
One may consider to appeal for another examiner...

Perhaps going through nasty examiners may help one to be stronger; but it is really some kind of nightmare.

:-)

20 kV for every sample would have been impossible and 1kV didn't give a useable image - I needed 10 to 15 kV minimum to produce a decent image.

You illustrated your point quite well, but the questions also came across as the 'examiner' (played by yourself) seeing how much the candidate (played by me) actually knew about the methods being used. I think the above interaction demonstrates how the candidate has to be prepared for some very awkward, strange and even 'acting dumb'-type questions (even from friendly examiners) to determine the candidate's understanding about what they have done.

As I said elsewhere, I prepared for that under the premise of what I might be expected to know. It's not just a case of knowing the material in your thesis, but peripheral areas such as general knowledge of your subject (in my case materials science and chemistry) and of the background of techniques used.

Ian (Mackem_Beefy)