Hi everyone. My viva is this Friday and I wondered if anyone could offer me some advice in terms of preparation at this stage. Obviously by now I've gone through my thesis in quite a bit of detail and I'm making sure I'm familiar with the key references. Is there anything else I should be doing? I've heard that a common starter is to be asked to give an overview of the thesis so I guess I should be able to regurgitate my abstract?! It's the more open ended/bigger picture questions I'm most worried about. I'm quite confident at presenting my data at conferences but in that situation I'd have powerpoint slides as prompts and will have practised the 'performance'. Any words of wisdom would be appreciated...!

Depends completely on the external examiner.. I had a word with my supervisor about mine and he told me the kinds of questions my external has usually asked - he was apparantly hot on 'research methods' (something my thesis didn't mention) so he asked me about them and one of my minor corrections was to add a section to do with research methods.

My viva was odd as it only lasted 55 mins and I felt a total fraud as all the examiner did was ask me very generic questions.. 'how do you see a virtual organisation?' and 'Do you feel you could have done this bit better?' Was very odd.

Have you identified all the 'holes' in your research and justified them and are you able to back up every decision you took?

yeah I've made a 1 page summary for each of my results chapters and identified the limitations/weaknesses and have come up with a counter argument for each one to defend my approach. I've met my external once a while back but she is not familar with the UK viva system. My internal has a lot of UK viva experience and I guess will keep my external right. I submitted back in November and was meant to have the viva last month but it had to be rescheduled at the last minute so all this waiting hasn't helped. I just want to get it over with now!

I'd suggest having a 1,5, 10 and 15 minute presentation prepared.
As a viva is an open book examination you could take copies of your slides in and use them on a small flip chart.

Try to find out about the normal viva process for your external examiner's country. I know some other European countries have more of a presentation and then q&a type set-up.

PC Geek, 55 minutes! Wow. One would think your external hadn't thoroughly read your thesis

It's remarkable how different vivas can be. The longest I've heard of is 8 hours, and now the shortest 55 mins.

I think the 55 min viva is usually because they have read the thesis and generally think that it is well written and points well considered so they just generally check background knowledge and let you on your way
I've heard of quite a few of these now ranging from the 1-2 hours and only actually know of one over 4 hours

'PC Geek, 55 minutes! Wow. One would think your external hadn't thoroughly read your thesis '

I don't think he had.. and he was in a real hurry to leave... he didn't stay for lunch and literally rushed out after telling me the result - my internal had pages and pages of questions, however after the external professor said 'Ok, that's me finished' she took his body language to mean he was in a hurry so asked me 3-4 token questions and said 'that's it'...

She told me afterwards I was bloody lucky as she had found flaws in my research (the ones I had already identified and was ready to defend) but said as I wasn't pulled up on them, I just had to make minor changes to the thesis..

I think this is probably the only 'better' thing I can hold over my partner.. he got a first in his BSc, finished his PhD 6 months earlier than me, earns more than me... still, his viva lasted 2.5 hours...

I'm taking it to be a petty and shallow victory

Hi, I've heard that a common mistake for students is that that they go into the viva not knowing what the key findings are in their reference material.

Good luck for your viva and congratulations on submitting! Let us all know how it went!

so just to stress me out even more, i just find out tonight that my internal wants me to give a 20 minute powerpoint presentation to kick things off I can see how it might help kick off the whole discussion but I would have appreciated a bit of advance warning about this to give me time to prepare it well. I know this isn't unheard off but it's not that common is it? I personally don't know anyone who has had to do this...

As you say, it's not unheard of for PhD students in the UK to give presentations during their viva, but it's slightly unusual. On the Continent it's normal as they tend to have public defenses. Perhaps this is actually a request from your external examiner, via your internal, since you mention that she is not from the UK?

My suggestion is not to worry about it and just stick to the key points in your thesis. You could even adapt one (or more) of your conference presentations, assuming they are relevant to your thesis topic. Use this to your advantage, as you say feel confident presenting with slides as a back up. Good luck!

Embrace the opportunity to present! It gives you the opportunity to 'sell' your Phd and direct the conversation that will follow immediately afterwards.

Good luck

I did it!! I passed my viva with some written changes to be made to the thesis. I found it pretty tough but I guess it is not meant to be easy. Yaaaaay

Yeaaaa! congratulations

Congrats!!!