I had my viva over 7 weeks ago and am yet to receive the official report. Long story short: I have been chasing the report for weeks as I'm told it's unusual to have to wait this long.

The chair of my viva said that he submitted the report to the office weeks ago but that it has been lost in the university's internal post. When I requested for him to simply send another electronic copy to the office, I have been told that he is off on sick leave (has been for 3 weeks) and will not respond to any emails. My second port of call was for the office to contact my internal examiner who - I thought - would surely have an electronic copy of the report to hand. However, she hasn't and merely forwarded me five one sentence bullet points that I already have, simply serving as a summary of the official report. I have been advised to make a formal complaint which of course puts me in a very awkward position. All I want is my detailed viva report so I can get on with my corrections and it seems impossible for anyone in the school to provide me with it. I could be waiting another month or two at this rate, which would put me at a 4 month wait - very upsetting for myself considering I wanted to finish my corrections within 6 months. I've turned down full-time teaching hours and opted for part-time hours in order to work on my corrections yet I've spent the last 2 months still waiting for this report.

Could someone please tell me how detailed their viva report was? With major corrections, is it normal to get 4 or 5 short bullet points thrown at you, or should you be given much more description than this? I would very much appreciate any advice anyone has on this!

There is something fishy going on here, apart from sheer incompetence. Complain to Graduate school now. A detailed report for major corrections would be at least 1 page of detailed instructions. I never wrote one shorter. Good luck.

I had a long wait for corrections too due to a similarly unfeasible combination of events. In fact I've had long waits at every step since submitting. Waiting is now my top skill.

It sounds as if your chair's sick leave has more or less run on from the Christmas break, which could be where things have started to go awry.

There should be an electronic trail from when the report was being finalised between the chair and the examiners. You could try contacting your external to see if they have a copy. Alternatively, if you are in the UK I believe many universities have agreements with employees to access their emails and files in the event that their absence impedes university business, so this might be worth investigating too.

I was surprised at how short my report was - not much more than a page.