11.1 How Will My Ph.D. Thesis Be Examined

You have now done all you can in the production of a first-rate Ph.D. thesis and you have submitted it to the relevant department as required.

The next thing that will happen is that a minimum of two examiners will be appointed: one internal (not your supervisor), one external.

Great care needs to be taken in the selection of appropriate examiners so it may be some time before the examiners are finally in place.

Examiners will be chosen for their experience and for their specialist knowledge in the area you have researched.

After the examiners have been chosen, you need to be more patient than you have probably ever been in your life as the thesis needs to be read and commented upon by both examiners before any preliminary decision is made regarding the success of the Ph.D. thesis that you have submitted.

Remember that they will have buy schedules and that gaps will need to be found in both their schedules in order for you to receive the thorough, comprehensive reading that your thesis requires.

Bear in mind, also, that a thesis takes a very long time to read properly and it is not a task that you would want your examiners to rush, is it?

A Ph.D. Graduate Comments:

"The time between the submission of my thesis and my viva was the most stressful time of the whole period of my doctoral research.

I think that this was partly because for the first time, I felt that the thesis was out of my control, that I now had no more input until the viva.

On top of this, I had chosen a research topic which needed a very particular combination of expertise in my Ph.D. research so it took longer than normal to find a suitable external examiner and he was abroad lecturing for most of the year.

It actually took a total of two years between the submission of my thesis and my viva by which time, I had forgotten most of what I had written!Fortunately, everything turned out well in the end and it was worth waiting to get the right examiners but it was a nail-biting time!"