Tag: viva prep

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viva

Common Qs About The Viva: What’s The Worst Question They Can Ask?

They being The Examiners of course. The all-seeing, all-knowing Examiners. Yikes! I often encounter candidates with a fear that Examiners are trying to find a way to really make them uncomfortable, and pull their work apart. Now, hopefully if you’re reading this you don’t think or feel that way – but you might still be worried about how “bad” questions can get. So:

What’s the worst question they can ask?

I’ve mulled this over for some time, and have several possibilities:

They could ask a question not in your field. Despite being a mathematician they ask you about Art in Florence during the American Revolution. If you’re a historian, they could ask you to derive general relativity from first principles.

Except that’s not going to happen. Your examiners want to know about your research and you as a researcher. Asking about a topic that is genuinely out of your field is not going to be productive in assessing your PhD worthiness.

They could ask you a question that you have never considered. They could ask something speculative or something that you have to reason out from first principles. It might be about applying your techniques or methodology to data that you don’t have access to. Or they could ask you to think about something with very little information to hand.

But is that so bad? If you’ve got to the viva you’re up to the task. You have spent three or more years learning how to think as a researcher. Your examiners are not going to ask something totally beyond someone in your field: they would reasonably expect that this is something you can do.

And you can.

These two possibilities aren’t so bad. Is there no worst question?

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viva

Common Qs About The Viva: What Should I Know About My Examiners?

I’ve been talking to PhD candidates about viva prep for over four years, and there are some questions that regularly come up at workshops. I’ve started answering some of these on this blog, but thought it might be useful to answer some of the most frequently asked questions all of this week. Let me know what you think in the comments, and please give me some questions for future posts!

What should I know about my examiners?

I think that this question is often asked in my workshops because candidates think there might be some special knowledge that they need. Like a cheat code on an early video game console, if they know the right bits of info, they will get an easy ride – or infinite turns at answering questions maybe! Of course, things don’t work like that, but there are some really useful things to know about your examiners in advance.

Many candidates know a little about their internal and external ahead of time (assuming that this is the examination team that you have; check your institution’s guidelines). Maybe you have met your external at conferences – perhaps even cited some of their papers in your thesis. And it’s likely that you’ve had the opportunity to meet your internal before, and know a little about them. There are three things though that will be really useful to know about your examiners.

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viva

Common Qs About The Viva: What Are Minor Corrections?

I’ve been talking to PhD candidates about viva prep for over four years, and there are some questions that regularly come up at workshops. I’ve started answering some of these on this blog, but thought it might be useful to answer some of the most frequently asked questions all of this week. Let me know what you think in the comments, and please give me some questions for future posts!

What are minor corrections?

I think that this question comes up a lot in my viva preparation workshops because people want to know what might be in their future. Hopefully they know that most PhD candidates have to make some amendments to their thesis, and so it’s useful to know what sorts of things come up. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, typical items on a list of minor corrections could include:

  • spelling mistakes and typos: I was terrible for missing “the the” in my thesis!
  • corrections to grammar: some grammar rules are easy to miss; if your examiners spot things they are not just being pedantic – they want your thesis to be the best it can be.
  • amendments to tables, references, diagrams: usually to make things more clear.
  • small amounts of copyediting: rewording sentences and paragraphs to make the meaning more clear.

There is a hope that a thesis will be read at some future date by someone wanting to build on your research. Corrections are asked for, in part, so that the book you have produced will as helpful as possible.

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viva

Common Qs About The Viva: What If I Find Mistakes?

I’ve been talking to PhD candidates about viva prep for over four years, and there are some questions that regularly come up at workshops. I’ve started answering some of these on this blog, but thought it might be useful to answer some of the most frequently asked questions all of this week. Let me know what you think in the comments, and please give me some questions for future posts!

What if I find mistakes in my thesis after submission?

I think that this question comes up a lot for lots of possible reasons. Most common, I think, is a fear that mistakes will somehow lessen the impact of academic work – examiners might find a typo and instantly think “This candidate was doing so well… Such a shame!”

In preparing for your viva you are going to read your thesis; you are bound to find things that you would want to be different. Sometimes this will just be phrasing, but sometimes you might find things that need to be different: spelling mistakes, awkward phrasing or even errors in your work. What can you do?

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viva

Common Qs About The Viva: Does Publishing Before The Viva Help?

I’ve been talking to PhD candidates about viva prep for over four years, and there are some questions that regularly come up at workshops. I’ve started answering some of these on this blog, but thought it might be useful to answer some of the most frequently asked questions all of this week. Let me know what you think in the comments, and please give me some questions for future posts!

Does publishing before the viva help?

I think that this question comes up a lot because some postgraduate researchers have been told that that is what academia is all about. It’s true that peer review of journal articles is a backbone of academic research, but PhDs are assessed on material presented in the thesis. The award of PhD is based on the merits of the research in the thesis, and by extension the talents and competence of the person who did it (the PhD candidate).

Given all of that, does publishing before the viva help?

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viva

Common Qs About The Viva: How Do They Start?

I’ve been talking to PhD candidates about viva prep for over four years, and there are some questions that regularly come up at workshops. I’ve started answering some of these on this blog, but thought it might be useful to answer some of the most frequently asked questions all of this week. Let me know what you think in the comments, and please give me some questions for future posts!

How do vivas start?

I think this question comes up a lot because sometimes starting things is hard. I think there’s often a fear of the unknown associated with the viva: the start of the viva is the start of the fear! I think that’s a shame, because from my experience of talking to PhD graduates, vivas tend to start with examiners asking the candidate to talk in general terms about their thesis and research.

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series viva

Commons Qs About The Viva: What If My Mind Goes Blank?

When did your mind last go blank?

The first time for me was in Mr R’s chemistry class in high school. Like a real swot I sat on the front row, even though Mr R was intimidating and had a habit of randomly picking people to answer his questions.

One day, I was really focussing as he talked about the concentration of substances in a solvent when he suddenly said, “…and the answer is… Ryder?” and turned his piercing gaze on me. My mind crashed and I lost the last ten seconds of what he had said: deleted, file error, 404 response. I had no idea what he said, even though I had been listening and all I could do was say “Uh, not sure sir,” to which he smirked, “Not listening, eh?! Bowness, how about you?”

(the answer incidentally was “2” and the question amounted to “what is 4 divided by 2?”)

(the irony that I would go on to get a PhD in maths is not lost on me)

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news viva

The Viva Survivors Podcast on Patreon

If you read this blog regularly, you’ll know that I produce the Viva Survivors Podcast. This is a project of mine where I interview PhD graduates about their research, their viva and life after the PhD. I’ve always hoped that it was a great way to help PhD candidates realise that the viva is going to be OK – it’s not a mystery, there are things to expect and there are things that people can do to prepare.

The current Viva Survivors banner!
The current Viva Survivors banner!

I realised after a while that it was also a really great way to tell people more generally about research. Someone starting a PhD can listen to the podcast and find out a bit about what doing research is like, as well as learning about a really cool research topic. At the time of writing, there are 28 episodes in the archive, and I’m well on track to hit my target of 32 by the end of the year (and we’ll see if we can squeeze another one in for good measure!).

I want to do more: can you help?

In the last year I had to take time off from the podcast in order to adjust to becoming a dad! Now that I’ve stepped back up to it I’m enjoying it more than ever, and realising that I want to provide more. To help that process, I’ve created a Patreon campaign for the podcast. Patreon is a bit like Kickstarter, but whereas the latter is for a project that isn’t finished yet, Patreon is crowdfunding for ongoing efforts.

I’ve just started the campaign, but as support grows I’ll be able to spend more time on producing episodes, creating new content and expanding the output of the podcast. I have a couple of initial goals (like covering the cost of hosting, creating several pieces of writing each month and producing some focused tips-based episodes), but I also have big dreams. And I need your help to achieve both my goals and my dreams: providing a useful resource to postgraduate researchers in the UK and around the world.

So, can you help me?

If you can, great! The podcast will always be 100% free for everyone, and if you are able to become a Patron for the Viva Survivors Podcast then I can do some things to say thank you in return. I have a variety of things to begin with, like a “Thank You!” page of backers on the podcast, a pre-release notification that new content is coming to the site – and even early access to future episodes!

Patreon is straight-forward to set up, and it seems like a really useful way to support people creating things. Even if you don’t think that you can support the Viva Survivors Podcast at the moment, then have a look around and see what other amazing things people are doing.

Thanks for reading! I’ve really enjoyed the last two and a half years of producing the podcast, sharing the episodes and seeing it become a valuable resource. With your help I hope to continue this and do a lot more. Any help you can offer to support the Viva Survivors Podcast – by sharing the episodes, volunteering to share your story or becoming a Patron – is really appreciated.

Nathan (@DrRyder and @VivaSurvivors)

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viva

Common Questions About The Viva: Dress Code

Is there a dress code for the viva?

Whenever I deliver a workshop on viva preparation, I ask “What do you want to know about the viva?” 100% of the time I get asked about the lengths of vivas, but as I answered that question last week, I thought that I would ask the question I get asked at 99% of workshops: is there a dress code for the viva?

In a few institutions, there is a standard of academic attire that is required (I believe Oxford and Cambridge often asks for candidates to wear academic black dress robes); be sure to check if there are any requirements at your institution. Guidelines might be given, but more often it is the candidate’s choice to decide what they want to wear. I know people who have worn business casual to their viva, and I know people who have worn a t-shirt and ripped jeans. I also know people who have stressed over what is “the best” or “the right” thing to wear.

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series viva

Viva Experience Research, Part 5: Drawing Threads Together

So Far

On Monday I introduced the research I set in motion earlier this year, a series of seven questions I asked PhD graduates about their viva experiences. On Tuesday and Wednesday I shared the basic quantitative results that I have found through analysing the responses I received, and yesterday I shared some of the qualitative responses that people gave, and offered a few thoughts on this.

What do all of these results say?

Vivas are not as long – on the whole – as stories about vivas lead us to believe; the vast majority of candidates who pass do so with minor corrections or no corrections; it seems a greater than previously believed proportion of candidates are told at the start of their viva that they have passed – and this is especially pronounced in ASH disciplines (Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities). Far more graduates think of their viva as being positive rather than negative, although almost a quarter of the respondents associated their viva with stress.

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