Can you fail a dissertation defense

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. How would one fail a master thesis defense? Ask Question. Asked 6 years, 8 months ago. Active 5 years, 5 months ago. Viewed 49k times. Edit: I passed with an excellent grade :D. Improve this question. Jack Twain. Jack Twain Jack Twain 3, 5 5 gold badges 22 22 silver badges 37 37 bronze badges. Your advisor should not let you defend if you are not ready. Ergo, your advisor thinks you are ready. Stop worrying and go for it!

Ideally, an advisor should not let you defend if you are not ready; unfortunately, some advisors still do let not-quite-there-yet advisees defend anyway. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. This should not happen unless: The mistake is blatantly obvious and something you should have really known better. And with blatantly obvious, I mean something that somebody who has not even studied computer science or a related field could easily spot.

Even then you may have chances, if the rest of your work is appropriate — almost everybody brainfarts now and then. You made not only one mistake but a lot of big mistakes. I have not experienced or heard of such a case but from what I have gathered, you pass if you: Give a talk about your thesis.

Be able to answer questions about it. Are not detected to have been cheating. Improve this answer. Having the undivided attention of a roomful of experts focused on your research is a rare occurrence, so make the most of it.

You may find great advice and wisdom in their comments, both about your dissertation and for your future as a scholar. When getting ready for your dissertation defense, self care is incredibly important. That may seem unlikely, but you know better than anyone what makes you feel better.

Showing up on time and in a good mood is sound advice. The time or place of your defense may change without much notice, or a committee member may be absent. You still have everything you need to proceed.

In the era of COVID19, your department may also have a Zoom contingency and decide to host your dissertation defense online. If this happens, give yourself a little extra time and you should be good to go.

In the midst of all the planning and preparation that goes into researching and writing a dissertation, it is easy to forget that completing one is a huge feat. Your committee members are excited about your achievement, and you should be too. Take the time you need to prepare yourself and your materials for your dissertation defense. Courtney Watson, Ph. Her areas of expertise include undergraduate and graduate curriculum development for writing courses in the health sciences and American literature with a focus on literary travel, tourism, and heritage economies.

Her writing and academic scholarship has been widely published in places that include Studies in American Culture , Dialogue , and The Virginia Quarterly Review. Her research on the integration of humanities into STEM education will be published by Routledge in an upcoming collection. Throughout her career in higher education, Dr. Watson has served in faculty governance and administration as a frequent committee chair and program chair. As a higher education consultant, she has served as a subject matter expert, an evaluator, and a contributor to white papers exploring program development, enrollment research, and educational mergers and acquisitions.

Dissertation Success. The Dissertation Defense Guide. August 18, Courtney Watson, Ph. In general, a thesis defense may take only 20 minutes, but it may also take two hours or more. This also depends on how much time is allocated to the presentation and questioning part.

We will talk more about the different parts of a thesis defense below. Defending a thesis largely serves as a formality because the paper will already have been evaluated.

During a defense, a student will be asked questions by members of the thesis committee. Questions are usually open-ended and require that the student think critically about his or her work. Defence and defense are both correct ways to spell the same word. Probably the most common reason for failing a Ph. For doctoral work, students must engage critically with the subject matter, not just set out what other scholars have said or done.

If not, the thesis will not be original. It will not add anything of substance to the field and will fail. Doctoral students should adopt a reflexive approach to their work. Why have I chosen this methodology? Can I make interesting comparisons between this and something else? Those who struggle with this aspect should ask their supervisors for advice on how to inject some analytic sophistication to their thesis. Lack of coherence. The thesis should be seen as one coherent whole.

It cannot be a series of self-contained chapters stitched together haphazardly. Students should spend considerable time at the outset of their dissertation thinking about structure, both at the macro level of the entire thesis and the micro level of the chapter. It is a good idea to look at other Ph. Poor presentation. The majority of failed Ph. They contain typos, grammatical mistakes, referencing errors and inconsistencies in presentation.

Looking at some committee reports randomly, I note the following comments:. For committee members, who are paid a fixed and pitiful sum to examine the work, few things are as off-putting as a poorly written dissertation. Errors of language slow the reading speed and can frustrate or irritate committee members.