4th Year PhD Students

Most of our studentships cover a period of 3.5 years, and thus the 4th and final year is all about preparing for the submission of your thesis. Deadlines for each of the activities described below appear in the Postgraduate Timetable. Regardless of your funding situation, all students must submit their thesis before 4 years of registration are up unless they have reasons to temporarily withdraw.

Doctoral Skills

The Physics Doctoral Skills Programme is laid out in full detail on its own page.

All tasks should be uploaded to Moodle.

Progress Monitoring:

Final Year Thesis Plan

To help us assess progress towards submission, students need to prepare a thesis plan and submit it via Moodle. Such a thesis plan is due at the start of your 4th year together with your annual progress report.

As with the progress reports and research plan, the thesis plan should be agreed with the supervisor and submitted via Moodle. Submission of the plan will be taken to mean agreement has been reached between student and supervisor.

The reason for producing a plan are to demonstrate :

there is sufficient material to write about
the student has thought about the structure of the thesis and the approximate length of each section
the timescale for finishing

The thesis plan should contain:

a list of chapter headings down to sub-section level (details may change in final version, but specific enough to assess)
a rough indication of the number of pages for each section (see note on thesis length)
the state of each section (e.g. % complete, in draft form, data awaiting analysis, experiments completed, experiments failed because …, more experiments needed, not thought about yet)
for the incomplete parts, especially experiments, an estimate of when they will be done should be included
a schedule of work, indicating a timetable for completing the thesis
expected submission date

The length of the thesis plan is not important compared to the information contained. It will probably be more than one side of A4 but less than 5.

Students who do not expect to submit before the end of their funded period will also need to consider how they will be supported and must remember that the thesis must have been submitted by the end of their registration period which is at most 4 years after your start date.

Progress Review

To make sure students remain on track to submit on time and are aware of the hard submission deadline after 4 years of registration, a final progress review is required. This needs to consider and discuss any changes/updates to the Thesis Plan you submitted at the start of the year and most importantly should offer a realistic timetable towards submission. It is not in your interest to be too optimistic here, please consider carefully whether you believe the timetable is achievable. After submission there may be an interview with the Director of Graduate Studies and/or Head of Department if there are concerns about your ability to submit on time.

As with progress reports and research plans, the final progress review should be agreed with your supervisor. Please submit a copy of the review to Moodle.

Thesis Writing and Submission

Thesis Writing Guide Forms for submission of a research degree

The most significant single piece of work for your PhD is the completion of your thesis. To see examples of previous theses from students in the Department please look at the WRAP archive here.

For most PhD students in the Physics Department, the training and research has been designed around 3-3.5 years of funding and full time students are expected to submit their thesis close to the end of their funded period. The maximum period of registration, regardless of funding, is 4 years. This deadline is absolute and students will not normally be allowed to submit at all after it. You will have received a letter that clearly states your intended submission and funding end-dates to make sure you plan according to this timeline. Note that the Doctoral College is rigorously enforcing the rule that students must submit within 4 years. Students will be withdrawn from the course if they cross this line even by a day.

Exceptions to this require truly exceptional circumstances. Please refer to the Doctoral College web page for more details.

Final Deadline

The University of Warwick operates a hard final submission deadline for all full-time students which is 4 years after the starts of your registration, not including any periods where you were officially withdrawn. For most students, their expected submission date is sooner, usually 3.5 years in line with their funded period. You will have received a notification of these dates at the beginning of your course. During this final year, students are expected to be focussing on writing up. Extensions can only be requested in exceptional circumstances for further details please see PGR Extensions