PhD Milestones

After a few years in a PhD program, working on whatever research project your advisor had funding for, or whatever project seemed interesting or fun at the time, it can be daunting to find a unified story or thesis statement that accurately, concisely, and interestingly summarizes your work. In this post, I will describe how I was able to find a cohesive story that unified the disparate strands of work I’d completed, and helped me focus my thesis proposal into an interesting final project....

Your oral defense (your thesis proposal presentation) is where you get to convince your committee (and a wider, public audience) that you deserve a PhD. You need to show that you’ve done cool work, you’re a smart and capable researcher, and you have thought of an interesting final project that will bring home a strong body of work. No pressure! In general, a thesis proposal presentation will look something like this:...

Acknowledge When You Don’t Know Something A big part of being a good researcher is recognizing when you don’t know the answer to something, and a likewise a big part of your PhD milestones (quals, proposal, and defense) will involve testing this. I’ve spoken with several professors and other students about this, and it is considered a universally important subject to these PhD milestones— your committee will test whether or not you know what you don’t know, and have the strength to admit that....

I recently completed my thesis proposal at Georgia Tech, and the process included several questions that I did not feel were adequately documented anywhere. With this post, I’m hoping to provide a straightforward timeline/guide for the thesis proposal process at Tech for future students. Admittedly, this post ended up much longer than I expected it to be, so maybe treat it more as a reference material and come back to each section as you get to that stage....

Your committee ultimately decides whether or not you pass your proposal and your defense, so you want to choose them carefully! The rules from the CS Handbook state that: “Your advisor is the chair… Your committee should be formed of at least five people. At least one faculty member must be from outside CoC (from another unit at Tech or an outsider, and should have a Ph.D.), but the majority must have some CoC faculty appointment....