What happens in a Ph.D. Oral defense?

Question

First of, how does a doctorate student prepare for the oral defense. Is there anything a student needs to keep in mind when going into the defense room? Is the Ph.D. thesis like a trial, where it is you versus them? This quesstion is for students that have gone through the defense: were you nervous and did you studdor or mumble during the defense? Did you pass anyway?

Answer 1

No, it isn't much like a trial, because in most cases, your committee really wants you to succeed, even if it doesn't always look that way on the surface. Generally, you have to give an overview of your dissertation, followed by answering a lot of probing questions from the committee, who have already read the thing and figured out what its weaknesses may be. They will ask you about the processes that went into the final paper, why you chose the methods you did, question you about source materials, etc. In other words, to prepare, make sure you know your dissertation inside and out. If there were parts of it (like the lit review) that you did years earlier, make sure you go over the sources and do any updating you need to do, and remind yourself of why you used the citations you did. Reacquaint yourself with the design and be able to defend why you chose that one among various options. Remind yourself of any statistical methods you used, etc. Talk to the members of your committee ahead of time to get a sense of what their concerns seem to be, so that you can prepare good answers to these issues.

Yes, I was very nervous, but no, I didn't stutter or mumble. If you are planning to be a faculty member, you have to be able to handle yourself, even if you are nervous. I was mostly scared of one fairly mean person on the committee, but he was okay during the defense and the others actually made it rather pleasant. The one thing I can tell you is that the whole thing will be easiest if your committee is made up of reasonable people who are not in some sort of long-term feud with one another (doctoral candidates sometimes get caught in the cross-fire), and if your Dissertation Chair is good at handling things.

Good luck!

Answer 2

You best have all your fact correct. Those in the audience will grill you until your mind goes numb trying to trip you up. I've observed several of these in the past decade. Often times they can become very ruthless. Be firm, confident, and have all the facts straight, and give correct answers to any questions put forth and you should do just fine. After you are finished you'll need to unwind. Go do that and you'll feel great.