Grad school has too many unwritten rules, has too much mysterious institutional knowledge, and has too many steps that are gatekeeping.
So as I'm working through grad school, I'm trying to keep track of all these steps to shed light on the confusing processes.
Shout out to my fellow grad students who shared info with me or helped me with this. Please fork this repo or contact me to add/edit more information or to help correct typos.
Decide (with your advisor) who will be your second committee member (your committee consists of your advisor plus one more faculty member for your MS thesis defense), and reach out to them to make sure they can serve on your committee. You may already have a rough idea for when you plan on defending your thesis (at least an idea of which academic quarter), it is good to make sure that your committee members will be available and not too busy or away that quarter.
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Schedule your thesis defense date at least 2 months in advance. Coordinate with your committee members on a date/time that works for them. Reserve a room on campus to have your thesis defense presentation in. (See notes at the end of the page about reserving a meeting room for exams/presentations)
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Send a clean draft of your thesis to your committee members at least 2 weeks prior to your defense. They will discuss comments with you during the second half of the defense.
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Submit a degree request through MyGrad
- Log in to MyGrad and go to Request Degree > Master
- Select "MASTER OF SCIENCE IN CIVIL ENGINEERING - Civil Engineering, Major/Pathway: CIV E 0"
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Get your Master's Supervisory Committee Approval Form and print it out. Bring it with you to your thesis defense. Your committee will need to sign it once you've passed your defense!
- Thesis formatting guidelines
- Alternatively, use my formatted thesis word document as a template
- This "ProQuest ETD Administrator" website is where you upload your thesis document (it requires that you make an account, different than your UWNetID ?)
- What copywrite option do I choose?
- Pick one that you don't have to pay for. I chose the "Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC BY)"
Make sure that you get your pay raise the following quarter.
(PhD Milestones: Qualifying Exam
- Reach out to potential qualifying exam committee members ~3 months in advance with a tentative date, or at least a range of dates so that you can start coordinating exactly when everyone will be available. You will need 2 additional committee members in addition to your advisor.
- Pick a date for the “oral exam” where you will meet with your exam committee.
- The “written exam” portion will be a set of questions/writing prompts from your committee members, provided to you several days before the date of the oral exam. Make sure that when you schedule the exam, you take into account that you will want to have a few days before the oral exam set aside to spend your time working on the written component. (For example, if your oral exam is scheduled for a Tuesday, you can request to have the written exam questions in hand by Friday, giving you Saturday, Sunday to work on them, and then submit them to the committee on Monday for them to review.)
- When you have scheduled a date for your exam, make sure to establish what day you want to receive the written questions, and when they will be turned in to the committee to review before the oral exam.
- Reserve a conference room! (See notes at the end of the page about reserving a meeting room for exams/presentations) If you’ll be meeting in-person (rather than over Zoom), make sure you reserve a meeting room well in advance (especially if you might be competing with students looking for study space during midterms or finals). Make sure the room has a whiteboard and markers or chalkboard and chalk (typically they will ask you to draw conceptual diagrams, or explain equations). Ask your advisor if there’s a room they’d prefer, try to pick a place that’s convenient for everyone if folks are coming from all different places across campus. (Call or visit the CEE front office to reserve a room in the CEE buildings. Another option are library meeting/study rooms, or the research commons)
- Send the details of your qualifying exam date/time and committee members to CEE graduate advising: ceginfo@uw.edu
- Contact your committee members ~2-3 weeks before the exam to remind them of the date you are expecting their written questions, and the date/time of the oral exam.
- At this time (or even earlier) provide your committee with a list of relevant classes you’ve taken, a CV or list of publications (if any), and a brief (~1 paragraph) description of your research interests and plans. (They will probably be coming up with questions in the last couple days before the exam and will want this information about you and your interests to reference. Contact them again the week before or week of if you need to send another reminder.)
- The written exam:
- Receive the written exam questions and get to work! (typically they’ll email you a document with their questions or writing prompts) The goal of these questions is supposed to be gauging how you approach technical problems, assess some of your knowledge, and make you think about aspects of your area of research you may not have thought about before. For any technical questions, be thorough in your answers by explaining your thought process, possible assumptions you have to make, and sources of information you’re referencing to help you answer (remember, this is open-book). For writing tasks, reference the literature your committee might suggest you take a look at (or even ask for suggestions if you don’t know where to start).
- Submit your answers on time! (email all your committee members the answers to all your questions so that they can review the answers to other committee members questions too if they want) Return your answers/solutions to the committee’s questions on time, even if you haven’t quite finished everything (just make sure to explain in your answer if you’re missing anything, and perhaps the steps you would have taken to complete anything that isn’t complete). Also its a good idea to remind the committee of the meeting room place/time for the oral component of the exam.
- Take a break, get some rest. Great work! You’ve gotten through the lengthiest part of the qualifying exam! The committee should be spending some time reviewing your answers before the day of the oral component of the exam.
- The oral exam:
- What to bring with you to the oral exam:
- Copies of the written questions and your answers for the committee members in case they didn’t bring their own copy. (they really should bring their own copy, but just in case)
- Copies of your class list/CV/research statement (the same thing you’d emailed them when scheduling the exam) in case they want to see those things. (again, they should have those if they’re prepared, but just in case)
- Markers/chalk/eraser for whiteboard/chalkboard (make sure ahead of time that the room has these materials. You may need to ask the CEE front office or someone at the Library for access to these if they’re not already available in the room). Also bring pencil/paper too.
- During the exam, introduce yourself and give a brief overview of your research interests that you’d provided the committee with. You’ll likely then be asked to explain your written exam problems, asked followup questions about those problems, and then more general questions about your planned research topic. At the end of the exam the committee will discuss in private and pretend to deliberate and decide if you’ve passed (don’t worry, you did pass, they wouldn’t hold an exam if they didn’t think you would pass). They’ll invite you back in and give some feedback, suggestions about areas to study/read about more.
- Congrats, you did it!
- What to bring with you to the oral exam:
- After passing the exam, your advisor will then submit a form to the CEE advising office notifying them that you’ve passed.
(PhD Milestones: General Exam
- Reach out to your general exam committee members ~3 months in advance. Give them a tentative date or range of dates to make sure they’ll be available.
- This is likely going to be the same group of people from your qualifying exam, but make sure that they’re still willing and able to be on your committee.
- Reach out to potential Graduate School Representatives (GSR) ~3 months in advance (or even earlier). For the General and Final Exams, you will need a “GSR” on your supervisory committee in addition to the 3 other members (so in total: your advisor, 2 committee members, 1 GSR). See the requirements for GSR here. And look up a potential GSR here. Your advisor might have an idea about good people to ask to be your GSR, likely someone who has expertise related to your research who can give valuable feedback on the technical aspects of your work in addition to their GSR duties (making sure exam rules are followed by committee members, etc). The GSR doesn’t necessarily need to be someone doing related work though. Here's an email template for reaching out to a potential GSR.
- Reserve a meeting room (See notes at the end of the page about reserving a meeting room for exams/presentations) Once you, your committee (including your GSR) have agreed on a date/time. Make sure to reserve it for a 2-hour block, plus any time beforehand you may need for setting up your presentation/projector, etc. See the links above for reserving a room for the Master's Thesis Defense. I used room ECE 303, which can be reserved here (
NOTE: It does not have a projector, you will need to bring your own projector!As of 2023 this room has a projector now).- If you are presenting/meeting virtually or hybrid, create a Zoom meeting.
- Send a calendar invitation (Google Calendar) to your committee members once a meeting location has been reserved.
- Submit a "General Exam request form" through MyGrad: No later than 3 weeks before your planned exam, log in to MyGrad, then in the top menu bar click on Request Degree then from the drop down menu Doctoral (General Exam). Follow the steps as instructed.
- One this is processed, the department should either email an electronic copy, or you can pick up a paper copy, of a degree warrant. This paper will be signed by the members of your committee when you pass the general exam, and you'll turn it back in to the CEE office afterwards.
- See more info about MyGrad here
- Writing your Doctoral Dissertation Proposal
- You will need to send a written Doctoral Dissertation Proposal to your committee ~2 weeks before your general exam date.
- Talk to your advisor about what they expect should be in this document (see mine here for ideas on formatting and content, I tried to keep it short.)
- Include a timeline of milestones (papers published, conference presentations, examinations) between the general exam and your expected graduation date
- Creating a presentation
- The first half of your general exam will be your presentation of your plan for your dissertation. This is open to the public so invite all your friends, family, fellow students.
- Your presentation will likely be 50% work you have accomplished so far (e.g. your 1st chapter) and 50% what you plan to do for the rest of the dissertation (e.g. chapters 2 and 3).
- Include extra slides with more details not covered in the main presentation to cover any questions your anticipate the audience (or more importantly, your committee) might ask about your work. These will be especially useful for demonstrating to your committee all the work you've done and problems/questions you've already anticipated or investigated as part of your work that maybe aren't in the main presentation.
- Preparing for the "exam"
- The second half of your general exam is a meeting between you and your committee, where they will ask questions about your dissertation plan.
- While they are "examining" you and your plan, their questions should be constructive, asking about details or potential problems in your plan that you may not yet have thought of (or maybe you have thought of them!)
- Take notes during this meeting, you will get a lot of good information in a meeting with your whole committee that would be hard to get at another time. Come prepared with questions for your committee members or specific requests for assistance if there are areas of your work they can help with.
- After the "exam"
- Make sure your committee members sign the degree warrant paper after you pass!
- Return your degree warrant paper to the CEE main office (or email).
- Make sure that you get your pay raise the following quarter.
(PhD Milestones: Final Exam)
- Schedule your final exam with your committee well in advance. And reserve a room for your final exam presentation (see notes below).
- Make sure that the CEE Graduate Advising Office has the names of the members of your "reading committee" - the CEE advisors should then submit this to the Grad School.
- At the beginning of the quarter in which you are having your exam (or no later than three weeks prior to your exam date), submit the Final Exam Request online.
- Make sure that your "Advisors & Committees" section in MyGrad correctly lists your committee members and their roles (including the Graduate School Representative, GSR).
This question comes up a lot, here are some suggestions and resources for reserving a meeting room for your exams/presentations.
- More Hall: Contact or visit the CEE front office to ask about reserving a room in More Hall.
- ECE 303 is in the Electrical and Computer Engineering building. See the room calendar here, and reserve here. As of 2023, this room has a projector and a podium.
- ECE 403 upstairs from ECE 303. See the room calendar here, and reserve here.
- UW Libraries meeting spaces: The smaller study rooms with whiteboards are perfect for a qualifying exam with your committee, the larger meeting rooms are better for presentations. See information and make reservations here.
- Research Commons: In the Allen Library South, the Research Commons has a varity of spaces to reserve.
- This is a general room request form from UW event services (though I haven't heard of anyone using this for reserving a space for their exams).
- Spaces at the HUB can be reserved, though it looks like this will have to be done by someone in the CEE front office for you.
How to get paid:
Other websites/documents:
- PhD Program Milestones
- “Preparing to Graduate”
- "Getting Ready to Graduate" (Ph.D., last updated 2017)