Doctoral FAQ

1. Student completes required departmental coursework.

2. Student forms doctoral committee. Department submits a committee constitution in the Committee Tool. Committees should be submitted ~2 weeks before advancement exam/ dissertation defense.

3. Student takes qualifying exam and advances to candidacy. Department submits Doctoral Advancement to Candidacy Form in DocuSign. The advancement to candidacy fee will be assessed to the Student’s TritonLink at the next monthly SFS billing cycle.

   1. NOTE: Joint Doctoral Students with SDSU use a different form. The SDSU department will initiate the advancement form (JDP3) in Adobe sign.

4. Student continues to conduct research.

5. Student prepares to defend their dissertation and graduate. Student meets with GEPA Academic Affairs Advisor to review dissertation formatting & required paperwork. Student defends. Department submits Doctoral Final Report Form in DocuSign.

   1. NOTE: Joint Doctoral Students with SDSU use a different form. The SDSU department will initiate the final report form (JDP5) in Adobe sign.

Students may take their qualifying exam over the summer. However, all advancement forms turned in during Summer Quarter will count for the following Fall Quarter.

During the summer quarter, Graduate Academic Affairs will still review advancements and send out the advancement letters.  After receiving the letter, students will be assessed the $50 advancement to candidacy fee on their next TritonLink billing cycle. Please note that the advancement forms will sit in the Graduate Academic Affairs DocuSign queue as they cannot be fully processed until the first day of Fall instruction. It is important that students remain enrolled in Fall in order for the advancement to be processed. If a student takes a leave of absence or withdraws that Fall Quarter, then the advancement will be processed in the student's next eligible quarter.

Students who are eligible for the Non-Resident Supplemental Tuition waiver will have it applied for the following Fall Quarter.

JDP EDD students are an exception and may receive a Summer advancement.

It is at the discretion of the department (student’s advisor, committee, department chair) if the student should re-advance.  Before the student is accepted into the program, it is advised that the department review the student’s coursework and research to determine if departmental standards for advancing to candidacy have been met. If it is determined that the student will re-advance, it is an internal process with the department.  The student doesn’t need to pay the candidacy fee again or re-submit an advancement form.

The student’s committee should also be reviewed and reconstituted if it does not meet departmental requirements.

Time limit recalculation requests are necessary when the assigned time limits based on the default calculation (from when a student starts any graduate program) do not match the student’s new academic plan. These requests should be submitted at the time the student transfers from a Master’s to a doctoral program, from 1 doctoral program to another, or is being readmitted to a doctoral program. The reasoning for a time limit recalculation is due to the transfer or readmission itself. Some examples for time limit recalculations are:

• a student switched to the doctoral program late in the MS career so more time is needed to develop the research topic;

• additional courses are needed because the student came from a different program;

• a student changed advisors/research topic as a result of the switch;

• a student completed the MS a while ago and is readmitting to the doctoral program so all the time limits are expired.

When a student is getting ready to transfer (or be readmitted) to a doctoral program, we recommended reviewing what the time limits would be based on the student's original start quarter at UC San Diego. The student’s faculty advisor should then determine if the assigned time limits are still appropriate or if the student will need more time based on the academic plan. There are 3 time limits that can be recalculated (pre-candidacy: PCTL; support time: SUTL; and total time: TRTL); a program may request a recalculation of all 3 time limits at the same time, or only for 1 or 2. If a recalculation is not needed when the student transfers, a time limit extension request can be submitted 1 to 2 quarters prior to the time limit expiration.

Recalculation requests should be submitted to the PhD Graduate Academic Affairs Advisor via email. The request should be in the form of a letter from the student's faculty advisor, endorsed by the department chair. The letter should explain the reason/s that a recalculation is needed (see above bullet points for some examples). Please provide as much detail as possible to support the need for additional time. 

Joint Doctoral Program recalculation requests should be submitted to the JDP Academic Affairs Advisor via email. Both PhD and JDP requests are reviewed by the Senior Associate Dean.

Time limit extension requests are necessary when a doctoral student's academic progress is delayed and more time is needed. Extension requests should be submitted 1-2 quarters in advance of the time limit expiring. Some justification examples for time limit extension requests are:

• a student changed labs/advisors;

• a student was facing some personal or health issues which delayed the academic/research progress;

• a student was delayed due to unexpected research results/equipment failure, or more time is needed to collect data.  

Extensions are commonly submitted for individual time limits. However, this is not always the case so extensions of multiple time limits can be considered if appropriate. Extension requests should be submitted directly to the Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs for the Senior Associate Dean's consideration.

The Time to Doctorate Policy can be found at: Time to Doctorate Policy

Doctoral degrees are research-driven, and not coursework-driven like Master’s degrees. So there is not a formal transfer for GEPA to process. Any transferred courses used for the student’s doctoral would be evaluated by the department and handled internally.