Submission, Examination and Completion

Submitting your thesis is the final act before examination. Your thesis must be submitted before the end of your period of study and will show on MyPGR as your “expected completion date”. There is no minimum period of study (except for the DEdPsy, DClinPsy, DClinRes, DClinPrac, DClinPrac (Res)). Funded students are encouraged to submit their thesis by the end of their funding period, which may be earlier than the maximum period of study. Maximum periods of study for all programmes are specified in the periods of study scheme in the 'Statement of Procedures: Periods of Registration and Changes to Registration Status for Graduate Research Students'.

Before a postgraduate researcher submits their thesis for examination, examiners must be appointed. In the UK system there are normally two examiners, one from within your own University (the internal examiner) and one from outside (the external examiner). In some cases more than two examiners. It is your supervisor’s responsibility to nominate suitable examiners and (if appropriate) a Non Examining Independent Chair (NEIC). Your supervisors may discuss examiners with you. Examiner(s) should be nominated at least three months before the expected submission date. Your supervisors, or anyone previously involved in the supervision of your research, cannot act as examiners, although they may be present during the viva as a non-speaking observer.  The internal should be someone in or close to your field of study but are not required to be in the same department. The external examiner must be an expert in the same research field.  Once examiners have been appointed and the thesis submitted neither you nor your supervisors should have direct contact with the examiners, except to arrange the formalities of examination. It is the responsibility of the internal examiner to arrange, with the external, the NEIC if applicable and the student, the examination of the thesis.  The examiners will read the thesis, provide preliminary reports on it, and then meet the student for an oral examination (‘viva voce’ or ‘viva’) if applicable.

The contacting of external examiners by students regarding any aspect of their programmes of study is prohibited and will be treated as an offence under the University's Disciplinary Procedures. External examiners are requested to inform the PGR Admin Office should such an occurrence take place.

For more information please see the University's Code of Good Practice: Boards of Examiners for Degrees by Research.

PGR theses/dissertations are submitted in electronic format as a PDF file. Supporting material such as datasets, visual or audio material, if applicable, may be submitted as supplementary files in any standard file format. You do not need to plan for a hard copy of the thesis to be printed, as we no longer accept hard copy thesis submission.

Please ensure that your electronic thesis conforms to the formatting requirements outlined in the Presentation of theses/dissertations for degrees in the Faculty of Graduate Research: statement of procedures.

For students on 'by Practice' research degrees in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, please read the supplementary information about 'by Practice' thesis requirements, available here.

Your thesis may be printed and sent to your examiners by the PGR Administration Office as a hard copy document if requested by an examiner. We may print a standard A4 copy for an examiner upon request so please indicate any printing requirements (i.e. colour pages) in your Submission Form

If you wish to have a hard copy of your thesis, you will need to make your own arrangements for printing it. Print Services may be able to do this for you.

If you are considering submitting your thesis in an alternative or non-traditional format, you should refer to the PGR Alternative Thesis Guidance and FAQs. 

Students will be required to complete the Change Format of Thesis form, which should be returned to the PGR Support Team by the following deadline:

• Doctorate programmes: 24 months after your programme start date.
• Research Maters (MPhil, MbyRes): 12 months after your programme start date.

For HASS programmes, additional information is available in the HASS Faculty PGR Handbook. 

Please note: the following submission process applies to all PGR students across our Exeter and Cornwall Campuses, and all enquiries should be sent to pgradmin@exeter.ac.uk.

When you are ready to submit your thesis:

• Please email a completed ‌Submission Form to pgradmin@exeter.ac.uk.  Where signatures are required in Parts A and B please include either scanned signatures or provide accompanying emails from the relevant signatories to be accepted in lieu of a scanned signature.  Please advise if your thesis will comprise multiple files.
• You will receive an email from the PGR Administration Office acknowledging receipt of your submission form. A submission folder will then be created in your name, and you will receive an explanatory email containing a link to the folder where you can submit an electronic copy of your thesis and any supplementary files. You will not be able to submit your thesis until you receive this link.
• When you receive the email containing the link to your submission folder, please upload your full thesis in PDF format (where possible) to the Submission Portal.  Please also upload any supplementary files.
• The PGR Administration Office will check your submission and contact you if there are any problems with your submitted document(s).  Please note that we will check whether the files open and are legible. Your submission will not be checked for completeness or proof-reading.
• Once your electronic thesis has been checked and accepted for examination your submission folder will be locked and you will be notified by email.
• If your Board of Examiners has already been appointed, your thesis will be sent to your examiners immediately and your Internal Examiner will contact you in the following weeks to discuss the arrangements for your viva voce exam.
• If your examiners have not yet been appointed, or your External Examiner has been asked to sign a confidentiality agreement prior to receiving your thesis, there may be a delay between the submission of your thesis and the date it is sent to your examiners for examination.  You will be informed if this is the case.

Resubmission of a Thesis

If you are re-submitting your thesis for a second examination, please follow the submission process above.  You will also need to pay a resubmission fee via the student finance team via the Make a Payment webpage. Please note that SID is not able to take payments by phone or in person- please use the make a payment webpage. Details of the amount to be paid will be confirmed separately after your first examination.

Please note, this does not include submissions for minor or major amendments or for outstanding amendments, none of which constitute a ‘resubmission’ and for which there is no fee to pay. Submission information for these categories will be sent to you with your list of amendments.

Submitting Minor or Major Amendments (not including Resubmission of thesis)

• Notify the PGR Administration Office at pgradmin@exeter.ac.uk that your amended thesis is ready for submission.
• You will receive an email from the PGR Administration Office acknowledging your message.   A submission folder will then be created in your name, and you will receive an explanatory email containing a link to the folder where you can submit an electronic copy of your thesis and any supplementary files. You will not be able to upload your thesis until you receive this link.
• When you receive the email containing the link to your submission folder, please upload your full thesis in PDF format to the Submission Portal.  Please also upload any supplementary files.
• The PGR Administration Office will check your submission and contact you if there are any problems with your submitted document(s).  Please note, that we will check whether the file opens and is legible. Your submission will not be checked for completeness or proof-reading.
• Once your electronic thesis has been checked and accepted for approval by your examiner(s) your submission folder will be locked and you will be notified by email.
• Your amended thesis will be sent to your examiners for review.

Examination 

It is important that you prepare for the viva. You are recommended to visit the University’s Researcher Development Online service, which has an e-learning course on ‘Preparing for your Viva’, and Researcher Development also has a ‘Preparing for your Viva’ session.

Please refer to the TQA Chapter 12 - Handbook for Examination of Postgraduate Research programmes and in particular, “section 7: The examination” for the detail about the examination policies. Below is some guidance for staff and students about the arrangements for the examination.

The University calendar also confirms the assessment requirements and further details about the examination.

We offer flexibility in the format for viva voce examinations:

• Virtual viva: where every attendee uses an online platform to attend the viva – no two attendees are in the same room
• Blended viva: where at least one attendee joins by video link, but two or more attendees are in the same room
• In-person viva: where all attendees are in the same room and there are no remote attendees

Whilst we will do our best to accommodate your preferences, there may be circumstances where one or more attendee must participate remotely. It is expected that decisions about attendance at the viva will be made in the contact of the University’s Sustainability Policy and with particular regard to prioritising low-carbon solutions such as video link as opposed to travelling to campus.

To agree that an examination may proceed with a virtual or blended viva, your Faculty DPGR needs to:

• make sure that it is feasible for all participants to proceed in the proposed format, which includes appropriate communications technology access, which must be satisfactorily tested in advance, to minimise the likelihood of any disruptions to communications in the viva;
• If you have an ILP: make sure that any adjustments to the viva required can still be made.

We're aware that circumstances can change even if appropriate arrangements are in place for your viva to proceed, please do get in touch with your PGR support team if you have concerns that this will no longer be feasible for you (please mark your email as urgent if your viva is due to take place within two weeks of making contact).

Read about the experiences of some of our past students who have completed their viva through the Doctoral College Blog:

• Preparing For Your Viva – Our Top Tips
• Viva Survivor: a drama in four acts
• Preparing for your online viva, by Hannah Littler.

Reasonable Adjustments

The University is committed to the provision of individual reasonable adjustments to academic study and assessment to ensure that barriers to learning are removed, so that students do not face discrimination arising from disability. Reasonable Adjustments may be required to formal assessments (including upgrade and thesis/dissertation examination by Viva Voce and the assessment of other taught modules of the Professional Doctorates), supervisory meetings, data collection etc in order help students to overcome barriers to learning.

Students with a disability or long-term health condition are encouraged to discuss their needs and requests for reasonable adjustments to learning or examination with the AccessAbility Team (Exeter campuses) or the Accessibility Team (Cornwall campuses) prior to their examination/assessment being scheduled. The AccessAbility/Accessibility team will create or update your Individual Learning Plan which will recommend adjustments. There are a range of adjustments which can be accommodated in the examination/assessment process depending on the needs of the student. In rare circumstances, some adjustments cannot be implemented and if this is the case, we will work with yourselves and Disability services to come up with an alternative. 

Please refer to the TQA, Inclusive Practice within Academic Study for further details.

When is a Viva Required?  

The University does not necessarily require MbyRes and MPhil students to undergo a viva. A viva examination is necessary in one of the following cases:

• a viva examination is judged to be necessary by one or more of the examiners
• there is substantial disagreement between the examiners
• the examiners are inclined to make a recommendation other than award of the degree for which the work was submitted (in such circumstances, the examiners may still require the satisfactory completion of minor amendments appropriate to the award in questions.)
• the student is keen to have a viva examination.

The examination of PhD thesis requires a viva in all instances.

Please bear in mind that there will be a period of time elapsing between submission of your thesis and the examination, as the examiners need to read it and write their preliminary reports. The examiners also need to write their recommendations after your viva regarding amendments. In addition, you may need to spend some time making these amendments, which will have to be approved by the examiner(s).  All this takes time, which is why it is very important to try to submit your thesis prior to your viva as soon as possible, if this is academically appropriate.

On the basis of reading your thesis and the oral examination, the examiners will produce a joint report with a recommended outcome. At the first examination of an MbyRes, MPhil and PhD the recommendation will be:

• the degree may be awarded,
• the award of the degree should be subject to minor amendments (such as corrections of typographical, spelling and grammatical errors and /or limited revisions of material in the thesis). Minor amendments should be made within 12 weeks of receipt of the examiners’ instructions regarding what changes are required.
• the award of the degree should be subject to major amendments, where more extensive revisions than that implied by a decision of minor amendments need to be made, but which will not normally require any significant extension of the original research to be undertaken. Major amendments need to be completed within 6 months of receipt of the examiners’ instructions regarding what changes are required.
• Resubmission of thesis. This is where more substantial work is required for the thesis to meet the requirements for the award in question, and students will be given 18 months to complete amendments suggested by the Board of Examiners. At the end of the resubmission period, the student may be asked to attend a second viva.

Following resubmission, there are other possible outcomes of the examination. For full details and regulations, see the Code of Good Practice: Boards of Examiners for Degrees by Research

After the examination and any required amendments have been approved, the examiners will recommend that the relevant research degree should be awarded. Once this has been confirmed by the University’s Senate the research degree can be said to be completed.

Open Research Exeter (ORE)

Once you have been recommended for award by your board of examiners you will need to submit your final thesis to Open Research Exeter (ORE) before your award can be formally approved.

Completion

Once you have received email confirmation that you have successfully deposited your thesis into ORE, the final stage in the award process is the formal approval of your award by the University Executive Board (UEB).

UEB Award Lists for research students are prepared and signed by the Vice Chancellor every Monday throughout the year. Where the Monday is a Bank Holiday this will be done on the Tuesday. No UEB will be held during the University Closure period at Christmas.

You will be sent an email by the Postgraduate Administration Office once your award has been formally approved.

International Students - Research students holding a valid Student or Tier 4 visa, who have completed a degree at a UK Higher Education Provider, are able to apply for a Graduate visa that allows them to remain in the UK and work, or look for work, for 3 years after they have completed a PhD.

For full details of the Graduate route including when to apply visit Graduate Route | International Student Support | University of Exeter

Graduation

Your graduation day is a special occasion to celebrate your academic achievements at the University of Exeter.

The University will have a summer graduation, normally in July, in both Exeter and Cornwall, and a winter graduation, normally in December, in Exeter only.

Should your award date have already passed, or be in the run-up to the graduation dates, you will be invited to register for the day via your Exeter and personal email addresses. It is important that you ensure you are eligible to graduate by having you award formally approved by the Vice Chancellor's Executive Group (VCEG) approximately one month before the date of the graduation, and any outstanding academic-related debt cleared approximately 2 weeks before the date of the graduation. Should either of requirements not be completed you will need to wait until the next graduation date.

For more information about Graduation Ceremonies and to register to attend please visit the Graduation website.

Degree certificate

You can choose whether to receive your degree certificate at a Graduation Ceremony or in absentia which means that your certificate will be posted to your home address. It is important to note that your certificate can only be issued after the official date of award, and once you have received email confirmation from the Postgraduate Research Office.

Your certificate will display your full name, and the full details of your degree.

Graduation

For information about the Graduation Ceremonies and to register to attend please visit the Graduation website.