PhD Requirements

Admittance to a PhD program is based on academic requirements that may or may not include a master’s degree.  But incoming PhD candidates must generally meet certain GPA and test score standards and must have a certain amount of academic background that meets the baseline requirements for the doctoral program.  Doctoral programs usually take a minimum of four years and more often average five or six.   Some programs simply require that a student continue to make a good faith effort towards completion; others put a time limit on completion although it is usually generous.  Once a student has been admitted, the program requirements break into five general categories.

Coursework

The first two years of a PhD program are mostly spent in the classroom, taking the courses that lay the foundation for the dissertation work to come.  PhD level courses cover the academic theory and history of research within a discipline.  Students are urged to develop working relationships with faculty members and begin to give some thought to the research coming in ensuing years.  Many students attend summer classes during the first two years in order to prepare for examinations.  Some schools require a research project in the first two or three years as a preparatory exercise.

Qualifying Exams

There is usually a point in a PhD program prior to formal launch of a dissertation when a major exam is given to test the students’ overall understanding of the field and the ability to assume a scholar’s role within it.  Some institutions will have exams in the first year, some in the second or third years, and some have more than one.  These preliminary exams are also an opportunity for the student to engage in some honest consideration about whether to proceed in the program, having been exposed to the rigors of a PhD program and the academic life that most PhD graduates lead.

Research

The primary academic achievement in a PhD program is the development of an academic proposal about the discipline, original research on the topic and completion of a dissertation that is written and then presented.  If the final three years of a PhD program are devoted to dissertation work, at least one of those years is spent on research.  Depending on the discipline, research may mean a tireless review of existing literature in the field, interviews with established scholars or even formally organized field research utilizing statistical tools.  In most cases, the research continues as the dissertation develops.

Teaching

PhD programs are meant to produce academic scholars for university faculties, which means careers in both research and teaching.  Most PhD programs offer a limited number of teaching assistant positions; all of them devote some portion of the classroom work to teaching methodology.  Many PhD candidates have teaching requirements to meet within the course of the program.  Often there are several options available to meet this requirement; it doesn’t necessarily mean standing up in front of a crowd of undergraduates and delivering a lecture.

Dissertation

The dissertation is the culmination of some years of research and writing which is guided by a principal faculty mentor and to a lesser extent, by your dissertation committee.  When the product is complete you are required to present it to the committee and then defend it against academic challenges from the body of scholars that has heard your presentation.  The general parameters of a dissertation are that it be an original concept for research and conclusion, based on a concept that if not entirely original, contributes to the existing scholarly body of knowledge in the field.  Those are high standards.  The final benchmark for a dissertation, although not necessarily a requirement, is publication in a peer-reviewed journal.