PhD viva preparation

How the viva gets set up

The scholar does not apply for a viva. The university fixes it after the thesis is evaluated.

As per the UGC 2022 regulations, three or more people evaluate the thesis. These are your supervisor and at least two outside examiners, who should not be employees of your university. If it can be arranged, one of them is from a foreign country. The viva is conducted only when both the external examiners recommend the thesis. If one of them rejects it, the thesis first goes to an alternate examiner. Clause 11 gives a time limit also. From the day you submit, the whole evaluation including viva is supposed to get over inside six months.

Every university has its own rules over and above the UGC ones. For example, the University of Madras sends the thesis to the supervisor, one foreign examiner and one Indian examiner. Then the viva notice is put up on the notice boards of the department, the institution and the library. In KTU the Vice-Chancellor selects three examiners, and if two out of the three recommend the thesis, the viva can happen. If you are in either one, our University of Madras guide or KTU guide has the complete steps.

Mostly you get a few weeks of notice. Plan how you will use those weeks from the first day itself.

Who sits in the room, and who can ask

Inside the hall, the board is your supervisor and one or more of the outside examiners. Many times the Indian examiner comes, as foreign examiners rarely travel for a viva. Depending on the university, a chairperson or the head of the department may also be present.

Others can attend too. The UGC 2022 regulations allow the RAC, faculty members and research scholars to sit in the viva. Mostly that means your lab juniors, some faculty, sometimes a family member in the last row. In the end of the session a few of them may ask questions. Usually these questions are soft. Still, sometimes a professor from the next department gets up and asks a hard one. Keep some answers ready for that person too.

The same clause permits an online viva. Some universities now keep you in a seminar hall and connect the external examiner over video. One day before, check your laptop with the projector and test the video link properly. A frozen screen in the first five minutes disturbs many scholars more than any hard question.

Start with the examiners’ reports

In many universities the examiners’ reports, or at least their comments and questions, reach your supervisor before the viva. KTU, for example, gives them to the scholar through the guide after removing the examiners’ names. As soon as the date is fixed, ask your supervisor for copy of the reports.

Read every report two times. Then I suggest you open one Word file and put a table there. First column is the comment. Next to it put page number, and in last column your reply. Many comments are small corrections only. Like in chapter 2 one citation is not there in the reference list, or Figure 3.4 is named as 3.5. Correct these in the copy you take to the viva, and tell the board if asked. Some other comments are actually questions. Take a comment like “The sample size appears small for the analysis used”. Here the examiner is asking you to defend that sample size, and also to say what you might do differently if you started again.

Many times the report gives a hint of what the examiner will ask in the hall. If an examiner wrote three lines on your sampling method, at least one sampling question will come. If the report praises chapter 4 and says not much else, the viva will probably be friendly. Friendly report or strict report, prepare a reply against each comment in your table.

The opening talk: 20 to 30 minutes

Most vivas start with your presentation. Check with your supervisor how long it should be. Twenty to thirty minutes is common. I have seen boards cutting the scholar short after ten minutes. For that, make one fifteen-minute version of the same talk and keep it in your pocket.

Don’t go chapter by chapter, because the examiners have already read the thesis. Give most of the time to your findings and why they are important. Scholars from many subjects use a slide plan like the one below.

• One slide on the problem, with the research gap written plainly.
• Objectives copied word for word from the thesis.
• For the method, two or three slides covering design, sample and tools of analysis.
• Findings one objective at a time, each with its main table or figure.
• Your contribution in one slide. Put the limits and future work on the next one.
• Papers you published from the thesis, with journal name and year.

Put only a little text on every slide. Examiners read faster than you talk, and with a full paragraph on the slide they stop listening. Did you correct anything in the thesis after the reports came? Then keep one slide for those changes. Boards like it when the scholar has acted on the reports.

The questions that come up most

Questions change from subject to subject, but mostly they come under a few types. For each type, prepare an answer of two or three sentences in your own words and say it aloud.

Why this topic? Here they are asking about the research gap. Your personal story is not needed. Show the studies you reviewed and what those studies did not cover.

Why this method? Why did you take a survey instead of interviews, why this sample size, why this test? If your method chapter already gave reasons for each choice, repeat the same reasons. If it did not, prepare them now itself.

What did you find that you didn’t expect? Almost every thesis has one result that went the opposite way. Pick that one and think how you will explain it.

How does your work compare with a named study? Many times examiners pick one paper from your literature review and ask about it. You should know the five or six studies nearest to your work well enough to say where your results agree and differ.

What are the limits, and what next? Mention the real limits, for example one district only, data from one time point, or self-reported data. Don’t list any weakness that you cannot explain.

Our viva question predictor makes a list of likely questions from your title and abstract. Use it as a starting list only, since it cannot forecast the real questions, and add the questions from the examiners’ reports.

Practise aloud, with interruptions

Reading the thesis again and again feels like preparation, but it does not help much. In the viva you have to talk about your work under pressure, and many times in your second language.

Rehearse the talk at least three times in front of people, with a timer running. Ask a lab mate or a junior faculty member to stop you in the middle of a slide with a question, like an examiner will do. Answer, then go back to the slide and complete it. Most scholars has not practised this answering and coming back, and it shows on the viva day.

If English is not your first language, write down answers for the ten questions you are most afraid of. Then say them without the paper till they sound like you. Short sentences are fine. Nobody in the board is marking your grammar, they only want to understand what you did.

With our viva practice tool you get one question at a time, so you can rehearse alone at home. Our viva preparation service also includes a mock viva with us over video call. The questions come from your thesis and the examiners’ reports, and afterwards we send notes on each answer.

On the day: how to handle a hard question

Listen to the full question first. Take a small pause. Many scholars have a favourite answer ready and they try to fit it in anywhere. Don’t do that. Reply to the question they actually put.

Some questions you will not know. No problem with that. Covering it with some long round-about talk is worse, the examiner will catch it in one minute. You can say “I didn’t test that, but I would expect…” or “I haven’t read that paper, sir. Could you tell me what it found?” In my experience the board takes this kind of reply well. What irritates them is a long answer that goes away from the question.

Sometimes an examiner will disagree with you. Don’t fight with them, and don’t give up your position fully either. Tell what your data showed and accept that another interpretation is possible. Suppose the examiner is right. Then tell them you will add a line on it in the final copy. Many vivas finish with a small list of minor corrections, and agreeing to do the corrections is normal.

Take a bound or printed copy of the thesis with page flags on the important tables. Keep your reply table printout also. With the flags you will not be searching pages in front of everybody.

After the viva

The board signs a report recommending the award of the degree, sometimes with corrections. Do those corrections fast and get the sign-off from your supervisor. In few universities the time given for corrected copies is very short. CHRIST, for example, wants four hard-bound copies at its Centre for Research within one week of the viva.

Then the university deposits a soft copy with INFLIBNET for Shodhganga, as per clause 17 of the UGC 2022 regulations. Till the degree is formally awarded, the university gives you a provisional certificate to use. If you have not reached the pre-submission stage yet, our guide on the pre-submission presentation explains that earlier seminar.