Timeline
- When all six components necessary to submit your thesis are received, we send your application to the Faculty for approval. They confirm it within one week usually.
- After that the thesis is sent to the opponents, who have six weeks to write their written report.
- The opponent's deadline must be at least seven weeks before the defense date because:
- Within a week after the opponents’ deadline, you will get their written evaluation/report from them.
- Then you have some time to make the changes you are asked to make (or small changes you want to make).
- You must make an errata list (a list of the changes between the submitted version and the printed version).
- You can also write a reply to the opponents if you want to (this is not common).
- At this point we need to print the final version of dissertation. The dissertation must be available (e.g. printed) at least two weeks before the defense, and the printer needs at least two weeks to actually print the dissertation, so you need to send the final PDF to the Graphic center 4 weeks before your defense date.
- This is why we recommend that you have at least seven weeks between the opponent's deadline and your defense date to make sure you have time to make small changes to your dissertation if necessary.
Vacation:
It is not possible to defend in July or August. This is because the Faculty and our administration are on vacation in July, and a defense requires administrative work in the weeks leading up to it (announcing your defense, publishing the web page, etc.)
The first date you can defend after summer holidays will be different every year, but in general it is not possible until the last full week in August, or first week in September.
Easter and Christmas holidays can also add a week or more to your timeline depending on when they fall.
Holiday days such as 1 May or 17 May also don't count as working days for the minimum of seven weeks we need after we get the thesis back from the opponents, so if there are any holiday days in those seven weeks, they will shift the deadline back slightly.
To create a customized timeline for your own submission and defense, please contact the PhD Advisor.
Other things to be aware of:
We only have the capacity for one on-site (e.g. in Kristine Bonnevies Hus) defense per day, so if you have a particular day that you feel very strongly about, it's best to bring this to the PhD advisor as soon as possible to make sure that date gets "reserved" for you.
External candidates:
Students who are not financed by the University or who do not have their main supervisor at the University) must add 2 weeks to this time frame, which means they must hand in their application and dissertation 4.5 months before the planned defense, as it must also be approved at the Section level.