PhD graduation

Decided to graduate? Welcome to hell.

UPD from Vlad: I throught Olga was exaggerating, but the process is really confusing and long. It will take you a full semester or more to do it.

Congratulations on making it this far. However, you are not quite there yet - there is still an overwhelming amount of paperwork you will have to go through. To save yourself some time, please follow this step-by-step guideline on how to get graduation clearance.

Official checklist:

Follow this checklist for a general step-by-step graduation guide. And you can find this one to be useful too, and this one as well (it has more details on requirements of the thesis defense)

Thesis guide is also very useful.

Unfortunately, there is no single resource that will give you all of the information. That’s why we made this wiki page. The whole procedure might be very confusing, feel free to reach out to Xinwen Fu for clarifications. He’s our new (as of 2023) graduate coordinator and I recommend reaching him out even if you have Cindy Chen listed in your UML NOW. He’s very quick to respond and I (Vlad) had very positive experience with him.

A note on the deadlines

There are certain deadlines related to the graduation and they are strict. E.g., you can’t graduate in Fall semester if you failed a library submission deadline. However, it’s not a huge problem. You can formally graduate in the next semester, but start your OPT job right after your thesis defence (assuming your OPT is approved by then).

0. Prerequisites

  • (optional, but highly recommended) It is assumed that you’ve already got a full-time job offer. If you haven’t yet, prep for the interviews and come back here once you do get an offer.

  • It is also assumed you have already satisfied the PhD requirements.

  • You also should have a clear idea of who is going to be on your committee. Aside from your advisor, there should be at least two professors from UML, and one external member.

  • Submit the PhD qualification clearance form as early as possible, if you haven’t already done so.

  • Keep an eye on the deadline for submitting the Declaration of the Intent to graduate. Submit is as early as possible. You do not need our dean’s signature on the form.

  • Also keep an eye on the deadlines for 1) submitting your thesis proposal to the library (it has to be after you defend your proposal) 2) defending your thesis 3) submitting your final thesis to the library. All of these deadlines are listed on the university graduate calendar.

If you fail these deadlines, it’s not a huge deal. You can still apply for **Post-**OPT, graduate, and start a job on time. The only thing that changes is that your official graduation will be the next semester. But if you do fail these deadlines, please contact anyone from Debby White team (maybe even her directly) for a consultation. She’s super nice and helpful.

1. OPT application (2 weeks)

Depending on your job start date, your first step is to clarify the date of the end of the program. You are allowed to apply for OPT 90 days prior to the end of your program, and it is strongly recommended you use all of that time period and apply in advance.

❗Remember that if you are an F1 student you are not allowed to start your job and receive any financial benefits without physically getting an EAC.

OPT application is a two-stage process: you first submit an application to the ISSO, and if approved, you use the newly issued I-20 to file together with the rest of your documents to USCIS. The full workflow can be found on the ISSO website.

1.1 Submitting your application to the ISSO

In your application you wiill have to specify the program end date, and the start date of your job. You will have to provide the following:

  • The I-765 form, filled out (:exclamation:signed in black ink)

  • Your transcript

  • Your I-94

  • Your passport page

Once you fill out your part of the application, it then gets transferred to your advisor. The tricky part here is that they have to specify the program end date and the defense date. Most likely your defense date is provisional and not set in stone, because nobody plans a meeting 90 days in advance. This is fine, as the ISSO allows some flexibility in dates. However, you should get these dates discussed and approved by the ISSO, and if you want to get a quick response it is suggested that you email the ISSO advisors directly.

1.2 Submitting your application to USCIS

Roughly 4-5 business days after submissing your application to the ISSO you will get your I-20. In the meantime, collect the following:

  • Two photographs

  • Scanned page with your visa stamp

  • G-1145 form

  • A personal check for $410 paid to the order of USCIS

❗:exclamation:Before deciding on whether to file your application by mail or electronically, check the OPT tracker. USCIS is so great that they are likely to process electronic applications (IOE) longer than the physical ones (all other centers). Get ready for the frustrating wait.

2. Matriculation Course (2 days)

Once your course- and research credit requirements are satisfied, you should enroll in the Matriculation course.

This course requires a ~$100 fee which can not be waived.

You should be planning to enroll in the course by the corresponding class enrollment deadline; however, if you miss the deadline you can contact the Office of the Registrar and ask them to add it to your account.

3. Committee (2 weeks)

Ask your potential committee members if they can and want to join your committee. If emailing, make sure to include your papers and a brief abstract of your work. Be appreciative of their time and ask about their availability. Make sure to mention your proposed timeline - serving as a PhD committee member is quite a commitment, and you want to give enough time for them to make a decision. Be patient.

4. PhD proposal (6-8 weeks).

Follow the school guidelines for proposal/thesis formatting. As of 2021, there is no official LaTeX template for a UML thesis. Thanks to kind students, you can get started with the unoffical ones.

Title, signature pages, and abstract title of the template are not up to the university format. I had to make a word doc, export it to PDF and concatenate my disseration with the correctly formatted signature page.

❗Schedule your proposal defense such that you allow your committee members at least 2 weeks to read the approved proposal. In other words, plan to be done with the proposal writeup 3-3.5 weeks prior to the planned proposal defense.

Tips:

  • Make sure to include a full list of your publications.

  • Include your proposed timeline.

  • Organize your thesis/proposal in chapters, with every chapter corresponding to one of your papers.

  • Ask past students for sample proposals/theses to give you an idea of what yours should look like.

  • Even though your proposal doesn’t have to have an abstract, you should have your abstract ready (see below).

Once your proposal is ready, you need to get it approved (yes, it does sound ridiculous). This means you need to send the proposal, the list of committee members with the intended proposal date, the proposed committee form, and the abstract of your proposal to your graduate coordinator (prof. Chen). Do not expect a fast or a detailed response. In fact, be thankful if you get any.

Note that you can’t schedule your proposal defense until your proposal is approved. Wait for the approval and send follow-up emails if necessary.

❗Advertise your proposal at least 2 weeks prior to the defense date by sending an email to cs-msgs@listserv.uml.edu and by filling out the Today@UML form.

5. Right after the proposal

I heavily recommend to do all of these the day you defend your proposal

  1. Make sure to schedule the defence date during the proposal

  2. Make sure to sign the title page (PI + committee, no dean signature required for proposal). PDF annotation signature should be fine.

  3. As soon as you schedule your defense, submit defense announcement to Today@UML and CS-MSGS. Use this template.

Submit your thesis draft to the library. You have to do it a week before the library submission deadline. It will cost $30+ to ProQuest and extra $50 to the library (archival fee). You don’t have to register the copyright through ProQuest (extra $90).

You don’t have to use your university email with ProQuest and I actually had some issues with it for some reason. It’s better to use your personal email, because this way you’ll be able to access this after graduation. You probably don’t need it, but I guess it’s better to have it just in case.

6. Dissertation Defence

❗You can’t defend unless you advertized your thesis at least two weeks before the defence on Today@UML.

7. After defense

  1. Collect commetee signatures for the title page

  2. Submit it to the library

  3. Submit this form to your graduate coordinator