Doctoral Degree Progress

Progressing through your doctoral degree

We’ve detailed what you need to know, with both policies and procedures, about progressing through a doctoral program at UC Berkeley, including pre-candidacy, advancing to candidacy, and dissertation writing and filing.

Our degrees staff work with departments to track your progress from registration to graduation. After speaking with staff in your department, you can consult with our staff about Qualifying Exams, advancement to candidacy, filing fees, probation, and re-enrollment.

If you are a Graduate Student Affairs Officer and have questions about any of the particulars detailed in these pages, please reach out to the Academic Progress Advisor for your program.

Find your Academic Progress Advisor

the campanile next to the sun

Doctoral Advancing to Candidacy

You’re Ready to Advance to Candidacy, Now What?

Doctoral students undertake an oral Qualifying Examination to show they are qualified to advance to candidacy. Masters students apply to advance to candidacy after completing requirements specified for each program.

Advancing to candidacy means you are ready to research and write a doctoral dissertation (Dissertation Plan A and B) and defend the doctoral dissertation (Dissertation Plan A).

Doctoral students completing a thesis submit individual applications for advancement that list the proposed committee for the thesis or dissertation. Either way, it is the student’s responsibility to ensure that advancement is requested, and to maintain progress to completion.

Please be aware of our best practices recommendations for qualifying exams, related to COVID-19.

Here are some things to be aware of:

1. Maintain your Registration

Graduate students are expected to be registered continuously, with a few specific exceptions (such as formal medical or parental withdrawal). Being registered not only maintains your access to libraries and online research resources; it is what gives you the right to work with the faculty. If your research requires you to be away from Berkeley and the immediately adjacent counties in northern California, you may be eligible for in absentia registration, with reduced registration fees.

2. Make Sure You Can Work with Human Subjects or Animals If Needed

If your research plans change after advancement and you will be working with human subjects or animals, you must complete training in human subjects research by taking and passing the online CITI Program, a basic course in the Protection of Human Research Subjects. Before you begin your research, you must have obtained an approved protocol from the Committee for Protection of Human Subjects. If you will be working with animals, there is a CITI module you should complete.

3. Stay on Track with Research and Writing

You will be working relatively independently. Make a point of communicating regularly with your faculty advisor and committee. Doctoral students advanced to candidacy are required to meet annually with at least two committee members (including the dissertation chair) and must complete the online Academic Progress Report. Having a positive Academic Progress Report on file from the previous year is required for students in participating programs seeking to use the Doctoral Completion Fellowship.

Students writing theses or dissertations may benefit from workshops offered by the Graduate Division’s Academic Services department. Academic Services can also help students form or participate in dissertation writing groups.

You should make every effort to complete your final examination, capstone project, thesis or dissertation within the period of time established for your graduate program. The specific time limits that apply are available from your program. If you exceed the time limit, your candidacy for the degree will lapse and you will not be able to complete the degree until it is reinstated. Reinstating candidacy will require a petition from the program, and is not automatic.

4. Develop your Professional Skills

You may want to deepen your skills as a teacher. The Graduate Student Instructor Teaching and Resource Center offers workshops throughout the year on topics of interest, including developing teaching portfolios and syllabi. The GSI TRC offers a Certificate in Higher Education that you can complete, and participating in some of these workshops fulfills requirements for the certificate.

The Graduate Division also annually offers a Summer Institute for Preparing Future Faculty, an intensive program to help students prepare for the academic job market, with tracks emphasizing teaching and academic writing.

Depending on your field, this may be an appropriate time to being sharing your research at conferences and through publications. The Graduate Division offers a Conference Travel Grant for students at any stage who are presenting their research at professional conferences. The Graduate Division’s Academic Services department offers workshops on academic writing.

Next: Dissertation Writing & Filing

Doctoral Pre-Candidacy

Pre-candidacy represents the first stage of a graduate students’ career.

All of your activities should be planned with the advice of the Head Graduate Advisor or academic advisors assigned on admission to the program.

1. Take Care of the Basics

  • Fulfill residency requirements
  • Fulfill any departmental course requirements
  • Satisfy any foreign language requirement
  • Take and pass preliminary exams if required
  • PhD students: identify Qualifying Exam committee members
  • PhD students: complete any preliminaries required before the Qualifying Exam
  • Complete CITI modules if working with human subjects or animals

2. Teach

The GSI Teaching and Resource Center provides support for your development of teaching skills, offering workshops every semester. Your department is required to offer a course on pedagogy that all first time GSIs must take either before, or at the time of, the first GSI appointment (often numbered 375). Also required of first time GSIs are attendance at the annual Teaching Conference for First-Time GSIs organized by the GSI Center, and completion of the Online Course in Professional Ethics and Standards for GSIs.

3. Consider Interdisciplinarity

Now is the time to decide if you want to formally engage in interdisciplinary study. Doctoral students can add a second degree goal, with the approval of relevant faculty.

Designated Emphasis (DE) programs formalize interdisciplinary concentrations for doctoral students. You need to follow guidelines to apply for the specific DE, and include a faculty member from the DE as a member of the Qualifying Examination committee. If after at least a year of doctoral study in an established program you think your project will require engaging across disciplinary lines and cannot be accomplished within an existing doctoral program, you can propose an Interdisciplinary Doctoral degree.

4. Pursue Fellowship and Research Grant Funding

Fellowships for continuing students offered by the Graduate Division require nomination by the individual program, usually based on an internal application initiated by the student. Many outside fellowships are available for continuing students, with deadlines and links provided by the Fellowships Office.

The Graduate Division offers workshops on applying for some major fellowships (the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the Fulbright Fellowship).

Small research grants are available internally from many of the Organized Research Units and Area Studies Centers on campus, as well as the Bancroft Library.

5. Share Your Research

Graduate students already engaged in preliminary research may want to present their results at conferences. The Graduate Division provides Conference Travel Grants for academic Masters and doctoral students. In some disciplines, students at this stage may publish in conference proceedings, student journals, or peer-reviewed journals. Consider registering with ORCID so that your published work is uniquely identified from your earliest days in graduate school throughout your career.

Your discipline may encourage you to be involved in outreach or community engaged scholarship. You may want to participate in a formal research mentoring program like the SMART program offered by the Graduate Division, or other mentoring opportunities you might have through your research sponsor, program, or college. There are many ways to share your research, and you should explore them now.

Best Practices for Zoom Qualifying Exams

Special thanks to the MCB Graduate Affairs Office for sharing the original work upon which this document is based.

If programs shift to all-Zoom preliminary, comprenhesive, and qualifying exams, we have compiled a list of best practices that we hope will assist students and faculty. Please review this document before your exam and share with all members. Chairs, committee members, and students should all employ creativity and flexibility to conduct the best exam possible.

As a helpful refresher, at the bottom of this document, please see some guidelines around QE committee responsibilities.

A note about the required exception memos:
Through AY 2021-22, the Graduate Council has granted a blanket exception to the rule that all members of a QE committee and the student must attend in person; all members of QE meetings can attend remotely. However, for record-keeping purposes, and to support students and departments should questions about the exam arise, departments are required to submit a short memo describing the exam to the Graduate Degrees office using the Degrees Exceptions eForm. This memo should describe the location and technological circumstances or tools to be used of all members, including the student (e.g., all members will use Zoom, the chair will ensure all technological needs are addressed during the exam, etc.) We have provided a memo template for department use. Either the chair of the committee or the Graduate Student Affairs Officer should gather pertinent details from all members; the GSAO should submit this memo using the Degrees Exception eForm in Campus Solutions.

Important:
If the Zoom meeting is experiencing repeated technical difficulties, or disruptions during an exam, the chair should immediately adjourn the meeting. Please see the Graduate Division Guidelines on Qualifying Exam Adjournment here (scroll down a little after hitting the link).

Zoom meeting on laptop
Photo by Chris Montgomery via Unsplash.com

Best Practices by Topic

Doctoral Candidacy Review

Doctoral students who have Advanced to Candidacy complete their Doctoral Candidacy Review ) online using the DCR eForm in Campus Solutions (This eForm replaced the GLOW DCR preciously in use).

The Doctoral Candidacy Review, to be completed on an annual basis, is designed to assist doctoral students and their dissertation chair to stay on track with advising and other supportive activities to help facilitate the completion of doctoral work in a timely manner.

The Graduate Council of the Academic Senate requires an Doctoral Candidacy Review to be completed each year for all doctoral students after they advance to candidacy until they complete their program.

What is the DCR?

  1. What is the purpose of the Doctoral Candidacy Review?
    The Graduate Division checks to ensure that there is a completed Doctoral Candidacy Review for the most recent year when a student eligible for the Doctoral Completion Fellowship (DCF) asks to activate that fellowship. The Report is also used to check that a student is in good academic standing for compliance with certain fellowship conditions.  The Graduate Division may consult your Doctoral Candidacy Reviews in cases where there is a disagreement about your progress. Finally, the Graduate Division will use aggregated information about students’ activities to inform decisions about new programs and resources for professional development.
  2. Where can one find a list of the DCR questions?
    A template of the form is available as a PDF document.

Timeline Questions – When to complete the DCR?

  1. What should happen when?
    After a year of Candidacy, you should initiate your part of the Doctoral Candidacy Review each academic year. Once your part of the report is complete, the eForm will notify your dissertation committee chair and ask him or her to convene a meeting to review your academic progress. This meeting should involve at least two members of your committee. This consultation should consider your Doctoral Candidacy Review (which your dissertation chair or co-chairs can view once you submit the eForm) and any other documents you provide separately to the committee, such as an updated CV or examples of writing.
  2. When should a student file the report?
    The online report for the current year is available from the first day of Fall semester until the day before the Fall semester begins for the next academic year. The Graduate Council does not indicate when during the year the report should be completed. Each student and committee can work out whatever schedule is convenient. If a student will be in absentia in spring, for example, it can be completed in the fall. The DCF process will review the student record to see that there is a satisfactory progress report from the previous academic year, which ends the day before the next fall term.
  3. What if a student is intending to file this semester? This is the best proof possible that the student is making good academic progress and as such no DCR is required.

Timeline Questions-Doctoral Completion Fellowship Issues

  1. The student advanced during this academic year and wants to take the DCF in the following academic year.  Does an DCR need to be on file for me to take the DCF then?
    No.  The act of advancement constitutes making sufficient academic progress and having an DCR on file is not needed for the first two semesters after advancement.  However, DCRs are required annually until you file. Please note that it is vital for you to discuss when you should take the DCF with your dissertation chair as taking the DCF early make not be in your best interest.  It was intended to provide financial support for you to finish your dissertation.  If you have other fellowships and teaching opportunities, these should be exercised before use of the DCF.

Other Student Questions

  1. Why does the list of activities on the form include things I haven’t done?
    Students in each of Berkeley’s 100-plus graduate programs have a variety of experiences: some present papers at national conferences; others conduct research with human or animal subjects requiring additional ethical conduct documents; some engage in extensive professional practice, such as internships. A comprehensive list of possible activities is provided to make this form quicker for you to complete. If you want to expand on anything in the narrative, feel free to do so.
  2. Why does the form refer to previous reports? What are these, and where can I obtain copies?
    This Graduate Council requirement has been in place for decades, and your department should have on file your Doctoral Candidacy Reviews beginning the first year you advanced to candidacy. DCRs filed in Campus Solutions will also be available to view there.
  3. Who gets to see this report?
    Your dissertation committee chair and other members of the committee are involved in completing the report. Your department’s Graduate Student Affairs Officer has access to all the reports from the program. Graduate Division Deans and staff can also access these reports as needed.

Research Involving Human and Animal Subjects

If you are conducting research involving human subjects, you are obligated to request review and approval for your study protocol from the Committee for Protection of Human Subjects (CPHS) which serves as the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for UC Berkeley.

Federal law and University policy require that all research you conduct that involves human subjects in any way must be reviewed and approved or determined to be exempt by the CPHS before the research is initiated. If your research is ongoing, you must request the project be reviewed and approved again prior to the expiration date of the current approval, and at least once a year.

As of September 1, 2005, before approval is granted for a research protocol, any graduate student listed as Lead Investigator or Key Personnel on an application to CPHS must complete training in human subjects research by taking and passing the online CITI Program (https://www.citiprogram.org), a basic course in the Protection of Human Research Subjects. Students should take either the Social-Behavioral or Biomedical sequence of modules as is most appropriate for the type of research they are conducting.

Graduate students who plan to use human subjects in their research must complete the CITI course and print out the certificate of completion prior to applying for advancement to candidacy. This certificate must be submitted with the advancement form.

There is no provision for CPHS to give retroactive approval of research. Applications involving greater than minimal risk for subjects will go to full committee review and must be submitted to the CPHS at least 4 weeks prior to the regularly scheduled monthly meeting. Applications for expedited or exempt categories of review are processed in order of receipt. The review process can be a lengthy one, sometimes taking 2-3 months to complete. Plan adequate time for the review and approval process. Research that involves human subjects that is conducted without the approval of CPHS may be rejected by the Graduate Division.

Only CPHS can determine whether research is eligible for exemption from federal regulations, qualifies for expedited sub-committee review, or will require full committee review. Each student should be granted individual approval by CPHS. If you have any questions about federal regulations or University policy, please call the staff in the Office for the Protection of Human Subjects at (510) 642-7461 or visit its Web site athttp://cphs.berkeley.edu. The CPHS/OPHS web site contains complete Guidelines and forms for research investigators.

Research Involving Animal Subjects

The Animal Care and Use Committee (ACUC) (http://www.acuc.berkeley.edu/) is charged with reviewing and approving all proposed uses of live vertebrate animals in teaching and research.

If you will be conducting research for your degree that involves vertebrate animals, you must obtain approval from the ACUC prior to beginning your research. You must provide the Graduate Division with a copy of the approval for your study protocol prior to filing for your degree.

Relevant Policies

For more information, see applicable policies in the Guide to Graduate Policy.