How to: Final Exam

(PhD Milestones: Final Exam, Checklist for International Students)

The Final Exam

  • Schedule your final exam with your committee well in advance. And reserve a room for your final exam presentation (see notes below on reserving rooms).
  • Make sure that the CEE Graduate Advising Office has the names of the members of your “reading committee” - the CEE advisors should then submit this to the Grad School.
  • Usually, you must be registered for 10 credits to maintain full-time status, this does not apply for your last quarter or for other circumstances (health issues, primary caregiver, DRS accommodation, financial hardship, or part-time program).
    • Talk with your advisor to determine if petitioning for reduced enrollment/tuition in your last quarter fits your plan.
    • The less tuition that needs to be paid to UW allows grant funding to be stretchd a bit further.
    • For international students, this petition will notify your home country and may affect the start of your grace period after graduation. Confer with ISS and your advisor before moving forward on this.
  • At the beginning of the quarter in which you are having your exam (or no later than three weeks prior to your exam date), submit the Final Exam Request online.
    • Do a “Degree Audit Report” through MyPlan before you submit the Final Exam Request. Make sure all your requirements have been satisfied (except for current credits you're taking, such as all the Dissertation CEE 800 credits, they'll be listed as in progress). If there's something incorrect in the report, contact the CEE grad advisors to get it resolved ASAP.
    • Make sure that your “Advisors & Committees” section in MyGrad correctly lists your committee members and their roles (including the Graduate School Representative, GSR).
  • Thesis/Dissertation formatting and templates (pdf templates/examples), (Microsoft Word templates from Professor Mamishev, UW ECE)
    • Jim Fox from UW has created an overleaf project which can be used to put together all chapters of the thesis together, following the UW Grad School requirements, with little formatting. The project can be accessed here.
  • Email your committee a reminder of your Final Exam date and time a few weeks ahead, and let them know when they can expect you to send them your dissertation.
  • About a week before your exam, the CEE Graduate Advisors should send you a pdf of your “Committee Signature Form” (also known as the “Degree Warrant”). Print this out to bring with you to your exam!
  • No later than two weeks before your exam, send your committee a copy of your (draft) dissertation.
  • The first half of the final exam will be your presentation of your work to the general (~45 minutes) followed by their questions (~10 minutes), and the second half will be the closed section with you and your commitee and GSR (Graduate School Representatives) where they'll ask you questions about your work. Afterwards they'll ask you to leave the room to deliberate among themselves, then bring you back in when they've decided you've passed (hopefully)!
  • Make sure they sign the Committee Signature Form (Degree Warrant)! And turn that back in to the CEE Graduate Advisors afterwards.

Submitting your Dissertation

  • See guidelines here
  • To submit your dissertation/thesis, you will need to log in to the ETD site here NOTE the login here is different than your UW NetID, username is your UW email address (you may need to make an account if you have not previously, if you submitted a masters thesis here in the past you should still have an account)
  • Items you'll need when you submit on the ETD website:
    • A single file PDF of your dissertation
    • Your abstract text to copy/pase into a separate field
    • Any supplementary files you might want to include
    • Names and info for all your committee members
    • Pick 3 subject areas to index your dissertation under from this list (whichever ones sound best to you, I think this is just to help with their indexing/searching features once it's been posted online)
  • After you submit, you may get an email from ProQuest asking for any formatting changes, for which you'd just need to fix the formatting issue and re-upload the PDF file to re-submit.