The dissertation and final public oral examination together serve as a culminating experience that showcases a doctoral candidate’s mastery of and emerging contributions to their field. The computer science department also requires a preliminary final public oral examination.
Preliminary Final Public Oral Examination
The preliminary final public oral examination (pre-FPO) is a preliminary presentation of your dissertation research and should occur six months before your final public oral examination (FPO) date. The pre-FPO gives doctoral candidates an opportunity to present their research, get preliminary critiques of the proposed dissertation, and clarify the outstanding work required for the final dissertation.
The FPO committee must be identical to the pre-FPO committee: committee changes require approval from the Director of Graduate Studies and verification that the new committee composition satisfies Graduate School rules. Readers are not required to attend the pre-FPO or FPO.
FPO Committee Composition
The FPO committee must consist of at least five members. This includes the student’s adviser, two examiners, and two readers. Two examiners and one reader must be faculty with a primary appointment in the Computer Science Department. All Princeton members of the committee must meet the Graduate School rank requirements to serve as a dissertation reader or committee member.
Committee members who are not at Princeton must be pre-approved by both the Director of Graduate Studies and the Graduate School.
Final Public Oral Examination Schedule
- More Than Two Months Before FPO
- Email gradinfo@cs.princeton.edu as soon as you have a target FPO date in mind.
- Review the Mudd Library Dissertation Format Requirements
- Submit final chapters to your adviser(s) for review
- If applicable, acknowledge and/or clarify public presentations, publications, and co-authorship of papers containing material in your dissertation as per this "Prior Publication and Co-Authorship" form
- Acknowledge your funding sources. See adviser for official grant numbers.
- Confirm your principal readers and examiners and that your committee meets Graduate School and departmental requirements
- Confirm FPO date and location
- If you are serving as an Assistant-in-Instruction in the semester that you are defending the dissertation, consult with your department about the FPO date to ensure that you may remain enrolled and eligible to continue teaching through the end of the term.
- Complete name, adviser, and other bibliographic fields in each Reader’s Report form and distribute them to Readers
- Inform your readers that they must return their Readers’ Reports to you no later than 3 weeks prior to FPO
- At Least Six Weeks Before FPO
- Distribute a final draft of your dissertation to readers and copy the Graduate Coordinators
- Please inform your readers that their reader's reports must contain substantive feedback (at least a few sentences) on your dissertation. The Graduate School will not accept blank reader's reports, even if they're signed.
- Please ensure your readers sign & date their reader's reports. The Grad School will not accept the forms if they are not signed AND dated.
- Incorporate suggested edits into your dissertation
- Four Weeks Before FPO
- Submit a final copy of your dissertation to the Graduate Coordinators
- Complete the advanced degree application through TigerHub
- If applicable, discuss the need to embargo the dissertation with your adviser
- For an application to be considered complete, the following materials (as PDFs) must be included:
- A copy of the title page, correctly formatted (sample title page)
- Date on title page is month/year of graduation, not FPO date
- A copy of the abstract (350 words or less)
- Three weeks before FPO
- Student (and gradinfo@cs.princeton.edu) should receive Readers' reports back from Readers.
- Two weeks before FPO
- Materials Submitted by the Department to the Graduate School:
- Request to Hold Final Public Oral form
- Reader Reports completed by principal readers of the dissertation
- A CV of any external examiner or reader. Committee membership from someone outside the University must be approved by the Graduate School prior to completion of the advanced degree application.
- At Least Three Days Before FPO & Day of FPO
- Confirm that your FPO has been approved and the announcement has been posted.
- Day of FPO
Defend!
- Following the FPO
Before submitting final paperwork to the Graduate School, graduate students must take the following steps:
- Submit dissertation PDF to Princeton’s ProQuest ETD site, paying any applicable publishing and copyright fees – the Graduate School requires traditional or open access publication and does not allow publication restrictions
- Optional: Submit link to an Open Access version of the dissertation to gradinfo@cs.princeton.edu
- Complete the Survey of Earned Doctorates
- Complete the Exit Survey
- Complete the checkout process for students departing the University in TigerHub. Must be completed two weeks after defending.
- Enrollment and benefits typically end the first of the month following a successful defense. Additional information can be found here: Status Changes and End of Student Benefits.
All final paperwork is normally submitted immediately following the successful completion of the FPO examination, but in no case later than two weeks after the defense or by the degree deadline, whichever comes first.