Now, the majority of you non-US based graduate students should have no problems planning your exit from grad school. After all, there is a time limit on your degree. And you must finish up then. Or else.
For better or worse, this is not the case with US graduate programs (at least in the sciences). There is no set end date for your degree. There are, of course, other dates of importance. Such as when your research funding runs out. Or when you've stayed so long they make you retake the core courses. But you can always work your way around those if you really want to be a grad student forever. It does give you time to get more done with your degree. Or time to fix mistakes you made early on. For many people though, this time is just more time to procrastinate.
| Don't worry, you'll get to that date eventually. |
Reverse Planning Your Exit
The main point of this is to establish deadlines for yourself based on a target graduation date.
1. Decide when you want to graduate (reasonably). In my case this is Spring 2015.
2. Figure out when your finalized thesis/dissertation is due to the University. This is typically a few weeks prior to graduation.
3. Make allowances for other people in the chain. For example, our graduate program director requires finished dissertations to be in his office a week before the university deadline for pre-approval. The university due date, minus this one week (in my case) is your personal due date. Mark this on your calendar.
4. Estimate how long it will take you to make final corrections to your thesis after your defense. Will you be well motivated? Or do you want to extend the time and apply for jobs? Also consider how long it will take your committee to get back to you on approving the corrections. Anywhere from 1-3 months is a reasonable time frame. This amount of time before your dissertation due date is the last possible day for your defense.
5. Estimate a time frame for your defense. Use the answer to #4 as the last day. Then, consider the size and availability of your committee. If you have a small committee that should be readily available at that time, give yourself a two week time frame. If your committee is larger, or your defense will probably overlap a field season or faculty vacation time, increase the time frame to 1-2 months.
6. Now, determine when you should start scheduling your defense. My university has a policy that the defense must be announced at least two weeks prior. Then, given the size and response rate of your committee, estimate how long it will take them to respond to potential dates. I'd give 3-4 weeks for this one. This indicates when you should submit your final rough draft to your committee.
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| Example timeline formulation. Mine, actually. Disclaimer: There is a high probability I will not defend or graduate on these dates specifically! |
After this point, estimating gets a little hazy. It is much more based on how long it takes you to finish your research and writing. If your university has time restrictions on qualifying exams, research proposals, and the like, you can also calculate your personal deadlines for those.
If you want to calculate further back, you need to estimate the time to write and finish research. Keep in mind that you will ALWAYS underestimate the amount of time it takes to perform a task. Don't be discouraged by this. Instead, try to improve your estimating skills. As humans, we tend to estimate the time it takes to perform a task assuming everything goes perfectly. This never happens. So next time, imagine things going wrong. You get sick, your equipment breaks, the data site goes offline, whatever. Then, estimate the time it will take with a reasonable amount of things going wrong.
Take that time and DOUBLE IT. Seriously. This should put you almost exactly at the time it will actually take. It feels awful at first - like you are really bad at getting things done in a reasonable time frame. But then, you make a much better impression on important people, like your advisor, when you accomplish what you say you will when you say you will. Using this method of estimation, you should still have a reasonable timeline for graduation.
If you find yourself missing the deadlines you pick, you need to stop and reconsider. You might be able to push harder and work more, but is it worth the stress? Given that a lot of the timeline depends on other people, it might be best to pick a different graduation date goal. Of course, many advisors support their students leaving for a job before final graduation, as long as the defense is complete. Consider your options carefully before deciding.
Now I want to hear from you. Have you already planned your exit from graduate school? Does having a deadline help you work faster and better? Let me know in the comments!
