Don't Let These 7 Signs Destroy Your Doctorate

There are 7 signs that your dissertation is heading towards rejection, and most doctoral candidates don't see them coming until it's too late. After years of coursework, research, and writing, the last thing you want is to go into your final stages only to get sent back to square one. I'm Dr. Steve Tippins, I've spent 35 years in academia. I've sat on more than 300 dissertation committees and coached hundreds of doctoral students across the finish line. I've seen every single one of these mistakes up close from the other side of the table. What I'm about to share with you is what your committee sees but rarely says out loud. In this video, I'm going to walk you through the 7 signs that your dissertation is in danger of not accepted and exactly what you need to do to fix each one before it costs you months. First of all, writing and format problems. Many times committee members will reject a dissertation just because of formatting issues, and that's even before they've really read your work. Failure to comply with your school's formatting requirements—APA, Turabian, Chicago, whatever shows your committee you're not ready. And it is a requirement at most schools. Submitting a document that hasn't been proofread, is full of typos, maybe even missing information or sections, can signal to your committee that you're just not taking this process seriously. I've seen people have really strong research but have it sent back because they didn't take the time to understand academic writing. And the requirements of their institution. And every time it gets sent back, it adds weeks or maybe even months onto the process. The fix for this? Look, treat the style manual and the template of your institution as gospel. You have to follow those. And once you learn those, you'll be able to use those to your advantage. The second danger point is failing to follow your proposal. When you have a proposal that's been accepted by your committee, think of that as a contract. You have told them what type of research you're going to do, what type of analysis you're going to use, and where you're going to get your data. Sometimes things fall apart or are different than we expect, so we have to go in different directions, but that doesn't mean to go on your own. Make sure you get committee approval before you change what you've agreed to, before you change the contract between you and your committee. Because if you move forward without their approval, I guarantee they're gonna come back and say, "But this isn't what we approved. Go back and do what we approved, and/or let's reevaluate what you've done and see if we can approve it." All of that wastes time. Years ago, I was a committee member. I was not the chair in this case. And there was a student who'd made a proposal., and we actually didn't even accept the proposal and said, "Make some changes and come back." This student didn't do anything. I thought they dropped out. I hadn't heard from them in 9 months or so. All of a sudden, they came back with completed research based on the proposal that wasn't accepted, and the committee and then the chair had to explain that, you know, "You didn't get this approved by the committee. This wasn't approved by the IRB. This can't be submitted." And this person was not happy, and eventually dropped out and never finished. So the proposal is your contract. If there are problems, and here's the fix, if there are problems in data gathering or the type of analysis or whatever, immediately contact your chair, get in touch with your committee, find out what tact they want you to take, and they will approve so you can move forward instead of just moving forward on your own. A third sign you might have issues would be in a quantitative study— analysis problems. Many, many, many people hire statisticians to do the statistics in their dissertation. At most schools, that's okay. What's not okay is for you to not understand what the statistician did. So yeah, they can do it, but you also have to learn from that statistician why the test was used that the assumptions were met, etc., because you'll get questions in a defense. Why was this test used over another? And what are the assumptions? Did you meet the underlying assumptions of the test? And you can't say, well, Dr. Rabidoux did that. That's not a legal answer on your dissertation. You have to be able to understand that. So if you're going to hire a statistician, make sure part of the contract is they will help you understand what has been done and why it was done. This can help dramatically save time because you go into a defense or before a defense when they write comments back and you say, "Dr. Ravidu did it." They're gonna say, "No, that's not a good answer. You gotta give me an answer." If it's part of your defense, I've seen people freeze and say, "Oh, I don't know why I chose that," or, "I don't know why that's done." And the committee's gonna say, "Come back when you do know." Maybe even not that politely. So, the fix on this: if you're using a test, you better understand what it means, what it does, what the underlying assumptions are, why it's the appropriate test. If you can cover that, you're prepared to move forward. Anywhere along the line in your dissertation, if you're having struggles, problems, need questions answered, join our free dissertation help community. Fourth sign you may be heading into some troubles with your dissertation is lack of preparation for your defense. Yes, a defense in the ideal world should be confirmatory. They should have already basically approved your work before they allowed you to go to defend it. But if you just rest and think, "It's approved. This is just a formality," that doesn't treat them with the respect that they deserve. You need to present this material. Yes, they've passed your proposal or your final document and said, "Yes, this is ready to go to defense," but they haven't confirmed it totally. Your final defense is confirmatory. So you have to be prepared and ready and able to answer questions. If you walk into a defense unprepared, what's going to happen during the discussion time between the committee is something like, 'Wow, he or she wasn't ready for this. They certainly didn't put in time to prepare for this.' And the subtle subtext to all of that is they didn't respect our time because they didn't prepare. We're here, we're ready to answer questions or ask questions. They weren't. And that doesn't reflect well on you. And more often than not is going to mean we want you to see the defense again, do it again. And that could be, 'Well, we can all get together again.' Now we're multiplying schedules and figuring out what happens. Um, and it could be 2 or 3 weeks before it could happen again. And unfortunately, many people save their defense until the end of a term, and you could miss a graduation date, costing you money, delaying graduation by months. The fix to this is be prepared and be professional. Come into your defense with slides that show and allow you to demonstrate your competence on this. Be prepared to answer questions in a professional manner. More often than not, that's going to move you forward. Another thing that can turn things around in the wrong way for you is disrespecting your committee or committee members. Now, sometimes this can come off like confidence, but too much confidence, and really not understanding that your committee's been there before and they're making comments to help you move forward based on their experience. When people don't take the suggestions of committee members, that starts to sour committee members on what you're doing. Now, you can disagree with a committee member and you can have a discussion either textually or via Zoom, phone, or in person, but that means you've taken a look at their comments, and you've responded to their comments and engaged in some sort of interactions. If you just disregard, don't respond, they feel like they've wasted their time and you haven't respected them. So take the time to look at what they've told you and answer, even if it's, "Yes, I agree. I'm going to do that," or, "Wow, I was looking at it this other way and using the work of another author," and now we're getting into a discussion within the field, and that's respectful. But just not paying attention is not respectful. Every time I've worked with a student who has said, "Oh, I don't agree with their comment," I then say, "And you have to engage with this committee member and explain why you don't agree or why you want to go a different direction." Look, sometimes you may be educating a committee member because they hadn't looked at it the way you're looking at it. And if that's the case, many times they end up as one of your biggest advocates. Always be professional. Always respect your committee members. And, you know, the comments they make are based on their experience, so use that to grow. Doing things like that will avoid this issue. A 6th area where there's problem is using outdated literature. Now, at some schools, this is becoming a little less of a problem because they have requirements that a certain percentage of literature has to come from, let's say, the last 5 years or maybe 10 years. What that does is make— that students are using up-to-date literature and they're up to date with what's going on in the field. If your most recent reference is from 1948, there's most likely been a lot done in your field in over 75 years. If there hasn't been a lot done, that probably means it's not a question that needs to be answered now. So, they're looking to make sure you understand the existing literature and the seminal literature from the past, but also what's been happening now. Too many times I've seen people submit proposals with information that sounded good, but the most recent reference was 2018, let's say, and many from the early 2000s. And what that's doing is telling your committee either there's nothing happening or I haven't paid attention to the recent material. This is part of knowing your institution's requirements as well. We talked about the templates earlier and handbooks, things like that. Understand what they want for literature. Now, here's something you need to also be aware of. It is 2026 right now. That means 2022, '23, '24, '25, and '26 are considered the 5 years. Great. But if you're defending your dissertation in 2027, 2022 goes away. It's 2023, '24, '25, '26, and '27. So when people say keep your literature up to date, that's kind of what they're referring to. So continuing to do literature searches and making your literature search bounded by a 5-year time period can be very beneficial for you and can also help you overcome a potential problem of literature that's too old. A 7th sign that your dissertation may be in trouble, and much of this one is out of your control, but let's just call it committee implosion. Maybe your chair retires. Maybe someone gets sick and leaves. Maybe someone leaves the institution. All of a sudden, your committee that you loved and you were working well with is changing. This is a position that nobody wants. Especially if it's your chair leaving. You can't always prevent this, but you can be ready for it if it arises. So, for example, your chair leaves. Is there another committee member who can step up to be chair? They're familiar with what you've done. They're familiar with you. Hopefully there's someone you work well with. This is the ideal person to put into your chair slot. You may need to come up with other committee members. Maybe your institution assigns it or you get to find it, a person. One issue when committees change is I've seen new chairs or new committee members come in and say, "Oh no, I wouldn't have accepted this. We have to change everything." So be aware that new voices can mean change. Now, if you have an approved proposal, there's an argument to be made that, hey, The institution has approved the proposal. Let's move forward. But if you aren't that far yet, it's pretty easy to reopen things for a new committee member. Easy for the committee, not for you. So you want to be ready to engage with any new committee members to try to answer questions and get them on board, because this can save a lot of time, as opposed to, "No, I, I don't want you to do a qualitative study. I think you need to do a quantitative study." 'Go back and get literature to support that. Redesign your methodology,' et cetera. That's a huge change, and we want to avoid that if at all possible. So the fix for this, or a series of fixes, is communication with members of the committee, with your institution. Also, documentation. Keep track of everything that's approved and when it was approved and the dates, and understand your university's handbook because those are the rules. That will guide everything. These are 7 signs that your dissertation may not be accepted. In addition, we've provided steps of what to do when any of those 7 arise. So, to recap, look, formatting and writing errors are going to get you in trouble. Violating the contract of your proposal without talking to your committee is also a red flag. Not understanding statistics, not being able to answer questions about— the process and methodology that you used in your study opens you up to not having your dissertation accepted. Walking into your dissertation defense without taking time to prepare is a big gamble with years of your life and of your work. Dismissing or not paying attention to committee feedback puts you in danger of getting your dissertation rejected and loses you allies along the way. Using outdated literature tells your committee you're not up to date with what's going on in the field. And if your committee begins to fall apart, the only real efficient way through this is with proactive, documented communication. None of these are surprises once you know what to look for. If any of these were to apply to where you are right now, don't panic. Fix it. That's exactly what this channel is here for. Comment below and tell me which of these you didn't see coming. And if you're looking for support, join our free Dissertation Help Community where thousands of doctoral candidates are getting real guidance and accountability that they need to finally cross the finish line. I'll see you in the next video.