Steve Tippins Ph.D.Helping doctoral students get their dissertation accepted, succeed in their careers, & change the world | Academic Career Advisor | Dissertation Chair & Founder, Beyond PhD Coaching | 35 + years of experience.

Know the Requirements of Your Dissertation Program

14 Aug 2025 · 1 min

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In this segment, Steve Tippins emphasizes the importance of mastering the administrative and procedural requirements of a dissertation program. He illustrates how misunderstandings—such as assuming a university permits both proposal and dissertation defenses in the same semester—can derail a student's timeline. By proactively checking university policies, IRB submission deadlines, and other bureaucratic timelines, students can avoid costly surprises and keep their path to graduation on track.

Chapters

Understand what your specific school requirements are. For example, I talked to someone a few months ago and they said, I'm going to defend my dissertation next semester, and I'm going to finish and graduate next semester. And I asked them a simple does your university allow you to defend your proposal and defend your dissertation in the same semester? Many don't, and that person checked and found out sure enough, their university would not allow that to happen. So the more you understand things like that, when the IRB has to be turned in, how long they take all of those administrivia type things, the better off you're going to be.