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.

This is What Your Committee is Thinking

14 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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In this advisory YouTube segment, Steve Tippins, Ph.D., warns dissertation writers that having excessively long early chapters (e.g., 104–128 pages across the first four chapters) while presenting a very short Chapter 5 (around four pages) can undermine credibility with committee members. He explains that Chapter 5 is the critical space where the author must fully articulate findings, meanings, and implications—essentially “sing your own song.” If the committee sees a disproportionate amount of work condensed into a brief final chapter, they may doubt the author’s competence or wonder whether the research was insufficient. Tippins emphasizes the need to thoroughly explain results and their significance, and he invites viewers to comment the word “help” to receive a link to his free dissertation help community.

Chapters

Too often I get someone who spent a year or more on a document. They've written 104 pages on the first 4 chapters or 128 pages on the first 4 chapters, and their Chapter 5 is 4 pages and covering all the sections that are required to be covered in Chapter 5. And as a committee member, it doesn't ring true or doesn't sound like you know what you're doing or that you have done the work yourself, because this is where you get to say, "Here's what it means." This is where you get to sort of sing your own song. Long, so to speak. So if you put a year into this and all you've got are 4 pages to write, they're gonna question you. Ultimately, in their minds, they may be thinking, "They did all this work and that's it? That's all they've got? Really? You know, maybe we didn't give them enough to do." This is where you really should be totally explaining what you found, what it means, what the implications are. Drop the word "help" in the comments and I'll send you the link to my free dissertation help community.