Ada apa dengan viva?

A good friend of mine vivaed yesterday.
She messaged me, “Alhamdulilllah, pass with minor correction.” Since she already told me not to come up with a banner or anything and put it up for all to see (you never know whether you’ll pass of fail – lotsa uncertainty involved, just last week another candidate vivaed with the result – resubmit & reviva!!) so I did my duty as a good friend by forwarding her msgs to inform all our mutual friends (in academia).
I was hoping that all those people will contact her (instead of me) in order to congratulate her. Unluckily that was not what happened. I was bombarded with calls & messages like,

Ha? Salah anta msg?

Er, lulus minor to mcm mana?

Bestnye….bila nak ke Beijing?

Etc.

The best so far, “Apa viva tu? Dia baru lulus proposal?” (suprisingly came from a future doctoral candidate)

So, let me clarify all matters relating to viva.
To get to viva stage is a big milestone in your academic life. It’s the beginning of an end – at least in terms of your career in graduate school.
Viva n. an oral examination, typically for an academic qualification.
In our case, a Ph. D. (what’s that? Never mind lah…)

Sort of like an interview process where the panelists are your dissertation committee members (a minimum of three), a representative of the Graduate School, one from the Faculty, another from the Centre of PostGrad Studies (to chair the session with an assistant to take notes), an elected internal examiner and most importantly the external examiner (who is given a minimum of three months to peruse laboriously over your thesis) .
Eg. "..you wrote in p.37 that A was .....yet in p.295 you mentioned again that A is.... please reconcile the fact..."

You’re given exactly 20 minutes of presentation time to defend your thesis, i.e. to cramp all relevant information pertaining to your 3, 4 years of research. After which the examiner will start asking questions.
You are supposed to defend your thesis – not to agree with everything he/she said. No help from your committee at all. Once the external starts the ball rolling, there’ll be questions from all members of the floor – bearing in mind not all have taken/given the opportunity of reading your thesis. Even the committee members can innocently asked questions which lead you to trouble.So, you can expect some silly questions but mostly you’ve to parry the questions as best as you can. This may last longer than a miserable one hour.

There will be a brief period whereby you’ll be asked to stand outside while the whole cast mull over your future.
When you’re called back inside, the Chair will make the pronouncement, something to the effect, “…. pihak kami bersetuju….”

The result can be:
1. Lulus (no correction? Unbelievable!! So far, to the best of my knowledge only this one particular professor (who I’ve had issues with) is given this distinctive award in US- on his birthday somemore!)
2. Lulus with minor correction (more common as you’re given about 3-6 months to make correction and submit the corrected thesis that incorporates the comments/suggestions given by the external or whoever during the viva, failing which you’re considered as fail. The 3 months can be a two-weeks correction if you’re hurrying for the Senate meeting.
3. Lulus with major correction. This is not OK as major part of the thesis need to be corrected and resubmitted but no reviva.
4. Resubmit and reviva – this is the second worst thing that could happen to a candidate! It means something wrong with your thesis, your model or analysis etc. (seldomly happen but it does happen)
5. Tak lulus but not given a chance to resubmit or reviva – you might as well as hang your neck!!

Post-lulus-viva Stage:
Detailed corrections
Get the committee members to endorse your corrections and the Chair of Grad School to agree as well
Resubmitt
Learn the technicalities involve in order to publish your thesis in hard-cover
Wait for the Senate meeting (bi-monthly)
Finally, Yeayy!!! The convocation ceremony…
(It’s not the title that matter for most of us. It’s more of a celebration of the end of a painful journey so that now we can get on with our life – family, friends outside the academia…)


Pre-viva Stage:
(a minimum of 3years & a maximum of 6 years for fulltimer & 8 years for part-timers) - This is a long elaborate process, I better not get into this now..

BTW, a true story - one of our senior collapsed right after he submitted his thesis. He passed away immediately. I guess, it's simply too much!!