You made it! The end of your third year is almost here. Congratulations! You must be practically done with your coursework and you have — I assume — nailed it.
Going forward, you will take almost no regular seminars and courses. Instead you will sign up for up to 12 units of COGS 299: Individual Study. Starting in the quarter after your advancement to candidacy, you should sign up for units of COGS 290: Dissertation Research.
From now on, your primary focus should be on the advancement to candidacy. You need to be preparing for your advancement by the Fall and certainly no later than the end of next year.
You should at this point already have discussed the topic of your advancement with your adviser and discussed who you want to invite to your advancement committee.
During the summer, you should continue the research that will be presented in your advancement and start planning your advancement paper and presentation.
The goal of the advancement paper and presentation is to demonstrate an understanding of the literature and issues in your area of research interest, and to propose a specific dissertation project to be approved by your committee
The Individual Development Plan
Before the end of Spring, you should schedule an annual feedback meeting with your primary adviser. To do so, you must complete your Individual Development Plan (link), which you can use to discuss summer research expectations if you haven’t already.
The advancement to candidacy
The advancement to candidacy is arguably the most important milestone of the graduate program in Cognitive Sciences after the defense. Sometime in your third or fourth year, you must assemble an advancement committee.
Your committee
The Advancement Committee must include:
- Your advising team
- At least three Cognitive Sciences faculty members in total
- At least one UCI faculty member with no affiliation to the Department of Cognitive Sciences (no primary or secondary appointment and no conflicts of interest)
- A total of five members
You must select three of the committee members who have a Cognitive Sciences appointment to be your Dissertation Committee. These faculty will continue to advise you and track your progress from the point of advancement all the way to the defense. Note that your advising team must be among these three. We usually refer to the non-affiliated committee member as the Outside member. Their function is not to evaluate your research but to oversee the fairness and rigor of the evaluation process, so while it is useful if they have a background that is relevant to your research, it is not required. The fifth member, who may or may not be in Cognitive Sciences, is sometimes referred to as the Floating member.
It goes without saying that you should obtain each faculty member’s permission before adding them to your Advancement Committee. Note that some faculty may add conditions before they agree to be on your committee – they may require regular check-ins, for example, or they may require that you make changes to a proposed project. Either way, they are there to help you succeed, so be sure to take advantage of their knowledge and experience.
After your committee is assembled, you should decide on a date for the advancement meeting.
The advancement paper
The advancement paper can take a few different forms, and you should discuss with your committee what the format should be. At a minimum, the advancement paper should describe your research activities to date and a proposal for a future research project. The paper can be relatively short (e.g., the length of an NIH NRSA Predoctoral format), but it can be as long as 30 pages or more. A reasonable and efficient strategy is to reuse (i.e., copy and paste) one or more research manuscripts you have written in the course of your PhD so far. About 2/3 to 3/4 of the paper should describe your past work, and the remainder should describe one or more future projects.
The finished paper should be officially submitted (via email) to your committee and to the Department Office no later than ten days before the exam is scheduled to take place.
The exam
The advancement exam consists of a 45-minute prepared presentation about your past research and future research plans. The presentation can have the same structure and content as the paper. During and immediately after the presentation, your committee members can ask you questions about the content of the paper and presentation.
After the exam, complete the internal PhD Advancement Request Form.
What the UCI Catalogue has to say
The UCI Catalogue is the sole authoritative source on academic requirements. About the advancement to candidacy, it says this:
Advancement examination. The advancement examination consists of a written research proposal, for example in NIH NRSA Predoctoral Fellowship format and an oral defense of the proposed research. The requirements for advancement are detailed below. Normative time for students to advance to candidacy is by the end of their fourth year in the program.
Requirements for Advancement to Candidacy. The requirements for advancement to candidacy are (1) the student must meet the requirements listed for the appropriate Master’s degree; (2) the student must, in addition, form a five-member faculty committee selected according to Graduate Division policy. The committee will examine the student on a topic which is determined in consultation with the committee. A written document describing the student’s work on this topic must be submitted to the committee and to the department prior to advancement. The student must demonstrate an understanding of the background and issues for the research topic and show sufficient preparation and creativity to undertake planning for a dissertation project (e.g., by describing a possible experimental design or outlining a possible theoretical development).
We get it
Of course, all of this does not mean you can’t take a break over the summer – you absolutely should! Make sure your advisers know well in advance if and when you are planning to take time off or be away.
Lastly, I don’t need to tell you that getting a lot of work done is trickier than usual these days – but I am. Cut yourself some slack. We get it. Stay healthy.
