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 a total of five (5) members:
- Your faculty advisor
- Three UCI faculty members of which, at least, two must have a primary or affiliated appointment in Cognitive Sciences.
- At least one UCI faculty member with no affiliation to the Department of Cognitive Sciences (i.e., no primary or secondary appointment and no conflicts of interest)
- Again, a total of five members of which the majority must have a primary or affiliated appointment in Cognitive Sciences.
You must select three of the committee members to be your Dissertation Committee. The majority (i.e., 2 of the 3) must have a primary or affiliated appointment in Cognitive Sciences. 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 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 above 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).
