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Graduiertenschule für die Geisteswissenschaften

Scheduling after the Submission of the Dissertation

Information for your scheduling after submitting your dissertation for review

(according to § 21 ff. of the Doctoral Regulations):

  1. The reviewers generally have three months to review the thesis;
  2. if both reviewers propose a grade of "opus eximium", a third review is required. An external reviewer must be sought for this, who must be given sufficient review time; at least 6-8 weeks should be allowed for this;
  3. Display of the work: three to four week ;
  4. subsequent objection period: eight days;
  5. the oral doctoral exam should take place as soon as possible, but no later than six weeks after acceptance of the dissertation ("acceptance of the thesis" = expiry of the objection period without objection);
  6. Invitation to the oral exam (if no objection is lodged): at least eight days in advance;
  7. plus: processing times, mail transit, possible enquiries etc. must be taken into account.

It should therefore be noted:

  • In total, this means that i. In general, there are about five to six months between submitting the dissertation for review and a possible oral exam date.
  • Due to the numerous deadlines mentioned above, it is strongly recommended that you do not arrange the date for the oral exam too early.
  • You should agree on the procedure and content of your examination and the form - colloquium or defence - with your supervisors/examiners as early as possible; ideally during the last prescribed Supervision Meeting. Helpful information on preparing for your colloquium/disputation can also be found here on the Internet.
  • After the oral exam, you have one year to publish and submit your dissertation (§ 26 Doctoral Regulations).
  • It generally takes at least three weeks to issue and deliver the doctoral certificate after submitting the deposit copies to the GSH and the University Library.

Please also note:
As already made clear in the notes on the composition of the Supervisory Committee , the GSH is unfortunately unable to finance travel and hotel costs for external supervisors; i.e. travel for participation in the oral exam must be paid for from another source; we recommend that you contact your first supervisor for this.