Daily viva help for PhDs
If you say too little in the viva then your examiners will ask for more.
If you’re saying too much then they will steer the conversation with comments and questions.
Don’t worry about whether you’re saying too little or too much in the viva. Show up ready to listen, respond and engage with the discussion.
“Test” doesn’t seem big enough to think about the way you have to engage in the viva.
A test feels like a little thing, a one-time intervention where you are measured, checked and analysed. That’s not the viva. Maybe we could consider the viva being like a car’s MOT: a check that you are researcher-ready. You have everything in place and are ready to run as a researcher, if you wanted to, but still that wouldn’t feel quite right.
Better to say you’re examined in the viva. You’re challenged by the viva. You defend your work in the viva.
But it’s not enough to say that you’re simply tested by it. The viva is not so great and big as to be the most important thing you will ever do, but it’s not so small as to be simply a test.
Your examiners aren’t there to fire questions at you and expect an answer in ten seconds or less.
They don’t have a big list of true or false statements for you to correctly identify.
And they won’t be grilling you on every single reference you listed.
The viva is a discussion. Your examiners have prepared questions to guide the process. Some are to steer the conversation, others are to check details in your thesis; some are sparked by their personal interests, and some questions might be to satisfy ideas of what is “correct” in your discipline.
But they’re not rapid-fire, all-or-nothing, earning points or against the clock.
The viva has questions but it’s not a quiz.
You’re a candidate, not a contestant.
It’s possible to overthink about viva questions. Yes, you need to prepare for them; no, you can’t prepare for every question or anticipate everything that might come up.
Your examiners might not know which direction the conversation will flow either. They have questions, but not a script; they can’t see all possible twists and turns that you might take together.
The discussions will emerge from the questions they ask, and you can’t know them in advance…
…well, not exactly.
Their questions are a response to what you’ve set out in your thesis. This is the end point of the questions you’ve been asking yourself all through your PhD. So a good starting point to be ready for the emerging discussions in your viva is to return to your original questions.
Reflect on those, then think about how you might approach the viva’s questions.
I was recently asked how many questions a candidate might get in the viva. What is the range like? wondered the nervous PhD. Was there a minimum or maximum number?
I tried to apply some logic to come up with some numbers, but gave up – the question is a red herring. Examiners will have a lot of questions in mind, some driven by your field, some by their interests, some by your thesis. They’ll have questions that you can expect, and some that you can’t. They’ll ask questions that they didn’t know to ask until you said something interesting in the viva too.
I don’t know how many questions will come up in advance of your viva: we could only know that after the fact.
If you’ve read this blog before then you’ll know I have ideas about how you can prepare for questions though. Do a good piece of research, write a good thesis and spend some practising answering unexpected questions to build your confidence.