University of Texas
ECE

CommNetS PhD Information

Admission Information for PhD in CommNetS

Policy for Current Graduate Students Wishing to Enter the CommNetS Ph.D. Program

Advancing to PhD Candidacy in CommNetS

Departmental Rules for ECE Qualifying Exams

Administered by CommNetS area coordinator, currently Prof. Ari Arapostathis

  • Students entering with MS must do so before 40 hours
  • Students entering with BS must do so before 60 hours

Application for evaluation of coursework

  1. Evaluated based on 15 hours including 4 formal CommNetS courses

    • if entered as PhD student need 9 hours including 2 formal CommNetS courses

  2. Statement of purpose

  3. Letter of support from research advisor

  4. Deadlines: Sept 15th and Feb 1st every year

PhD Course Requirements

  • At least 30 hours of "regular classroom instruction," all classes at the graduate level
  • No individual instruction classes count towards the 30 hours of "regular classroom instruction"
  • At least 12 hours of the 30 should be taken in residence at UT-Austin
  • 6 hours should be "outside the principle area of study" (no requirement for inside or outside of department; student's qualifying committee will examine appropriateness of courses indicated as "supporting work")
  • GPA in each category ("major" and "supporting") should be at least 3.5.

Note: These constitute MINIMUM requirements; additional requirements, subject to ECE GSC approval, may be imposed by individual academic tracks. Any current student may chose to use these new guidelines, or at their discretion, may elect to use the old guidelines. Also note that these are MINIMUM requirements, and a PhD qualifying exam committee can elect to require more if they believe it is appropriate for a given student.

Oral research proposal

  • Set up PhD committee early on in conjunction with your advisor and submit to CommNetS area coordinator. Be sure that one of your committee members is not on the ECE faculty and is not considered to be reciprocal as an advisor within ECE.
  • Once approved (two weeks or so) schedule exam

Qualifying exams

  1. The qualifying exam committee chair fills out a checklist form at the end of the qualifying exam. During the qualifying exam, the student can receive a pass or failure on the report and on the presentation. Each is decided by majority vote, except that the advisor(s) cannot vote. Conditions may be attached to the pass (e.g. take a technical writing course). The committee can also recommend additional technical courses for the student to take. The report guidelines vary by area. Reports by students enrolled in the Computer Engineering area are limited to 20 pages of double-spaced text, tables, and figures. At the qualifying exam, the members of the PhD committee are finalized.

  2. To complete a PhD, a PhD candidate must pass three sequential steps with unanimous consent of the PhD committee members at each step:

    • Student submits a completed draft of dissertation at least four weeks before the proposed defense date. The PhD advisor(s) must guarantee that the draft is free of grammatical and spelling errors. At least two weeks before the defense, each committee member is asked to sign a form that states that the draft is complete enough to defend.
    • Student presents a defense of the dissertation (which is required to be open to the public) followed by a closed-door examination. There is a form for each committee member to sign that says that the student passes or fails the defense. Any member of the PhD committee can fail the student. There are three levels of failure.
    • Student must obtain the signature of each committee member on his/her dissertation.

Any PhD committee member can delay any gate until he/she is satisfied with the student's progress. In addition, any committee member could decide fail a student.

A PhD committee member who is a full-time faculty member at UT may not be removed unless the following three conditions are met:

  1. the committee member himself/herself wants to be removed
  2. all of the other committee members agree, and
  3. if the committee becomes invalid due to the removal, then a suitable replacement must be found to maintain a valid committee.

After you advance to candidacy, the next step is the PhD defense

The qualifying exam committee generally becomes the defense committee. Hence, The Graduate School policies on defense committees may be useful to know. Here is the section of the graduate catalog describing policies, rules, and requirements for the granting of a PhD degree: