In My Defense, I Gave It My Best Shot

For readers who may be approaching the final stage in the quest for a PhD, here are seven tips that could help you defend your dissertation with greater confidence.

AsianScientist (May 26, 2017) – Some months ago I wrote about how the PhD journey is very much like the game of Pokémon. Awaiting you at the end of your candidature is a panel of examiners—the Elite Four of your academic adventure—who will scrutinize your dissertation and convene to judge whether you are deserving of the doctorate degree.

I have since met the Elite Four on the path to earning my PhD, and I could say that it was an encounter not easily forgotten. Presenting your work to domain experts who probe the depths of your scientific knowledge is both challenging and humbling at the same time. In retrospect, many of my fears of a hostile Q&A session were unfounded, and adequate preparation was key to having a meaningful discussion with senior scientists.

For readers of this column who may be approaching the final stage in the quest for a PhD, here are seven tips that could help you face off your own Elite Four with greater confidence.

  1. Know your thesis like the back of your hand
  2. Your examiners have had the better part of two months to flip through your thesis and pick it apart. By the time your oral presentation is scheduled, it could be almost four months since you last browsed through your thesis contents. To make sure that you still have the upper hand on your examiners, spend time reviewing your thesis on a regular basis. This way, you’ll continue to be familiar with it and not panic when the examiners raise an obscure point to test you during the Q&A.


  3. Pay attention to the examiners’ reports
  4. Before the oral presentation, you will usually receive the examiners’ reports so that minor or major revisions to the thesis can be made. The comments provided in this report should not be taken lightly as they provide insight into the examiners’ perspectives and could become a dominant point of discussion during the oral presentation. This is your opportunity to do some strategic reading to come across as a well-informed peer on the day of the oral thesis defense.


  5. Read reviews like they’re your favorite book series
  6. Reviews are great when you want to gain a thorough understanding of your field of study. They’re also a quick way for you to become moderately familiar with a topic that your examiners seem to be interested in (you’ll have to read between the lines of your examiner’s reports here). Many processes and observations in science are connected at some fundamental level, and reviews often reveal the subtle but important links between apparently distinct domains. You can’t be an expert at everything, but some diversity in your knowledge base won’t hurt.


  7. Understand your M&Ms
  8. When carrying out experiments, one might become so fixated with the experimental readout that the means to that end get overlooked. Admittedly, the enabling principle of a particular reagent or technique is either ignored or forgotten by the time the thesis is written. I’ve seen candidates fumble when asked about how a certain kit produced a crucial set of data, or why a particular plot from an experiment looks the way it does. If you don’t want to find yourself in awkward silence over something your examiners think you ought to know, it pays to understand your materials and methods thoroughly.


  9. Prepare your presentation slides in advance
  10. Putting together a succinct yet coherent slide deck is not an easy task, and if you’re looking to impress the examiners, you’ll want to pay attention to not only the contents of the slide deck but also the aesthetics of the presentation. Garish color schemes and cluttered or wordy slides are a surefire way to cause an audience to lose interest, and data without one or two short points of elaboration can be frustratingly opaque. Personally, I’ve found schematics and summary slides, placed at regular intervals of the presentation, to be immensely helpful in focusing the audience on the main message of the presentation.


  11. Practice, practice, practice
  12. Even if your PowerPoint slide deck is already prepared, don’t just assume that you’ll be able to ‘wing it’ and speak smoothly on the day of the examination. Depending on what works for you, you could prepare a script or make a voice recording of your own presentation as practice. Even better, organize a rehearsal and invite your colleagues and supervisor to sit in and give their comments on pace, flow and clarity of your presentation. With their feedback in mind, go back and practice some more. Cliché as it may sound, practice really does make perfect.


  13. Give significance to statistics
  14. Given the widespread problem of p-hacking in research, is it any surprise that examiners nowadays place an increased emphasis on statistical analyses? I’ve noticed that questions on the appropriateness of the statistical test have become almost mandatory during thesis defense presentations, usually accompanied by queries about the interpretation of a p-value of less than 0.05. Statistical packages are convenient software tools for scientists to churn out p-values, but they have also to some extent inhibited the desire to understand deeply the assumptions and calculations behind a particular statistical method. I’m not advocating that everyone becomes a professional statistician, but some level of competence in statistics is certainly necessary and helpful.



As you step up to the finish line, I hope these tips will help you cross it with some semblance of grace, and may you continue to find meaning in your pursuits beyond the PhD program.


This article is from a monthly column called Hacking a PhD. Click here to see the other articles in this series.

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Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: Shutterstock.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.

Jeremy received his PhD from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he studied the role of the tumor microenvironment in cancer progression.

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