Hi all,

I was wondering what the possible outcomes are of minor corrections. Can they be bounced back if the examiner doesn't feel they've been addressed adequately? I am not in this position (and hope not to be), but just wondered as it doesn't say on my examiners' form.

Thanks
Tudor

Hi Tudor, Hope you're well. Have your minor corrections been approved?

With minor corrections, I would think it is very rare for an examiner to cause an issue unless the corrections have not been carried out properly, as requested. If they haven't been carried out appropriately, the examiner may not be willing to sign off on all of the criteria needed for the Dean to award the doctorate. But I think that's a very rare scenario as they gave minor corrections in the first instance.

Someone in my office asked the same question recently and got an unofficial answer. Allegedly at my university, minor corrections are to be accepted if a "genuine effort" is made to correct them. So as along as you try to fix all the requested corrections you will get passed.

Presumably minor corrections will be handled only by your internal examiner so unless you miss out a correction or your internal is a dick, you will be passed for full publication and graduation. I don't know of anyone failing after minors.

I agree with the above comments. Only if you really ignored the corrections in a bad way. I think "genuine effort" would be appreciated in 99% of the cases.

Corrections in most (possibly all) UK universities cannot be 'bounced back'; they're a pass or fail.

In a way the advice above about 'genuine effort' is true but should be taken with caution. From an examiner's perspective, they've seen a thesis that was more-or-less-ok, but needed correcting. If you put yourself in their shoes - would you then fail a student's 3+ years of work because there was still a typo?

That said; if the typo is in the title of the thesis and there's a general vibe of 'I completely ignored all the feedback you gave me after volunteering the time to carefully examine my thesis', there is an obvious risk there. Yet of course this seldom happens, because most students will spend the time to address the corrections rather than take this risk.

In my experience in UK academia it's untrue that only the internal reviews minor corrections though I'm sure there may well be Universities where this is the case.

Thank you everyone and hope you are all doing well! Well, this is reassuring. Someone said they can't be bounced back - it's a pass or fail - I find that interesting indeed! Hope not to test it out... I haven't yet submitted mine (I was given extra time due to personal circumstance) - they're due next week :-).

Great! Well done. I'm sure it'll all be fine.

I say it can't be bounced because I asked, as examiner for a UK university, when a corrected thesis landed on my desk with the corrections done very poorly (or not at all in some cases).

This put me in a position of either failing a PhD completely because of minor issues, or effectively passing it still with minor issues.

I passed it, because it seemed the considerably lesser of two evils. I'd think most examiners would lean the same way. Nobody wants to take 3+ years of someone's work and throw it in the bin, unless it's patently damaging to academia if they don't (e.g. it's faked data, completely nonsensical, zero contribution, dangerously misleading conclusions, etc.).

This is not a bad policy per se, as the alternative could lead to worst-case scenarios where corrections end up as an endless and increasingly subjective back-and-forth.

The student doesn't 'win' in that scenario, though, because they're then going to go on and publish a thesis with errors, which may haunt them for the rest of their career. Really, at the point of submitting corrections, if you feel happy to have it published with your name on as (probably) the only PhD you'll ever do, and as the culmination of 3+ years of work, you're probably in the right place.