Hi all,

I sadly got some bad news and feel really sad. I've got told that my PhD should be terminated. Unfortunately, my personal circumstance effected me this year which is not something I do not use reasoning on why I was behind. My main reasons were for termination:

1) Lack of knowledge:- I really didn't know how important the background knowledge until it was too late.
2) Not enough work:- they refer to the research as "heuristic" and not much work involved.

They gave me a chance to repeat the process but unfortunately my personal circumstance and catching up my work didn't give me enough time to reflect time on going over the maths. I did however managed to get the personal circumstance resolved but the time was too late.

I did get told I can appeal but I'm not sure if the effect is worth it? My personal circumstance is probably going to be ignored and I think my relationship to my supervisor is sort of drifted away (he doesn't seem to care anymore).

The "not enough work" confuse me the most, I was doing exactly what my supervisor wanted me to do and yet I get the result?

Anyway, I feel really sad about the news but also I actually put a lot of effect on the research when the personal circumstances and it was a lot of work. That's just gone down the drain.

In general, these decisions are made (or supposed to be made) with the student's best interests in mind.

If you didn't get up to speed on the background etc., the difficult decision for the University/panel is whether it's in your best interests to continue to study (and potentially pay) without a likely completion. If, based on progress to date, their consensus is you'd waste even more effort in a failed or never-submitted PhD, then it makes sense to terminate it for everyone involved.

You should appeal if you think you can genuinely put in the effort to solve the problems. If circumstances have changed and this is going to be the case, then you should appeal and state this case.

Your personal circumstances typically need to be formally reported to the University to 'count'. Many, many PhD students fail to do so because you can be in bed sick/depressed/bereaved etc. and still 'work' on a PhD (because you're not usually expected to be sat at a desk 9-5), which leads them to attempt to 'work through' these situations - then they are inevitably penalised because they've not formally been away. If you do take the route of appealing and continuing, and circumstances change again, I would make sure you approach it as though you had a 9-5 job and take formal leave of absence.

I'm sorry to hear about your experiences. The appeal process is not a nice one, as you are pitted against your institution (or so it feels) and have to end up attending a panel where it feels very much like this. I would only do this if I felt I had a very good chance of a) winning and b) being able to continue on with a good relationship with my supervisors. So one idea is that you could go down that route and see what happens. Or you could think about pursuing a new PhD later on - make a new start. I think that's my take on things without knowing full details. I hope this helps.

I don't know about odds - it would all depend on the specific case, I think. You could speak to the people in the student union who deal with the appeals, and ask them how often it is that a student wins their case. I don't have personal experience of being a student in the appeal, I was just a student representative who sat in on an appeal once. In this case, the student lost because basically it boiled down to his word against the supervisors', and there wasn't hard evidence to support his word (or theirs incidentally). I would really try and get advice from the academy or student union or whoever it is that deals with these things in your university.

It might be worth talking to someone impartial in your academy / student union who can advise you better as to whether they think it is worth appealing or not - and get more than one opinion. I think it boils down to do you think you have a grounds to appeal and do you have strong evidence to prove it? And would it also be apparent during the panel meeting that you and your supervisors could still have a good working relationship if you won the case? This was something that was a factor in the panel I sat in on. And personally, I wouldn't want to continue when my supervisors had not wanted me to - unless I was right near the end and had already invested so much that there was no way I was going to let go of it without a fight.

My only advice though would be that if you do go ahead an appeal, be ready to move on with a Plan B in case not successful. Good luck in making your decision.