Yogi Berra was baseball coach who is well known for his interesting quotations. One of the most well known sayings attributed to him is ‘It ain’t over till it’s over’. Similar kinds of phrases have been used by countless other sports commentators and even Rocky Balboa and Lenny Kravitz.
The saying rang true when a colleague in the engineering department recently underwent his PhD viva. Traditionally, people have the idea that when someone gives a PhD viva, either he gets the degree after the viva or not. However my colleague has been asked to make corrections to his thesis, which may take some months to complete. This means that apart from ‘yes’ or ‘no’, there may be other outcomes of a viva. For example our university guidelines include the following sentences:
A candidate will frequently be asked by the examiners to make minor corrections to his/her thesis before the examiners recommend the award of the degree and the thesis is in a satisfactory state to be lodged in the University Library. Such corrections will typically include removal of typographical errors and possibly re-writing of very limited sections of the thesis. …
…If you are asked to resubmit your thesis you will be informed by the Graduate School Office which will send you notes for guidance prepared by the examiners on the revisions you are required to undertake. A time limit will be set for the resubmission and this must be strictly adhered to.
Therefore, if a friend of yours is going for his viva, hold off the celebrations for a while even if you don’t expect a disaster,. As Yogi Berra said, ‘It ain’t over till it’s over’
