Graduating

It’s been a long and ardous journey through multiple years at EPFL, and now you’re finally ready to finish your PhD! Depending on your lab, the actual thesis might be completely new content, stapling your papers together, or something in the middle.

Some tips about when to finish:

  1. Finishing earlier means you have more time in the rest of your life. On the other hand this may be the only time in your career when you have this much freedom at work.
  2. Be proactive and talk to your supervisor about when you want to finish, don’t just wait.
  3. Some groups have a “thesis proposal” that is supposed to happen a year before the end of your PhD. This is not mandatory, but it’s a good exercise to reflect on what you have done and what you can realistically do in a year.
  4. If you think you are on your final semester, and do not TA, and then extend your thesis by a semester you might be asked to TA again.

A few external links:

Timeline
Choosing your jury
Looking for a job