Students must have an undergraduate degree in computer science or an allied field such as engineering or math with appropriate CS background to be admitted into the Ph.D. program. Each student who is admitted must then satisfy the following requirements:
Adequate background (as defined over undergraduate classes) is required for all students. A student can satisfy the background requirement for an area using 1 of the following options:
For the coursework option, the following UTCS undergraduate courses, or equivalent, are required as background:
Every PhD student is expected to spend a substantial amount of time on research, starting from the first semester. Doctoral students are required to enroll in a special research course CS 398T during their first semester in the program. (Students entering in Spring will be required to take this course the following Fall.) As part of this class, students will be expected to find a research supervisor with whom the student will work throughout the first year; each PhD student must always have a research supervisor.
In each subsequent semester, until admission to candidacy, a Ph.D. student must
Doctoral students may not enroll for 12 or more hours unless they receive special permission from the Graduate Advisor. Such permission is granted rarely and only based on written justification from the student's research supervisor.
The goal of the diversity program is to expose students to different research styles and methods from various CS areas.
See Diversity Courses for a list of the Diversity courses that are offered and their grouping into threads.
All courses used to satisfy the Diversity requirement must be completed with a grade of B- or better, and a combined grade point average of 3.5 must be achieved on the 5 courses used to satisfy the Diversity requirement. An overall grade point average of 3.1 must be maintained on all Diversity courses taken. Additional Diversity courses may be taken as part of the Depth program. Diversity courses may not be taken CR/NC due to the GPA requirements.
Diversity Course Waivers may be used to fulfill some Diversity requirements. A Diversity Course Waiver is granted when: (1) a student has taken a graduate-level course at another university and that course is equivalent to a UT-CS Diversity course, and (2) the student is able to demonstrate a satisfactory understanding of this material to a Graduate Studies Committee (GSC) member who teaches the Diversity course. The GSC member may choose any method to evaluate the student's knowledge: a written or an oral examination is possible. At most one Diversity Course Waiver may be used in each Diversity area.
Students satisfy this requirement by taking at least 3 courses related to their particular research interests. At most one of these courses may be outside the Computer Sciences Department; they are usually chosen from the CS department's list of graduate classes. Courses listed as Diversity courses may be used as part of a depth program as long as they were not also used in the student's Diversity program. No CS 395 (conference) or CS 398T course may be included in a Research Qualification (RQ) document. All courses used to satisfy this requirement must be completed with a grade of B or better. A grade point average of 3.6 over all depth courses must be attained.
The Research Preparation Exam requires students to learn and demonstrate specific skills necessary to do research early in their careers.
For this exam, the student (in consultation with faculty) selects and conducts research on a topic, and presents a talk, to be approved by a committee of 3 faculty members. One of the committee members should be from outside the student's research area. The committee will evaluate the student with respect to two questions:
A student should pass the exam by the end of 3rd year in PhD program (before filing the Research Qualification document). It is not necessary to complete all coursework before doing the RPE.
In the RQ document, the student:
The RQ document must be filed by the end of the 3rd year in the PhD program.
Each student must prepare a written dissertation proposal and then give an oral public presentation of the proposal. This will normally happen soon after the RQ document is filed. The student must, at this point, assemble a tentative dissertation committee that has been approved by the graduate advisor. Be sure what you send to the graduate adviser for approval includes a short description of your dissertation and what role you foresee for each proposed committee member in helping you reach your research goals. The approved committee will examine the student on the proposal. If they are unanimously satisfied that the proposed work, if substantially completed, would constitute an acceptable dissertation and that the student has the potential for substantially completing the work, then they will recommend admission to candidacy. Admission to candidacy must be approved by the Department's Graduate Studies Committee and the Graduate School.
IMPORTANT: The graduate school requires enrollment in 2 semesters of dissertation. If you plan to graduate in August or December you must have your application to candidacy submitted by the required deadline for the January GSC student assessment meeting. (See deadlines in the Graduate Newsletter.) This will allow your application to candidacy to be reviewed at the January GSC student assessment meeting. If you are approved for candidacy you can then complete both semesters of required enrollment to graduate as planned. The next opportunity for review of your application to candidacy would be the August meeting. Students reviewed at the August meeting cannot meet the required 2 semester enrollment and graduate until May.
Each student must write a dissertation that describes original research and submit it to the members of the dissertation committee. There are many resources to help in writing a dissertation. The student will then give a public presentation and defense of the dissertation research. When the committee is satisfied with the dissertation, they will so inform the Graduate School.
A minimum grade point average of 3.0 must be maintained over all CS graduate courses. All course requirements must be completed within a six-year period. There is a two semester requirement for Ph.D. Candidacy. The first semester requires enrollment in _99R and the second semester requires enrollment in _99W. A student may enroll in a summer session as part of the 2 semester enrollment requirement.
The Graduate School imposes a set of requirements on all graduate students, which must be met by all CS graduate students. These requirements deal with such issues as grades, courses taken in residence, transfer credit, and time limits.
Doctoral students who entered the program in Fall 2005, or earlier, are eligible to graduate either under the above rules or under the earlier rules. See Earlier Ph.D. Program for a description of the earlier Ph.D. program.
Ph.D. students may also pursue the M.S.C.S. degree as long as it does not interfere with their pursuit of the doctorate. The course requirements for an M.S.C.S., other than the background courses and two additional courses for a minor, are a subset of those for the Ph.D. Students must obtain approval of the graduate adviser and their research supervisor before taking a minor course. Send an email to the graduate adviser with a scholarly justification of the reasons leading to choosing the minor course(s). The student's research supervisor should send an email to the graduate adviser indicating approval of the minor course(s) choice.
