Students must complete all course work, preliminary examinations, and the dissertation requirement within an eight-year period from matriculation, excluding leaves of absence. Except in unusual circumstances, students will be expected to gain admission to candidacy status prior to the end of their fourth year in the program (excluding leaves of absence). Requirements for admission to candidacy are filed in section 5 of this manual.

If a student has not completed all requirements for the Ph.D. (including deposit of the dissertation) at the end of the fifth year on dissertation registration, he or she must submit to the full dissertation committee, within two months of completing that fifth year, a copy of all written work completed to date on the dissertation. If the student is unable to construct such a committee, he or she will be dropped from the doctoral program. The committee members will evaluate this material, and report to the department Doctoral Coordinator and to the Vice Dean for the Wharton Doctoral Programs, recommending that one of the following actions be taken:

[a.] The student’s research and training are judged to have continued currency, and the student is retained in the doctoral program, subject to the other University and Wharton doctoral policies and procedures that may apply (e.g.regarding total time in the program).

[b.] The student is required to modify the dissertation research in order to bring it up to date and to current standards in the discipline, and defend a new dissertation proposal describing the revised research.

[c.] The student is required to fulfill action [b.] and in addition to retake and pass such qualifying or preliminary exams as the committee shall specify.

or

[d.] The student is disqualified from continued doctoral candidacy.

Students who have not completed their dissertation requirement within the eight-year time limit will be dropped from the Wharton Doctoral Programs. Students who are at the dissertation phase and are dropped due to the eight-year time limit may, however, at some later date graduate from Wharton’s Doctoral Programs if they meet the following conditions:

1. They have been admitted previously into candidacy;

2. They have successfully completed the dissertation proposal phase prior to the expiration of the eight-year limit;

3. The currency of their research and training has been certified by the dissertation committee, as described in the preceding paragraph;

4. Their dissertation is approved by an appropriately constituted faculty dissertation committee; and

5. They pay all arrears on dissertation tuition fees, including late charges from the time they were dropped until the point of time when their dissertation is accepted, together with any other outstanding fees.

The faculty is under no obligation to provide advice to former students who have not completed their dissertation requirement within the eight-year time limit.