Doctoral degree

You have to submit your application for admission via GRADUS at the beginning of the work on your PhD thesis.

Catalogue of potential credit points accepted by the Faculty of Chemistry to fulfil the required ECTS in individual doctoral studies. You can gain the degree within an individual doctoral study oder within a structured doctoral study.

To enable the candidate to obtain in depth knowledge in the examination subjects, he or she is supposed to hand in an application with a suggestion of the examination committee [de], an exposé about the dissertation (approx. 1 page), a shortlist of your publications and a CV. This application has to be handed in at the dean´s office to Mrs. Monika Carey at least half a year before the expected date of the oral exam and has to be signed by the supervising professor. The application can only be discussed, if you have been admitted as a Ph. D. student in a former meeting of the doctoral committee. The doctoral committee can accept or reject the proposal and appoint other examiners.
If you graduate within the Doctoral Degree Regulations of the University Stuttgart from 2019, the dissertation can be prepared publication-based in a cumulative form, if this is permitted by the directive of the doctoral committee in agreement with the faculty council and the supervisor approves the preparation of a publication-based dissertation.

After the finishing the dissertation (don't forget the declaration of authorship) the candidate registers at the dean´s office with one hardback of his dissertation, with the declaration of authorship as a separate letter. If you are doing a cumulative doctorate, you habe to submit the thesis electronically eight days before the meeting of the doctoral committee. Furthermore your supervisor needs to confirm that all requests within the doctoral agreement have been completed.
The doctoral committee decides on the members of the examination committee in his next meeting. Only in well reasoned cases a deviation from the preliminary composition is possible.
The candidate gives a copy of his work to each of the members of the examination committee. The main examiner and the co examiners write a report and send the original of the report to the dean´s office. If both reports are available in the deans office, the candidate arranges an appointment with the examination committee for the oral examination and he/she books a lecture room. It is necessary to send the information on the exam date and the room to the dean´s office at least 16 days before the arranged date of the examination.

The candidate arranges a date for the oral examination with the designated examination board and reserves the lecture hall/seminar room. A little tip: It is easier to reserve a room if you take the lecture slots into account. If an examination starts at 13:15 h, it is easier to find a room than trying to find a room from 13:00 h. The examination can take place at the earliest 16 days after notification of this date to the Dean's Office. Reason: The thesis and assessment must be available in the Dean's Office for 14 days. Please remember to inform the Dean's Office of the place and date of the examination. The oral examination takes place immediately after the presentation (after exclusion of the public), usually in the room in which the presentation took place. The doctoral documents are returned to the Dean's Office after the examination.

The oral Ph. D. exam starts with a presentation (20 -30 minutes), in which the candidate explains the concepts of her or his dissertation as well as the essential results. The presentation is open to members of the university. In the oral examination, which is lasting between one and two hours and is not open to the public, the candidate has to prove that she or he has in depth knowledge in the area of her or his dissertation. This is supposed to happen in an exam conversation with the main examiner, the co-examiner and an additional examiner in another subject, which is usually related to the subject of the dissertation. The dean can appoint the examiner in the additional subject or another professor of the department to be the head of the examination committee. The oral examination takes place directly after the presentation (after the public has been excluded) in the same room in which the presentation took place. The doctoral documents are handed back to the dean´s office after the examination.

The dissertation work has to comprise a summary in foreign or german language with a normal size of 2 - 5 pages, but 10 pages as a maximum. For details see the german pages.
(Decisions of the promotion committee on 22/05/1996, 11/06/1996, 21/01/1998, and 16/4/2008).