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Ph.D. students must pass an oral proposal defense exam before they will be admitted to candidacy. The student is required to write and successfully defend a research proposal. The student's supervisory committee must approve the topic prior to the student preparing the proposal. The topic and resulting proposal has to be original and, as such, should be easily distinguishable from previous research proposals written by students or faculty members of the University of Florida or any other institution.

After the supervisory committee approves the topic, the student has 21 days to submit a typewritten proposal to each member of the committee. The committee members and any other interested faculty then examine the student. If the student fails to defend the research topic adequately, he/she may be assigned a new topic or given 14 additional days to amend his/her proposal. A reexamination by the supervisory committee will be done at that time and the student will either be given a "pass or fail" on the second attempt; no additional attempts will be allowed.

The student must complete the proposal defense in the same semester that the written exam was passed unless there are extenuating circumstances in which case the student must petition the faculty for an exception to this rule. If the student fails to complete the proposal defense within the term the written qualifying exam was taken, the petition to propose at a later date is denied, or the student fails the proposal defense he/she will be required to retake the written section the next time it is offered.

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