PhD Formalities
In Germany only universities are authorised to award doctorates. No matter who is your personal advisor, eventually you will obtain your PhD degree from the Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) and most likely from the faculty of physics1.
To successfully get through the entire PhD process you have to comply with certain formal prerequisites of the university apart from your scientific work. Moreover, the university offers many very useful facilities to enrich your PhD studies. Below we give an overview about the different obligatory formalities you have to match and options you have.
From September 2018 you are supposed to manage every process related to your PhD via the new online platform Promovendus. We give an explanation of how to get started with it on our Promovendus subpage.
Mandatory formalities
The faculty of physics of the TUD provides you with an overview of their prerequisites of a PhD. Therein you also find the contact details of Frau. Annerose Theinert, who is our contact person in the doctoral office of the faculty.
The regulations for obtaining a PhD are collected in the Regulations for Obtaining a Doctoral Degrees (Promotionsordnung).
If you wish to replace the final oral exam Rigorosum at the day of your defense prior to your talk you can conduct doctoral studies instead, for which they have the following Regulations for Doctoral Studies (Ordnung für das Promotionsstudium).
Beginning Phase
What?
You are required to be accepted as a PhD student at the TUD. By the acceptance process the university makes sure that you match all requirements for obtaining a PhD. The process is done online via Promovendus. We explain on our Promovendus subpage how you get access to the platform and on our Acceptance subpage how the acceptance process is done.
When?
At the latest, the acceptance process must be finished prior to the opening of the doctoral proceedings in the final phase of your PhD. We strongly recommend PhD students with non-German university degrees, even European ones, to pass the acceptance as a PhD student in an early stage of your PhD. Possibly, the university demands the submission of further documents or even aks you to take extra courses during your PhD studies. Therefore, is quite some uncertainty about how long the process of acceptance will take.
Middle Phase
If you have chosen to replace the Rigorosum by doctoral studies you will have to attend a certain number of lectures or other scientific events and pass two oral exams. We give details on our Doctoral studies subpage.
Final Phase
Useful Options
Being matriculated as a PhD student is not necessary for obtaining the PhD from the TUD but entails quite some advantages. We explain the matriculation process and give an overview about the benefits and costs of being a PhD student officially on our Matriculation at TUD subpage.
Highlights are:
- free use of all trams, busses and S-bahn in and around Dresden (area of VVO)
- free use of regional trains in entire Saxony
- reduced prices for meals in all the mensas
- access to various guided sports courses for low costs at the USZ (Universitätssportzentrum - university sports center)
- reduced entrance fees in museums and other special offer for students in shops
- free use of Nextbikes in Dresden for the first 60 min of each ride
The Graduate Academy of the TUD provides their PhD students and Postdocs with a huge number of courses on various topics. You can gain extra knowledge and capabilities on further scientific issues, academic and non-academic career planning and soft skills like conflict-, time- and self-management or leadership. For every course you pass, you obtain an attendance certificate.
Additionally, at the Graduate Academy you can apply for funding, for example for research stays abroad, and they give advise and help for any PhD related problem or question. For more information see our Graduate Academy subpage.
You have to be accepted as a doctoral candidate of the TUD before you can register as member of the Graduate Academy.
1Possibly you intend to submit your thesis to another faculty of the TUD or to some other university. We stick our explanations to the most usual procedure at our institute.