Checklist for starting doctoral studies
Table of contents
Doctoral study-right
You have been awarded the right to study for a doctorate at the Ģֱ. Your doctoral study right starts either on 1 January or 1 August Your doctoral study right is active during the semesters for which you register for attendance. Once your study rights are active, you can enrol in a course, create a supervision document with your supervisor and complete your studies or degree.
Please note that even if your right to study starts on 1 August or 1 January, you do not have to be present on campus at that time. Agree with your supervisor on the timetable for starting your doctoral studies and dissertation research and on arriving on campus.
Graduate school, doctoral school, doctoral programme
The Ģֱ has one graduate school, six faculty doctoral schools and 18 doctoral programmes. Your right to study for a doctorate is assigned to a doctoral programme. In addition to the doctoral programme, you will also be part of the doctoral school of the faculty that has granted you the right to study and the university's graduate school, which offers transferable skills studies for all doctoral students at the university.
Doctoral researcher, doctoral student
Depending on the context, a student admitted to doctoral training at JYU can be called a doctoral researcher or a doctoral student. “Doctoral researcher" is a researcher who is writing a dissertation. All doctoral students are therefore doctoral researchers. Doctoral researcher is also a job title used at the Ģֱ. Sometimes the term "doctoral researcher" may refer only to staff members employed as Doctoral Researchers. The context is usually employment-related, such as salary, working hours, business trips, leaves or absences.
“Doctoral student” refers to a degree student who has the right to pursue a postgraduate degree in compliance with the Universities Act. A doctoral student’s target degree is a doctoral degree. In this guide, we refer to those admitted to doctoral studies as doctoral students.
Your first tasks as JYU doctoral student
Within about two months of getting the right to doctoral studies
Please read the following guidelines once you have set up your university user account and discussed your doctoral studies and dissertation research with your supervisor.
Course enrolment
Once you have saved a study plan in Sisu, you can enrol for courses with study credits. Doctoral students have the opportunity to participate in staff training for researchers in addition to the courses with study credits.
Doctoral researchers are part of the university community
Full-time doctoral students usually work on their dissertations either as grant researchers or in employment with the university. It is also possible to do part-time doctoral studies alongside other work. All doctoral students are degree students and doctoral researchers and are part of the university community.