All doctoral students are enrolled provisionally for the first year.
Your research proposal will include the milestones for the first year that have been agreed between you and your supervisor. These are subject to approval by the Board of the Graduate Research School.
At the end of the first year of candidature, submit the Confirmation of Candidature form along with your annual progress report.
Your ongoing candidature will be confirmed if the agreed designated tasks and agreed milestones are completed and verified by the school, and approved by the Graduate Research School, and all other aspects of candidature are satisfactory.
You can check the due dates for your milestone paperwork using HDRhub
Task examples
The Graduate Research School have a number of compulsory tasks that all doctoral students need to complete for confirmation of candidature:
- completion of the ACRI9000 unit
- UWA ethics approval (if animal or human ethics approval required)
- a substantial piece of writing at the appropriate conceptual level. This piece of writing must be related to the PhD, completed during the first year (FTE) of enrolment, and reviewed and approved by your supervisors.
The aim of the mandatory writing task is to test your conceptual understanding of an area related to your project and your ability to express your understanding of this area in academic writing. The writing is not submitted to the GRS but is assessed by your supervisors. However, the GRS require details of this piece of writing. When you are completing your confirmation task list in your research proposal coversheet, please include the title of the piece of writing. Is the piece a draft of your literature review (or a substantial part of your literature review), a draft paper, or a draft thesis chapter (or substantial part of a chapter).
In addition to the mandatory GRS tasks, supervisors will also nominate a number of additional tasks, such as:
- presenting work orally to the school
- completing relevant, approved coursework units
- completing a literature review or annotated bibliography if this is not included in the proposal
- passing appropriate safety courses such as laser safety, radiation safety, chemical or laboratory safety
- completing a one or two-day course in intellectual property
- completing an introductory course in electronic literacy, for example, using electronic data bases available at UWA
- completing other relevant, approved development activities such as training in statistics, academic writing, project management or microscopy.
School-specific requirements
Some schools have their own requirements for confirmation of candidature, others choose to assess confirmation on a student-by-student basis. Contact your graduate research co-ordinator for more information about the confirmation of candidature requirements of your school.
