The final stages

Each institution and faculty has its own procedures and deadlines regarding the different stages of the administrative procedure leading to the oral examination :

• appointment of jury members (proposal and approval) ;
• submission of the different manuscripts (number, where, deadline) ;
• thesis conference  (often called colloque de thèse);
• oral examination (thesis defence) ;  see some advice from the RCFE  (in French)
• obtaining of the doctoral title.

The time lags between these different stages can be considerable. It is thus advisable to find out about the regulations well in advance, draw up an end-of-thesis schedule are especially contact external jury members sufficiently early in order to establish their availability.

The first people to whom the thesis must be sent are not always the same. The composition of the jury also differs from one institution to another. The requirement regarding a jury member external to the faculty or university is common practice in universities in French- and Italian-speaking Switzerland.