Viva advice. Specific questions?

Hi everyone,

I have my Master's viva soon (my thesis being in maths). I bothered to go some googling before making this topic and I got the impression that almost all vivas are solely about general questions eg 'Where do you see this research going?', 'what papers were important?' etc etc. My viva is about half an hour long, and I was wondering if I should be prepared to talk about specific details. Will anyone ask me about line 6 on page 61 or something like this? Will they go through specific proofs and the painful details, or will questions be more general?

Many thanks, and of course any general advice for a viva will be appreciated!

Reply 1

poohat

It entirely depends on your examiner, there isnt a set procedure. A masters viva is less intense (and shorter) than a PhD viva though so its unlikely they will go through it line-by-line they would for a PhD (but they might, who knows). I would advise being prepared to talk about specific details though, they might (eg) ask you a question about a particular section of it just to make sure you really understand what you're doing.

Just try to relax and enjoy it, its nice to have people interested in your work and it may be a long time before someone else reads anything you've written that closely again.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 2

returnmigrant

The viva is designed, above everything else, to test your understanding of your argument. Simply, can you explain this face to face and not just on paper.

There won't be any trick questions. Yes, will be tested on your research - what if you'd looked at that angle? or why did you not consider this within your argument? - but all you need to respond with is simple practical answers - it isn't relevant to my thesis question, because......, or I had to restrict the field simply because of space/feasibility etc. This is also to see if you understand how to conduct research, and if you have the capability to think beyond your own research and have thought about 'what else' - they won't be expecting anything beyond 'I would have liked to also look at .....', or 'it occurred to me that ...... might be an area to take this into/consider .....'.

Masters vivas really aren't that awful - its more like a chat with someone else who understands your area of interest. Academics aren't mean - they don't enjoy making students squirm. Its simply to ensure academic standards are maintained - and guard against fraud.