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Ph.D. Logistics at UMD

Every school administers a PhD differently. This section provides a consolidated version of UMD's expectations.

Classes

You are required to take 36 credits for your Ph.D. which must be distributed to satisfy certain educational requirements. As of 2023, these requirements are:

  • Major Focus Area: 18 credit hours
  • Minor Focus Area: 6 credit hours
    • \(\geq3\) level 600 or higher
  • Math / Science / CS: 9 credit hours
    • $\leq3 $ from the College of Engineering
    • \(\geq3\) level 600 or higher
    • Cannot be double counted with major or minor focus area credits
  • Research Courses: 3+ credit hours
    • Use to maintain full or part-time status

Focus Areas

Focus areas \(here\) are the specific areas of research / courses you intend to pursue while at UMD. When you enroll at UMD, you must specify a major and minor focus area from the following:

  • Aerodynamics and Propulsion
  • Structural Mechanics and Composites
  • Rotorcraft
  • Space Systems
  • Flight Dynamics, Stability and Control (FDSC)

In principle, your major focus area should align with your research and the courses you are most likely to enroll in during your degree. You can find all of the available courses and their corresponding focus area in the Five Year Plan. Historically students in the MLDS lab choose Space Systems or FDSC as their major area and the alternative for their minor area.

Examinations / Milestones

In addition to taking classes, the PhD also requires students to pass four exams detailed below.

Qualifying Exam (Year 2): The qualifying exam is a glorified literature review. You'll be assigned a paper that is relevant to your general research area, and you'll be expected to present the content of the paper to three faculty members, and answer questions and propose how you could extend the research.

Comprehensive Exam (Year 3): The comprehensive exam is an oral exam which comes after you've taken the majority of your classes. You'll select five faculty members with whom you've taken a class to administer the exam, where they will ask you to solve between one and three course-related problems on a whiteboard. Admittedly, this sounds far worse than it actually is.

Pre-Defense Exam (Year 4 or 5): The pre-defense contains a written and oral component. The written component is a document which describes your research progress thus far, and discusses what you have left before you intend to defend (remaining open problems and plans to address them). The oral component is an hour long presentation of this same content. From these materials, your committee will provide feedback to help ensure that you're anticipated work is sufficiently novel and appropriate for a PhD when it comes time to defend.

Defense (Year 5): The whole enchilada. One hour presentation followed by questions from a committee of five faculty members.

Resources

  • Graduate Handbook: Primary reference for all degree requirements.
  • Five Year Plan: When courses are offered over the next 5 years, and their associated label.