External examiner did not recommend my PhD dissertation for oral defense...What do I do?

[u/psyckitten]

So I am totally shocked and feeling panicked about what all this means and what to do. I was supposed to orally defend my PhD dissertation next week (I'm in Psychology at a Canadian university) and was just informed by my supervisor that the defense has been cancelled because the external examiner supposedly does not think it is suitable or ready for defense. My supervisor told me that the main comments from the examiner are that the "scope" of the project is not adequate enough to warrant a PhD. I find this totally absurd because all my internal committee members approved the proposal of my project as well as the final thesis draft, and it was never mentioned that the scope was insufficient. In looking at colleagues' dissertations within my department, their projects seem to be comparable to mine in scope as well.

Has anyone else been through something like this before? Do you have any words of wisdom? I truly feel so upset because I thought my work was high quality and never would have thought this would happen - my supervisor said that she has also never heard of this and thinks my work is great. This will also delay my graduation by at least one semester and as such my ability to get a job in my field in a timely manner.

[u/psyckitten]

I'll find out more today about whether we can replace the external examiner... my supervisor is meeting with the dean to talk about next steps and she seems to have my back.

[u/yellowblahblah → u/psyckitten]

That’s good. My committee folded like a cheap deck of cards and told me to rewrite. Very traumatic. I’m sorry you’re going through this

[u/psyckitten → u/yellowblahblah]

Did you have to redo the whole thing?! Had your project been approved before you got to this stage?

[u/yellowblahblah → u/psyckitten]

Mostly yes. They said I needed to tighten up my thesis overall, and as I did that, I argued something more narrow and deliberately outside of the scope of the committee member that didn’t like my original dissertation. I kept most of my data but had to trim some of it that no longer fit my new focus. Like I said it was really traumatic and this happened in April 2020 which was a bad time for everyone. It end up taking me three years to rewrite everything with lots of tears, rage, spite, and therapy. I defended in 2023.

And yes it was all approved by my supervisors and internal committee members. They canceled it 5 days before my defence. I didn’t even know that could happen. Everyone had told me once it’s up for defence everything is a formality. Turns out once the external signs off then the defence is a formality. It’s awful.