Free tool, planning and viva
PhD timeline planner
Your submission window and milestones under UGC 2022.
Put your PhD admission date in the box and the planner will give the earliest and the latest date you can submit under the UGC 2022 regulations.
Along with that it shows some suggested milestones for the years in the middle. In the first year itself most scholars feel six years is plenty of time. Then coursework eats one full year. Data collection gets pushed by few months because some office did not give permission on time, and a journal can keep your paper for months without reply. When you can see the last date, and a review coming every six months, it is much easier to plan those middle years properly. You can also put all the dates into your phone calendar at one go.
Not sure the answer fits your study? WhatsApp us or call, and we’ll look at it with you.
How the tool works
We took the legal limits from clause 4 of the UGC (Minimum Standards and Procedures for Award of Ph.D. Degree) Regulations, 2022. That clause gives a minimum of three years for the PhD, coursework counted within those three years only, and you can go up to six years counting from the admission date. Some universities allow re-registration after that, and in that case you get two more years at the most. On top of this, women scholars and scholars having more than 40% disability may be given two extra years. The planner calculates all these limits from your admission date.
- Earliest submission is simply your admission date plus three years.
- Latest submission we show at six years from admission. Tick the checkbox for the extra two years and the planner shows eight instead.
- Re-registration is not there in every university. Where it is allowed, up to two years can come after the latest date.
All the other dates are our suggestions, and the planner labels them so. We show coursework as finished by month 12 because in most universities it gets over in the first year. For progress review we put one every six months. Clause 10 asks the scholar to present progress before the Research Advisory Committee once in each semester, so that is where the six months comes from. Our target submission date is 54 months after admission if you are full-time, and 66 months if you are part-time. Three months before that target we put the pre-submission seminar (our guide on thesis submission steps explains that stage).
Suppose a full-time scholar joined on 1 August 2024. For her the earliest submission is 1 August 2027. Her six years get over on 1 August 2030, and if the university gives re-registration she can go till 1 August 2032. As target the planner puts 1 February 2029, and she will face eight progress reviews before reaching there. If you joined on the 31st and the target month has only 30 days or less, the planner shifts the date to the last day of that month.
Under the result you will see two buttons. Press the first one and you get an .ics calendar file, it opens in Google Calendar, in Outlook and in the iPhone calendar also. The second one is for printing the plan, or you can save it as PDF and send to your guide on mail.
Questions scholars ask
Which date do I enter, admission or registration?
Take the admission date printed in your provisional registration letter and enter that. As per UGC, the six years start from the admission date. Some universities count from a different day, like the date the coursework result came. Then enter that date only and write a small note in the plan.
Does part-time study change the limits?
For part-time also UGC 2022 gives the same three to six years, there is no difference in the limits. What changes in the planner is only the suggested target, which comes later for part-time scholars. Your university might have kept a longer minimum for part-time people, and we have seen that in a few places, so better look at the PhD rules by university before you plan around these dates.
I was admitted under the 2016 regulations. Can I use this?
You can, only take the dates with some caution. Under clause 16 of the 2022 regulations, each university decides which rules apply for scholars admitted before the new rules came. Go to your research section and ask which set applies to you, in writing if they will give.
How do I add the dates to Google Calendar?
First download the .ics file. Then open Google Calendar on a computer, not the phone app, go to Settings and choose Import and export. Select the file there and pick the calendar you want. Each milestone comes in as an all-day event with a short note. iPhone is more simple, just open the file and the events get added.
Is my admission date stored anywhere?
Nothing is stored on our side. Your browser itself does all the calculation, and our server only records that somebody used the planner.
Stuck on a chapter? Talk it through with us.
Call or WhatsApp, say where you are in your thesis, and we’ll tell you plainly what kind of help makes sense, if any.