General Policies

A comprehensive description of University policies that govern doctoral programs can be found here.

Admission Criteria

Eligibility for admission to a doctoral program is limited to superior students who have demonstrated intellectual ability, high achievement, and adequate preparation for advanced study and research.

Minimum university standards for admission to a doctoral program require a bachelor's degree from an accredited institution (or equivalent) and a minimum of a 3.0 GPA in the last 60 attempted semester hours of undergraduate studies, or a score of at least 1080 on the combined verbal-quantitative portion of the GRE or a combined verbal-quantitative score of at least 540 on the GMAT, or a master's degree from an accredited institution and GRE or GMAT scores. A GRE or GMAT score is required of all applicants.

Meeting minimum university admission standards typically does not merit admission to the Management program, however. Historically, successful applicants have academic qualifications that are significantly above the stated university minimum requirements.

Independent Study Hours

No more than 12 total semester hours of independent study (including up to six hours counted toward a master's degree) may be applied to a doctoral program of study.

Time Limitation and Continuous Enrollment

A student has seven years from the date of admission to the doctoral program to complete the dissertation and complete the doctoral degree. No courses taken since the original program entry date at UCF may be older than seven years and used in the program of study. Graduate course work taken elsewhere and not part of an earned graduate degree is subject to the 7-year rule.

Examination and Doctoral Committee

The Management Department Candidacy Examination Committee and Doctoral Committee consists of all academically qualified permanent faculty in the department. All members of the department may be involved in the process of creating the exam and evaluating whether students have successfully completed the exams. More generally, the Doctoral Committee must certify that a student has successfully completed the Candidacy Examination and demonstrated the qualifications necessary to successfully complete requirements for the degree before a student may enter candidacy.

Candidacy

After admission to candidacy students must register for doctoral dissertation hours (XXX 7980). The admission to candidacy will be approved by the graduate college coordinator and forwarded to UCF Graduate Studies for status change. Doctoral students admitted to candidacy are expected to enroll in dissertation hours and to devote full-time effort to conducting their dissertation research and writing the required dissertation document. Students in doctoral candidacy must continuously enroll in at least three hours of dissertation course work (XXX 7980) each semester until the dissertation is completed.

Dissertation Advisory Committee Composition

Doctoral students must have a Dissertation Advisory Committee prior to the Candidacy Examination. The Committee will consist of a minimum of four members. At least three members must be qualified regular faculty members from the UCF Management department, one of whom must serve as the chair of the committee. One member must be from either outside the College of Business Administration (Economics is an exception - their faculty may serve as outside members), or outside the university. Adjuncts, visiting faculty members, and outside scholars may serve as a member or co-chair of a dissertation advisory committee, but may not serve as the chair.

Dissertation Preparation

The Graduate Studies Thesis and Dissertation Manual describes UCF's formatting requirements for dissertations and outlines the steps graduate students must follow in order to submit their dissertations electronically to UCF Graduate Studies. Graduate students can obtain the manual from the Graduate Student website (www.graduate.ucf.edu). The Thesis/Dissertation Office provides online workshops to inform graduate students about procedures, deadlines, and requirements associated with preparing a dissertation. Students who have just passed Candidacy are strongly encouraged to visit the online workshop.