The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

Hi! I recently passed my prelim exam and am now officially a PhD candidate, but the big asterisk on my passing was that my committee wants me to look in to extending my deadline to graduate. SMART only provides 4 years 9 months before I MUST graduate (according to the way things were run for my cohort year), and that's obscenely fast for my program, which has an average graduation time of 6 years. Does anyone know what happens if I don't graduate on time? Of course, according to the handbook, they claim I owe 10 years of my life to the DoD instead of 5, which is a pretty insanely long time to lock yourself into a specific job. Trying to guarantee a graduation date from a PhD program is pretty wildly optimistic in the first place. Has anyone else run into this issue, and what happened? Help please!

veriste wrote:Hi! I recently passed my prelim exam and am now officially a PhD candidate, but the big asterisk on my passing was that my committee wants me to look in to extending my deadline to graduate. SMART only provides 4 years 9 months before I MUST graduate (according to the way things were run for my cohort year), and that's obscenely fast for my program, which has an average graduation time of 6 years. Does anyone know what happens if I don't graduate on time? Of course, according to the handbook, they claim I owe 10 years of my life to the DoD instead of 5, which is a pretty insanely long time to lock yourself into a specific job. Trying to guarantee a graduation date from a PhD program is pretty wildly optimistic in the first place. Has anyone else run into this issue, and what happened? Help please!

I'm currently facing the same problem. My solution was to request a "leave of absence" from the program, during which time you will receive no payments nor accumulate time owed. Double check with your CA, I'm sure this is a common issue and wouldn't worry about it too much.

Just curious if anyone else here has gotten a leave of absence and can share their experience? I'm in a similar boat and I don't yet know if I'll need to request one (as research progress can be very unpredictable), but I'm pretty worried that I'll need to.

guest2 wrote:Just curious if anyone else here has gotten a leave of absence and can share their experience? I'm in a similar boat and I don't yet know if I'll need to request one (as research progress can be very unpredictable), but I'm pretty worried that I'll need to.

1-Talk to your advisor, discuss target graduation date. Obtain his approval of an extension is needed.
2-Talk to your SF, mention that your advisor recommends an extension. Request their approval.
3-Submit leave of absence request to SMART together with the two approvals.
4-Secure funding or get ready for lean times during your leave!

I applied for a leave of absence, and it went pretty smoothly. They didn't have any issues with it as soon as my POC from my SF emailed saying they were fine with the new graduation date.