When the candidate has prepared a thesis, the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies chairs an oral Departmental Ph.D. Examination. After this is successfully completed, the candidate moves on to a final Ph.D. defense involving an external appraisal of the thesis and an oral examination by the School of Graduate Studies. The time for completion of the Ph.D. degree is approximately four years. This is required for students entering directly into the Ph.D. program, but is certainly not for those entering the M.Sc. program. On arrival, students who have not chosen their supervisors are encouraged to talk with as many professors and graduate students as possible, so that they can make an informed choice of both supervisor and research topic.
Many groups hold weekly seminars concerned with recent developments in their area of research.
There is also a Departmental Colloquium every Thursday afternoon during the regular academic year, at which leading physicists from around the world provide an expert view of advances in the most interesting fields of physics. The GLC, chaired by the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies, consists entirely of graduate students representing the different areas of research. It advises the Department on a wide variety of issues of interest to graduate students, performs annual graduate course evaluations, initiates many new proposals, serves as a sounding board for Departmental and University matters, and compiles the Department's Student Handbook. In every year of their graduate program, graduate students are offered the opportunity to work as a Teaching Assistant in one or more of these courses. Teaching Assistants at the University of Toronto are unionized, and conditions of pay and employment are excellent.