Do colleges do anything to acknowledge a student finishing his classwork in preparation for his dissertation?
The term “doctoral candidate” generally denotes advanced status - not just a doctoral student, but one who has passed some milestone along the way (completed coursework, passed comprehensive exams, etc.). There are common elements in most programs, but there’s no universal structure, so the precise answer is going to vary from school to school. For mine, you could advance to candidacy after completing an oral qualifying exam, 80% of your coursework, and both the written and oral comprehensive exam.
Candidates who are finished everything but the dissertation are sometimes referred to as ABD (all but dissertation), but that’s not an official status.
Interesting 'nerd! Assume ABDs don’t get cool ceremony?
Not that I’ve heard of.
Different programs have different hurdles. Most have some sort or quals and then some sort of orals, but some also require a formal research plan. But I’ve done this at two different universities (my adviser died on me at the first one) and no recognition for any of the preliminary steps. Even when you’ve done your coursework you often participate in seminars.
Not in my program. I had to pass a qual exam in my second year. I finished my last class last year and no one cared. But I only had to take three elective classes - the rest is all research.
In my department, when you pass the milestone of completed coursework/comprehensive exams/dissertation proposal approved (all of which typically happens within the span of a month or two), a few weeks later you are off to some distant place to do your fieldwork. So, perhaps the closest thing to a “celebration” of achieving ABD status is some send-off party – just a gathering with friends and maybe a professor or two from your committee. (The heavy drinking doesn’t get going until you’re in the field, though…)
At my school, the summer between your first year and second you choose your lab and develop your project proposal. You defend your proposal in front of a faulty committee. Once passed, we opened some champagne and started in the lab officially. We never used ABD or candidate. Everyone knew if you got a C in two classes or didnt pass your proposal defense you were out of the program.
Finishing course work was a nonevent. I took three courses officially my first year. It was all research for the most part.
The next celebratory milestone was the defense 5-6 years later.
In my program everything was willy-nilly and you took “dissertation” as hours in your schedule. You were perfectly welcome to take them before your coursework was done. The only thing that meant anything was having your dissertation accepted… and getting The Format Nazi to accept it was usually a bigger hurdle than getting your committee to accept it.
What happens when the correctly-working committee discovers that they approved a crappy project?
A correctly-working committee? They’re too busy dodging flying pigs to care about a doctoral project. 
At the end of my second year, I’ve got a qualifying exam and formal research proposal coming up (og help me, just three weeks from now). After that, the next three or four or mumble years is just research. I finished my required classes, five in total, last semester. I may take a few classes or seminars if there’s something relevant to my thesis… though in part that’s just because a good seminar is fun, not particularly difficult, and gives me an excuse to read and discuss papers that won’t be cited in my thesis.
Proposals that received conditional approval need to be reworked to be approved. It was actually a good safety net, as a group of faculty could see what other faculty were thinking about for their students!
Everyone knew that the proposal is a first approach to develop the project. It was meant as an exercise to the student to get us to research the background of the work, propose an initial series of experiments and postulate outcomes. It was meant to be like a grant proposal with a presentation. It was laso to help learn how to write grants.
Personally, I found it to be an excellent activity. It took about two months to put together, working closely with my lab director. Boy, I learned how to take constructive criticism! The amount of red ink on my first draft…
(I was just joking about the typo in your post - “faulty” instead of “faculty”.)
Another vote for “depends on the university”, but in the sciences, at least, after the hurdles of the first couple of years (with names like “qualifiers”, “candidacy”, “oral exams”, etc.) some paperwork gets filed, but that’s about it. You don’t get a new nameplate or anything for your desk. These days the term “PhD candidate” is usually used regardless of which side of the hurdles you are on, at least in the vernacular.
Good lord, I utterly missed that!
Too funny! I almost think my brain read faulty and faculty as synonyms…
Very cute!
I think, in some cases, it’s possible to get a master’s degree. A lot of schools will give a master’s degree to you if you can’t complete the dissertation up the level of competence, rigor, etc. expected but at least made it X far into the doctoral program. I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t ask for it in advance right now even if you expect to finish the PhD.
For us, the first year of classes was pretty intense, but after that, the courses were pretty much non-events. Finishing them just wouldn’t be worth celebrating.
TY all for your answers to my questions, both asked and unasked.