All But Dissertation

Thanks for the link. It verifies what I just said

"ABD is not an actual title but rather just a little construction people use to describe a state that many graduate students find themselves in. I think that you can honestly call yourself ABD if you have completed all of the requirements of your PhD with the exception of an approved dissertation and/or dissertation defense."

 

A perspective from the other side of the PhD

Kizmet’s sense of things is right here.

This quotation is technically correct, although it’s a bit like saying that one is “all but at the store” because you’ve done all your safety checks and warmed up the car, but not left the driveway. The dissertation or thesis is after all the thing that makes a research doctorate what it is.

Much has been made in this thread of a hiring context for the nebulous term “ABD.” Yes, people do get hired when they aren’t PhinisheD yet, but almost always when their supervisors indicate that the candidate has it in the bag, and frequently after publishing one or more journal articles based on their research. When universities issue a call for applications and say they will consider “applications from PhD’s or ABD’s,” they are generally expecting to hire someone either with their PhD in hand, or someone who will have successfully defended by the time of starting the next term. They are emphatically not hoping to hire someone who hasn’t started their dissertation and isn’t working on it (or is no longer working on it), yet there will always be those students who want to stretch the meaning of the term to include themselves at that stage. If they couldn’t be bothered to start their dissertation while they’re on stipend and have time, they are extraordinarily unlikely to fire up, conduct research, write it up, and defend successfully once they’re teaching four classes per semester.

One can always search for exceptions, but this is generally how things operate.