Most PhD candidates in the UK are registered initially for an MPhil, or as a probationary doctoral candidate, and have to pass a formal assessment in the first eighteen months before their registration becomes a PhD. Birkbeck's published policy puts it plainly: PhD programme students are initially registered for an MPhil, and an assessment must be made about whether their registration should change.
It is usually a written submission plus an oral examination with a panel. It can be failed, and it can be passed on a second attempt. And it is almost impossible to research, because no two institutions call it the same thing. Below: a translation table, what panels actually assess, the questions they ask, every documented outcome including the one nobody writes about — and a mock upgrade panel with a mentor who has sat on one, plus a read of your report before you submit it.
What your university calls it, and where to find your own rules
The same examination is called the upgrade viva, the transfer viva, the confirmation review, the progression review, the annual progress review, differentiation, or simply the MPhil-to-PhD upgrade. A candidate whose department says “confirmation” will not find a page titled “upgrade viva”, and the reverse. That is the whole reason this corner of the web is unusable.
So, a translation table. Every link below was opened and confirmed to return HTTP 200 on 8 October 2026.
| Term | Used by (examples) | Published policy |
|---|---|---|
| Upgrade / MPhil-to-PhD upgrade | Birkbeck, University of London | Expectations for upgrade from MPhil to PhD status · Research student progression and assessment |
| Confirmation review | University of Sheffield | Confirmation Review |
| Progression review | University of Nottingham; University of Sussex | Regulations for the degrees of PhD and MPhil · Formal Progression Reviews |
| Progress review / annual progress review | University of York; Loughborough University; University of St Andrews | Progress and review arrangements · Progress monitoring · Progress reviews and termination of studies (PDF) |
| Transfer viva / transfer report | UCL, Department of Computer Science | Publishes a “Transfer Report & Viva” feedback form for panels. Not linked here: the file is served over plain HTTP as a Word download. Search your own department for “transfer report”. |
| Upgrade, set at discipline level | University of Exeter | Upgrade guidance sits inside college-level handbooks rather than one university-wide page — evidence that the rules can differ within an institution. Link withheld: the previously published upgrade page now redirects to the ESE handbook index, which does not itself carry the criteria. |
| Differentiation | Not verified. | This term is in circulation but we could not confirm a current, publicly published policy using it. Rather than fill the row with a guess, we have left it open. If your institution uses it, we would like the link: mia@globalprojectshelp.com. |
Search your institution's site for “research degree regulations” or “code of practice for research degrees”. Then find your school or faculty's own guidance, because the detail — word limits especially — is usually set at that level rather than centrally. If what your department does in practice differs from the written policy, ask your Graduate Tutor or Director of Postgraduate Research in writing and keep the reply.
Everything below is the general UK pattern. Your institution's regulation overrides it in every case of conflict, including where it conflicts with us.
When it happens
Timing is set relative to your registration date, not to how ready you feel. Birkbeck's published windows are a good worked example of how precise this can get:
- Full-time, on a programme typically lasting three years: first attempt between nine and eighteen months after the start of the research project.
- Full-time, second attempt: between fifteen and twenty-four months, and normally no more than six months after the first.
- Part-time, on a programme typically lasting five years: first attempt between fifteen and thirty months.
- Part-time, second attempt: between twenty-five and forty months, normally no more than ten months after the first.
Other institutions set different windows, and some run the assessment annually as part of a wider progress-monitoring cycle rather than as a single gate. The knock-on that catches people out is the same everywhere: the written submission is usually due several weeks before the oral examination, so the real deadline is earlier than the date in your diary.
What you submit, and why it matters more than the viva
The panel questions you on the document. If the document is unclear, the viva is an hour spent repairing it out loud instead of discussing your research.
Birkbeck specifies that the submission should cover, though not necessarily as discrete items: an introduction giving the context of the work; a literature review or evidence that one has been undertaken; a research question or hypothesis; a section on methodology or evidence that methodology has been considered and agreed; a substantial piece of work towards the thesis objectives; and a bibliography. It also makes clear that what counts as the substantial piece depends on the kind of project — for a project with fieldwork in year two, a literature review, ethics approval and methodology may be enough; a theoretical project would be expected to show a developing theoretical framework; an empirical one, results obtained so far with some initial analysis; a practice-based one may have a shorter written component alongside elements of the practice itself.
Length varies enormously and we are not going to invent a number. Birkbeck's own expectations state that they do not include a word count, while noting that schools and faculties may set one. Find your school's figure; do not work from a number you read on a blog.
A supervisor's report usually goes to the panel alongside your submission. Candidates frequently do not know this exists. It typically covers the work accomplished so far and the programme of further work leading to a thesis, including a timetable. Whether you see it varies — at Birkbeck it must be submitted to the student as well as to the PGR School Lead, which is not true everywhere. Ask.
Write the submission for a reader who does not know your project. Panel members are chosen for subject expertise, but they are subject-adjacent, not subject-identical — and they will question what is on the page, not what is in your head. Every assumption you have stopped noticing is a question waiting to be asked.
Have your upgrade report read as a critic would read it.
A mentor reads your submission before it goes to the panel and returns written feedback on the argument, the plan and the gaps — as a reader and critic, never as a rewriter. We do not write or rewrite upgrade reports, and we will say so again on this page because it is the document most open to that temptation.
Who sits on the panel, and what that changes
Typically two academics with the subject expertise needed to evaluate the submission, drawn from outside your supervisory team but usually from inside the institution. A member external to your school, or external to the university altogether, may be appointed — at Birkbeck, specifically to provide an independent view, for instance at a second attempt. One panel member acts as chair, coordinates the oral examination and completes the report afterwards.
Whether your supervisor attends varies. At Birkbeck the principal supervisor may be present if the student requests it, but must withdraw while the panel decides.
At many institutions, panel members are barred from examining your final thesis. Birkbeck's policy says it outright: members of the panel will be ineligible as examiners for any subsequent MPhil or PhD thesis.
Where that holds, the upgrade panel is the only senior, critical readership you will get whose opinion carries no risk to your final award. That is not a threat to be survived. It is free examiner-grade feedback, eighteen months before it counts, from people who cannot mark you at the end. Check your own regulations before relying on it — but if it is true where you are, it should change how you walk into the room.
What the panel is assessing
Not vibes, and not a smaller version of the final viva. Published criteria exist and almost nobody reads them. Birkbeck's are representative and unusually clear; a student should be upgraded if they demonstrate:
| The criterion | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Satisfactory progress so far | Measured against where someone at your stage should be, not against a finished thesis. Be able to say what you have done and when. |
| Sufficient awareness of the context | A literature review appropriate to the stage, and a bibliography. You are showing you know the conversation you are joining. |
| A viable research question or hypothesis | Viable means completable within the maximum registration period. This is a question about scope and time, not about ambition. |
| Technical and generic skills development | Confirmed by your supervisor. Where a funder such as UKRI sets expectations for skills development, progress against those has to be demonstrable too. |
| A viable plan for the work | Including a timetable and key milestones for everything remaining. The section panels probe hardest and supervisors rehearse least. |
| English language proficiency, written and spoken | Assessed through the submission and the oral. Stated as a formal criterion, not an informal impression. |
| Research ethics considered | Ethics dimensions thought through, and where appropriate, an application made or approval obtained. “I'll do ethics later” is a poor answer at month twelve. |
Read that list against what the final viva asks and the difference is stark. The QAA defines a doctorate by an original contribution to knowledge made through independent research, and the final viva tests whether you made one. The upgrade asks something else entirely.
The panel is not trying to find a hole in your results. It is trying to establish whether your timetable is real. The final viva asks “is this a doctorate?” The upgrade asks “is this a doctorate in the making, and are you the person who can deliver it in the time remaining?” Most candidates over-prepare a defence of work done and are ambushed by questions about work outstanding.
Questions upgrade panels ask
Grouped by the criterion each one tests, and built from the published criteria above rather than copied from somebody's list of forty.
Viability of the question
- What is your research question, in one sentence?
- Is it answerable with the access and time you actually have?
- What would a negative result look like, and would the thesis still work?
Context and literature
- Who else is working on this, and how is your work different from theirs?
- What has been published since you wrote the literature review?
- Which single paper is closest to what you are doing, and why are you not duplicating it?
Method
- Why this design rather than the obvious alternative?
- What is your sampling or case-selection strategy, and what happens if recruitment falls short?
- Have you piloted anything? What did it change?
The timetable — the section competitors omit
- What will you have completed by this time next year?
- What is on your critical path — the thing that, if it slips, moves everything?
- What is your contingency if the obvious risk in your project materialises?
- Which chapter will you write first, and when do you start writing rather than reading?
The method questions are the ones most often answered badly, because at this stage the design is still a proposal and candidates defend it as though it were already done. If that is where you feel least secure, work on it separately — methodology mentorship covers design, sampling and rigour in their own right.
Ethics, governance and scope
- Where is your ethics application, and when does the committee next meet?
- What is your data management plan?
- Is this one thesis or three? If you had to cut a third of it, what would go?
One worked example
Question: “What will you have done by this time next year?”
A weak answer
- “I'll have finished data collection and started writing up.”
No dates, no dependencies, no risk. It tells the panel you have a hope rather than a plan, and it invites the follow-up “and what if recruitment takes twice as long as you think?” with nothing prepared.
A stronger answer
- “Ethics approval by December; recruitment December to April, which is the critical path because it depends on two gatekeeper organisations; analysis May to August; the methods and first findings chapters drafted by September. If recruitment stalls past February I widen to a third site, which I have already approached — that costs me about six weeks and does not change the research question.”
Dates, the dependency named, the risk named, and a contingency already in motion. The follow-up becomes a conversation about the third site rather than a test of whether you have thought about time at all.
Illustration only. This is a constructed example written to show the shape of a strong answer, not an excerpt from a real submission.
Possible outcomes, including the ones nobody writes about
From Birkbeck's published policy, which sets out first-attempt and second-attempt outcomes separately — a distinction most sources omit entirely.
| Attempt | Outcome |
|---|---|
| First | Recommended for upgrade to PhD status. |
| Referred to a second attempt by a specified date against specified criteria, with a second viva. | |
| Referred to a second attempt by a specified date against specified criteria, without a second viva. | |
| By written agreement between the student and the panel chair, not recommended for upgrade and remaining registered for the MPhil — which may lead to submitting an MPhil thesis. | |
| Second | Recommended for upgrade to PhD status. |
| Not recommended for upgrade; remains registered for the MPhil. | |
| Not recommended for upgrade and referred to the PGR School Lead for consideration of formal discontinuation of studies on the grounds of insufficient academic progress. |
That last row is the thing candidates search for at two in the morning and every competing page avoids, so here it is stated calmly. Discontinuation is a documented possible consequence of failing at the second attempt. It is not a decision the panel makes — at Birkbeck it belongs to the PGR School Lead under a separate discontinuation policy, and the policy requires that you are given feedback setting out exactly what has to change after a first failure, along with the support to do it.
What to do in the week after a referral
- Get the panel's report in writing, and the specific criteria and date you have been referred to. The panel completes a written joint report; you are entitled to know what it says.
- Map every point to an action. One line per comment, one line per response, with a date.
- Agree a revised plan with your supervisor, in writing. An email summarising what you agreed is enough and it protects you both.
- Find your institution's appeals route and its deadline now, even if you do not intend to use it. Appeals are time-limited and the clock does not wait while you decide. Birkbeck, for example, handles these through a separate research appeals policy.
If progression affects your visa or your funding
Failing to progress can have consequences beyond the academic. Where your study is sponsored under the Student route, your institution has sponsorship duties that depend on your registration status; where you are funded, your funder will have its own reporting requirements and conditions.
We are not qualified to advise on either, and neither is any other dissertation mentoring service. What we can tell you is who is: your university's international student advice team, who deal with sponsorship questions every day and whose advice is free to you, and your funder's named contact. Speak to both early rather than after a decision. If this is the part keeping you awake, it is the first call to make — before the academic preparation, not after it.
How we prepare you for an upgrade panel
- A read of your upgrade report before you submit it. Written feedback on the argument, the plan and the gaps — as a reader and a critic. We do not write it, and we do not rewrite it. This is the document a candidate is most likely to be tempted to outsource, so we are saying it twice: not that, not ever. Our academic integrity policy has the full boundary.
- A mock upgrade panel. Full length, in the format your institution uses, questioning you on your actual submission rather than on generic prompts.
- A timetable stress-test. The thing panels probe hardest and supervisors rehearse least. We take your plan apart looking for the dependency you have not noticed.
- A written report afterwards, plus one follow-up session to work on whatever came apart.
What we will not do: write or rewrite your upgrade report, contact your panel or your department, or predict their decision. Nobody outside the room can do the last one, and anybody who says they can is selling you a guess.
Preparing for a second upgrade attempt.
If you have been referred, the preparation is different: narrower, mapped directly to the panel's stated criteria, and focused on the specific things they told you to fix. Bring the panel's report and we will work from it.
Pricing
Doctoral mentorship sits in our Fellow tier, £0.050 per word of the work being mentored, in pounds sterling. An upgrade report has a word count, so written feedback on it prices cleanly at that rate. The same price applies wherever you are reading this; there is no regional pricing and no currency conversion.
A mock upgrade panel has no word count, so a per-word rate does not price it. A session price has not been published on this site yet. Until it is, ask through the quote form for a mock upgrade panel specifically and you will get a figure in pounds before committing to anything.
Your mentor
Questions candidates ask
What is the difference between an upgrade viva and a transfer viva?
Usually nothing. They are two names for the same examination: the assessment that decides whether your registration moves from MPhil or probationary status to full PhD candidature. Some institutions also use confirmation review, progression review, annual progress review or differentiation. See the translation table — and use your own institution's word when you search, because that is the only one that will find your rules.
Can you fail an upgrade viva?
Yes. It is a real assessment with documented outcomes, not a formality — though at some institutions the practical culture around it is closer to a formality than the policy suggests, which is exactly why reading your own regulations matters. The most common unsuccessful outcome is a referral to a second attempt, not an immediate end to the programme.
How long is an upgrade viva?
Shorter than a final viva, and set locally rather than by a sector rule. Ask your PGR support manager or graduate tutor what is normal in your school; ask the same question about whether a presentation is expected at the start, because that varies too.
How long should an upgrade report be?
There is no national figure, and anyone quoting one is generalising from a single institution. Birkbeck's central expectations explicitly do not include a word count, while noting that schools and faculties may set one. Find your school's guidance; that number is the only one that matters.
Who is on the upgrade panel?
Typically two academics with the subject expertise to assess your submission, from outside your supervisory team and usually inside the institution, with one acting as chair. A member external to your school or to the university may be appointed, particularly to give an independent view at a second attempt.
Does my supervisor attend?
It varies. At Birkbeck the principal supervisor may attend if the student requests it, and must withdraw while the panel makes its decision. Check your own policy, and if you have a choice, make it deliberately.
Is the upgrade panel the same as my final viva examiners?
Usually not, and at some institutions they are expressly barred from it — Birkbeck's policy states that panel members will be ineligible as examiners for any subsequent MPhil or PhD thesis. Where that applies, the panel is senior feedback with no downstream risk to your award. Confirm it in your own regulations before relying on it.
What happens if I am not upgraded?
The documented outcomes are: referral to a second attempt, with or without a further oral; remaining registered for the MPhil by agreement; and, after an unsuccessful second attempt, referral for consideration of formal discontinuation. A first-attempt referral must come with feedback setting out what has to change. See possible outcomes.
Can I appeal?
Institutions have an appeals route for research degree decisions — Birkbeck handles upgrade appeals through a separate research appeals policy. Appeals are almost always time-limited and usually turn on procedural irregularity or on circumstances the panel did not know about, rather than on disagreeing with the academic judgement. Find your deadline immediately, before you decide whether to use it, and talk to your students' union advice service.
How is an upgrade viva different from the final PhD viva?
The final viva asks whether you have made an original contribution to knowledge. The upgrade asks whether there is a viable doctorate here and whether you can deliver it in the time remaining. You are defending a plan, not a finding. If your final viva is the one ahead of you, see final PhD viva preparation coaching.
Related guidance
Sources
Institutional and sector sources only. No competing commercial page is cited anywhere here. Every link was checked on 8 October 2026.
- Expectations for upgrade from MPhil to PhD status — student policies 2025–26. The backbone of this page: timing windows full-time and part-time, the seven criteria, submission components, panel composition and the bar on panel members examining the thesis, and all documented outcomes including discontinuation. Birkbeck, University of London
- Research student progression and assessment — the student-facing version of the same process. Birkbeck, University of London
- Confirmation Review — an institution using “confirmation review” for the same progression milestone. University of Sheffield
- Regulations for the degrees of PhD and MPhil — progression review as an annual formal assessment within the research degree regulations. University of Nottingham
- Formal Progression Reviews — progression criteria for entry to year two of a research degree. University of Sussex
- Progress and review arrangements — including the option of a second and final opportunity to meet progression criteria, and transfer to MPhil. University of York
- Progress monitoring — progression as an annual cycle rather than a single gate. Loughborough University
- Progress reviews and termination of studies for postgraduate research students (PDF) — the link between progress review and termination, set out formally. University of St Andrews
- Characteristics Statement: Doctoral Degree — 3rd edition, February 2020. The standard the upgrade is a waypoint towards. Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA)
- Advice and Guidance: Research Degrees — sector expectations on progression monitoring. PDF. Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA)
- Preparing for the Viva: A Guide for Doctoral Candidates — Lunt and Houston. Cited here only for the contrast with the final viva. PDF. UK Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE)
Last reviewed · 8 October 2026 · Next review · October 2027
Author and reviewer · not yet supplied — see “Your mentor” above
Does your institution use a term that is missing from the table? Tell us: mia@globalprojectshelp.com