In American higher education, Candidacy is a special status accorded a graduate student working on the final stages of the doctoral degree. One is "recommended for Candidacy" by the department but one is "admitted to Candidacy" by the university. Candidacy is not quite the same as ABD ("all but dissertation") status, since a student can be admitted to candidacy before finishing all coursework. However, once all courses have been taken and all degree requirements completed except for the document/thesis and the final oral defense, a student in Candidacy is considered to be "ABD."
When the student has passed the comprehensive examination and removed any provisional admission requirements, the Supervisory Committee will recommend to the Office of Graduate Studies that the doctoral student be admitted to Candidacy by filing the Application for Admission to Candidacy for the doctoral degree, noting the dates of completion of the comprehensive examination(s).
Completion of the form is initiated with the student who will complete the top part of the form and submit the form to the GKSOM Graduate Committee through the Graduate Forms Submission Portal. The form will be routed to the student’s Supervisory Committee for signatures and then filed with the Office of Graduate Studies.
By stated policy of the Graduate College, Candidacy must normally be achieved no fewer than seven months prior to the Final Oral Exam, as detailed above. Only under unusual circumstances will the Graduate College consider the petition of a student achieving Candidacy late in a given semester for graduation at the end of the following semester.
Registration and Fees during Candidacy
During Candidacy, students may register for the fall and spring semesters using MyRed.
If a student was officially certified as a resident of Nebraska for tuition purposes while on campus but has now, during Candidacy, moved to another state or country, the student continues to pay resident tuition.
If a student was classified as a non-resident for tuition purposes for the entire period while on campus, the student continues during Candidacy to pay non-resident tuition. (This includes students who were Graduate Teaching or Research Assistants from another state or country and did not ever carry through the specific official procedure to meet the standards established by the Board of Regents for resident tuition status. In such cases, while the student was on campus as a Graduate Teaching or Research Assistant the student was classified as a non-resident student and tuition was assessed on a non-resident basis, but the University remitted the difference between non-resident and resident tuition.)
However, if students are registering for only one credit hour, which is in EXCESS of their program requirements, merely to maintain Candidacy as required by the Graduate College, they are charged the Resident tuition rate regardless of previous residency status.
Students in Candidacy who have completed all courses on the Program of Studies and who are registering for Doctoral Dissertation (MUSC 999) or Doctoral Dissertation Portfolio (MUSC 999P) hours in excess of the requirements of the program in order to maintain continuous registration are eligible for a waiver of the non-resident portion of tuition. To qualify for this benefit, students must:
Have grades for all courses on the program except for Doctoral Dissertation (MUSC 999) or Doctoral Dissertation Portfolio (MUSC 999P) hours.
Send email to Eva Bachman requesting this benefit. (You need only make this request once. Your ABD status, once approved, will remain in effect until you graduate.)
Complete information is available here.