Doctoral Registration Forms

ECE Doctoral Students are required to complete the registration form HERE every semester.  

An ECE advising hold that blocks you from registering will remain on your registration record until the Doctoral Registration Form is completed and approved.

This form is meant to give you time to reflect on your graduate progress so far, and what your upcoming semester will look like. This form will be completed in DocuSign, and should be routed to your faculty advisor, your supervisor. If you do not have a supervisor, it should be routed to your track advisor.

By signing the Doctoral Registration Form in DocuSign, your faculty advisor approves your registration, and agrees to be the instructor of any individual instruction course(s) such as ECE X97C, Research Problems; ECE X99W, doctoral Dissertation; or ECE X97M, Graduate Research Internship (for international students) that you list on the form. Next, a staff member on the ECE graduate student services team will review your form and clear your advising hold.
Also complete the additional Individual Instruction Course Approval Form to take an ECE individual instruction course with a professor who is not your faculty advisor, or if you forgot to list your individual instruction course(s) on the Doctoral Registration Form that you already completed. 

Students cannot add individual instruction courses on their own. The exception is ECE X99W. Doctoral candidates must add themselves to ECE X99W, the Dissertation course. An ECE graduate student services team member must add you to any other individual instruction courses listed on your Doctoral Registration Form, or listed on the Individual Instruction Course Approval Form, during an open registration access period.  Be sure all your holds are cleared!

Refer to the registration instruction page HERE for more information on signing up for courses after your registration form is completed.  All the holds on your RIS, Registration Information Sheet, must be cleared before you can attempt to register.  Tip: Complete the Doctoral Registration Form in fall prior to early spring registration at the end of October and the beginning of November.  Complete the Doctoral Registration Form in spring prior to early summer and fall registration in April.

Exceptional Circumstances

A full-time Research Scientist at UT-Austin who has never taught a course at UT-Austin cannot be the signer/instructor for an individual instruction course such as Research Problems. Consult an ECE Graduate Coordinator for more clarification.

If you are an international student in the ACSES track without a doctoral supervisor, and your registration form is signed by the ACSES track advisor, Prof. Jonathan W. Valvano, then you must prepare an additional Individual Instruction Course Approval Form that you route to the ACSES professor who signed your ECE CPT form (not Prof. Valvano) in order to get added to ECE x97M, Graduate Research Internship.

Only list ECE 698A, master's Thesis; ECE 698B, master's Thesis, or ECE 398R, master's Report, on your Doctoral Registration Form if (1) you do not have a master's degree already, and (2) you are applying for an ECE master's degree with Thesis or Report along the way to completing your ECE PhD degree.  ECE 698A must be taken in a semester prior to taking ECE 698B.  ECE 698B and ECE 398R must be taken in the semester you expect to finish the ECE master's degree requirements.

Continuous Registration Requirements for Doctoral Candidates

After advancing to candidacy, doctoral candidates must enroll continuously for the Dissertation course (ECE X99W) for all subsequent long semesters, including the semester of graduation.  Doctoral candidates must accumulate at least 6 hours of the Dissertation course in order to graduate.  The Dissertation hours in the student's final semester are included in the total number of accumulated hours.  Continuous registration in the summer terms is not required unless the student is employed as a GRA/TA in summer, or the student plans to schedule their defense and graduate in summer. 

Doctoral candidates are eligible to have their registration switched from Research Problems course hours to the matching number of Dissertation course hours by the Graduate School's internal, mid-semester deadline during the semester in which their application for candidacy is approved.  (In summer, the Graduate School's internal "switch" deadline occurs early in the summer.)  If you wish to switch registration, contact an ECE Graduate Coordinator. If you are more than two semesters away from defending, there is no need to switch registration mid-semester.