Doctoral education

Doctoral personal study plan (DPSP)

Doctoral personal study plan offers doctoral students practical tools for planning their studies and research, and for discussing their plans with their supervising professor.
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Doctoral personal study plan (DPSP)

The doctoral personal study plan (DPSP) is a tool for planning and scheduling your activities and resourses in order to complete your studies and reseach, and to graduate towards the career you aim at. It is also a tool for discussing your plans with your supervising professor and for agreeing about the supervision and advising that you need.

DPSP consists of the following documents:

  1. Credit plan (Sisu)
  2. Research plan
  3. Supervision plan
  4. Financing plan
  5. Career plan

Update your DPSP when necessary. We recommend you to go through your plan with your supervising professor at least once a year.

If you were requested to submit some of the DPSP documents as part of your study right application, you may use the same documents as a basis for your first DPSP.

DPSP is stored in MyStudies.

Confirming and storing your DPSP (5 parts)

To confirm your DPSP

  1. Prepare the five parts of the DPSP, discuss them with your supervising professor and revise them if necessary. Please note that some parts of the plan, such as the Supervision plan, require a discussion with both your supervising professor and thesis advisor(s).
  2. Upload the discussed DPSP to MyStudies as one PDF document for your supervising professor’s confirmation (Task 6 in MyStudies).*
  3. Email your supervising professor to inform them that your DPSP is ready to be checked and confirmed. The supervising professor will only look at the Task 6 that includes the final pdf (including all the five parts).
  4. Your supervising professor confirms the DPSP by saving it to the Notes. If there are issues, your supervising professor will contact you.

* New doctoral students need to first receive an email invitation to start using the MyStudies system for their DPSP - before receving the invitation you cannot submit your DPSP to the system. If you haven't received the invitation and need to confirm your DPSP, please contact your Doctoral programme's Doctoral education services.

When is the confirmed DPSPS needed?

You will need an official confirmation for your DSPS at the beginning of your studies. After that, you should confirm your DPSP

  • If your supervising professor, advisor(s), research topic or research field changes.
  • If your funding situation changes significantly.
  • If you are taking courses in other universities.
  • When you start pre-examination, you must have an up-to-date and confirmed credit plan (Sisu) and career plan.

In case you make changes to your credit plan (Sisu), please see "Credit plan (Sisu)" above.

MyStudies instructions (aalto.fi)

mystudies.aalto.fi

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