In Germany, after graduating from university, you are eligible for a doctorate if you meet certain conditions. In China, LLM is equivalent to the first national unified examination of German law, so it is not necessary to make up lessons after studying for a master's degree in China and then studying for a doctorate in Germany.
The first step in studying for a doctorate is to find a doctoral supervisor who agrees to guide your thesis. In German, a doctoral supervisor is called? Doctor's father? ; Full professors in regular universities can generally instruct doctoral students. When looking for a tutor, they usually collect some relevant information first to see which professors are in related fields. Everyone has different considerations when choosing a tutor. Typical questions are how the professor studies in this field, whether he reads the papers handed in in in time, whether he is generous or harsh in grading, whether he can accept different opinions, how to treat people, whether he is friendly and amiable, and so on.
After selecting a professor, the next step is to contact him, usually through his secretary first, and many people can't pass this pass; Famous professors, in particular, tend to be attracted by many people, and their secretaries often put the first pass. Filter? Give up many applicants.
After passing the secretary, the professor will read the relevant application materials and decide whether to admit doctoral students. So, how does the professor decide whether to accept doctoral students? As far as law is concerned, the university graduation examination is called the first national examination, which is divided into two parts: written examination and oral examination, with a full score of18; Passing 4 points, 9 points is a very good result, and those exceeding 12 points are basically rare; The doctor's father looked at the score first. If the score is high, it is less likely to be rejected by the doctor's father. If the score of the first national examination is not particularly high, it will be difficult to find a tutor.
The professor makes three final decisions: rejection, postponement and acceptance.
It is also difficult for some professors to make a decision to refuse. In the final analysis, it is to refuse other people's demands. For some professors, this is a very simple thing. The simplest way is for the Secretary to reject all applications. Refusal to reply is generally divided into five parts: 1, and the application materials have been received; 2. Can't accept its application; 3. Give a reason. Generally speaking, many doctoral students have been admitted and have no energy to accept new doctoral students. 4. Express great regret; 5. Encourage and wish applicants good luck with other professors.
Compared with direct refusal, postponement is a disguised and dishonest refusal; Generally speaking, the professor gives the applicant this answer: I will consider your application and I will inform you later. As a result, applicants waited for news for a long time, often afraid to ask the professor again, so as not to leave a bad impression; After a long time, the applicant will know that there is no hope.
Of course, the good result is to get a positive answer and let the applicant start preparing other conditions; Among them, for China students, the most difficult are two seminars. Generally speaking, choose a seminar held by a professor, choose one of the designated topics, write a paper, about 20 pages, then give a report in 20 minutes on the designated date, and then answer questions raised by other students; Written papers account for two thirds, and oral reports and discussions account for one third; In the end, the total score should be above the average, which is not a pass. After attending two discussion classes and obtaining relatively excellent results, you can apply for doctoral qualification together with other materials. For readers who are still in China, the more feasible way to contact the tutor is through the recommendation of domestic professors.
Second, determine the topic
After determining the tutor, the next step should be to decide the topic of the thesis. Generally speaking, the tutor will ask you what questions you are interested in, and ask you what topic you want to write first. If your topic is approved by the tutor, the tutor will not easily let you rewrite other topics; The advantage of doing this is that you have a sense of identity with your own topic, because it is decided by yourself, not imposed by your tutor. If you don't have any specific ideas, or the professor thinks your topic is not suitable, he will give you a topic or ask you to choose one from several topics.
It is more realistic to write some topics of comparative law, that is, to compare the situation between China and Germany in specific fields. Its advantage is that it can give full play to its advantages over German students and avoid its own disadvantages. Because of writing the topic of pure German law, China students do not have the advantages that German students have. After all, the law regulates social life. If you don't live in this society since childhood, even if you study law in the German university system, your knowledge of German law will certainly be greatly limited. For the situation in China, by the same token, students in China certainly have advantages in related research, but it is not easy to write such a topic well; First of all, a real comparative study is very difficult. Nowadays, many works called Comparative Law actually introduce the situation of various countries in a certain field to a great extent, and there are very few things that can really be compared. Is that so? Comparative method? Actually, it doesn't make much sense; Secondly, writing the topic of comparative law means that it is very important to study the situation in China, instead of putting all your energy into German law. When you go abroad from Wan Li, which is not far from home, you usually want to study foreign laws well, but spending a lot of energy on studying the domestic situation seems to be inconsistent with the original intention of studying abroad. Of course, from the perspective of comparative law, we tend to think from different angles, broaden our horizons, get rid of the shackles of various tangible and intangible preconceptions when studying only one country's laws, and have a more thorough understanding of the laws of both countries.
Third, the guidance of the professor.
After the topic is determined, it is necessary to collect relevant information and conduct corresponding research. Unlike in China, doctoral students in Germany do not have to attend classes, and almost all of them do their own research. So how much guidance and help can the tutor give in this long process of thesis writing? Generally speaking, if doctoral students don't take the initiative to find professors, professors generally don't ask about their research progress and give specific academic guidance; In practice, how much doctoral students get guidance from tutors is directly related to how many opportunities they have to get in touch with professors.
We need to make a distinction about this problem. German professors usually have some assistants besides secretaries. These assistants are also doctoral students. They have independent or shared offices. Generally speaking, every assistant has his own task. For example, the professor teaches a course by himself. When the professor is on a business trip or cannot give lectures for other reasons, these teaching assistants will give lectures for him. In addition, these assistants also provide some tutoring courses to help students digest and consolidate what they have learned. For these doctoral students who are teaching assistants, they often have the opportunity to discuss their papers with their tutors and get some specific academic guidance.
For doctoral students who are not assistant professors, it is very limited to get guidance from professors. They need to arrange time to meet the professor through the secretary. Because German professors usually arrange a week's courses in one day, and the residence and university location are often not in the same city, doctoral students have limited opportunities to meet their tutors. In fact, in the long process of thesis writing, doctoral students without assistant positions rarely meet tutors; In the long process of research and writing, many doctoral students do not meet their tutors for academic exchanges.
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Generally speaking, doctoral students have limited communication with their tutors during the research process, which may even make people feel that the tutors are worthy of the name. However, for doctoral students with independent research ability, they enjoy full academic research freedom because their tutors don't ask their research progress. For doctoral students who are not particularly good at independent research, this system is undoubtedly unfavorable.
Fourth, economic sources.
Studying for a doctorate is an investment in time and economy. Economically speaking, expenses generally include living expenses and research expenses (such as books and photocopies, and even travel expenses for field investigation and information search); A few years later, this is also a lot of money; The success or failure of the paper, economic factors can be said to have a great role, the economic sources of doctoral students, generally divided into these categories:
1. Family support: Many German doctoral students receive financial support from their parents, especially those with good family economic conditions. With their parents as financial backing, they study with peace of mind. Among the students in China, few rely on the support of their families;
2. Working for professors: Many doctoral students also serve as assistant professors. This position belongs to public office. General assistants sign a contract with the government for three years, work about 20 hours a week, and spend the rest of their time on papers. This position is very popular with doctoral students. Besides solving economic problems, it has some advantages. Because teaching assistants often contact their tutors, they can often have academic exchanges with them. By participating in some activities, such as organizing meetings. Assistants generally have offices, which is also an advantage; In addition, because teaching assistants often contact with tutors, they have established a close relationship, and tutors generally tend to give higher scores when grading doctoral dissertations. The achievement of doctoral thesis still carries some weight, and the popularity of assistant position also has a great relationship. Of course, there are advantages and disadvantages. Many tutors often assign a lot of work to teaching assistants, which greatly limits the time for teaching assistants to write papers.
3. Scholarships: The ideal source of income is scholarships. After obtaining a doctorate, I am eligible to apply for many scholarships. It is common to apply for scholarships from some party foundations. The main political parties in Germany have their own foundations, which support talented and public-spirited students close to their political views. Some of my friends have won party scholarships, including Germans and foreigners, including China. These scholarships generally last for two years and can be extended 1 year. It is said that the longest one won a five-year scholarship. However, it should be pointed out that applying for these scholarships, in addition to taking a long time, generally takes 4 to 6 months, and the possibility of success is really low; According to the statistics published by these party bases, only one out of every 20 applicants is lucky.
In addition to political party foundations, other organizations provide scholarships, among which DAAD (German Academic Exchange Center) subsidizes domestic students to study abroad and foreign students to study in Germany. China students who want to study for a doctorate in Germany can apply for a scholarship jointly awarded by DAAD and a domestic organization called the Foundation for Studying Abroad. One of the conditions is probably that you have obtained a master's degree. If the applicants pass the primary election, they will spend a year studying German, and then DAAD will send some of them to Germany to study for their doctoral degrees. The disadvantage of this program is that it takes too much time. If you plan to go to Germany to study for a Ph.D. and start learning German at the postgraduate stage, then participating in this program means that you can't go to Germany immediately after your master's degree, but you must study German for one year, no matter what your German level is. You must have a master's degree when applying, which means you can't apply before graduation, which means you can't go to school until two years after graduation at the earliest; Because two years accounts for about one-fiftieth of my life, the author has never considered this procedure at all, and studying German for one year may not be sent to Germany, so it is better to be cautious about this procedure as a whole. In addition, there are some other scholarships, such as scholarships set up by some organizations or individuals in universities.
Time required for verb (abbreviation of verb)
Financial security is only a necessary condition for doctoral studies, but it is far from enough. After solving the economic problems, doctoral students began to face the challenges brought by Japan's long-term research expansion. As far as the time required for doctoral study is concerned, doctoral students are not required to write and submit papers within the prescribed time limit. Generally speaking, there are very few doctoral students who finish their thesis in a year or so; About one third of doctoral students spend three years, one third between three and five years, and the last third over five years. Generally speaking, it takes longer for international students, and it also takes some time to improve their language, because law and language are closely related. Among international students, the progress of the thesis seems to be in direct proportion to the mastery of German.
Due to the difficulty of completing the doctoral thesis itself, many doctoral students give up halfway. It is estimated that at least 20% of law doctoral students insist on not being the last; There are various reasons for giving up, such as having a good job opportunity. But the most common reason is the difficulty of academic research itself. In order to write a qualified doctoral thesis, you must read and digest a large number of documents, form your own ideas, and finally express them in a way that conforms to academic norms. This is really a great challenge to one's will and ability.
The procedure of intransitive verbs after submitting papers
If you pass the exam, the previous procedure will pass smoothly. Finally, you hand over your thesis to your tutor. Don't worry, the follow-up procedure will still take some time. After receiving the paper, the tutor should read it, write comments and grade it within four months, and then the law department will give it to another professor, who will make a second comment and grade it. Generally speaking, the second professor respects the opinion of the tutor and gives the same score as the tutor. Only when the opinions of the second professor and the tutor are significantly different will the two grades be different.
After the second professor expressed his opinion, the law department set a date for the oral examination. The content of the oral test has nothing to do with the paper. Candidates get a question of their major, such as a case, and then prepare for about a month. The process of oral examination is similar to that of domestic thesis defense. Candidates spend about 20 minutes to introduce their views, and then answer the questions raised by the examiner. * * * The total duration is about one hour, and then the examiner will discuss internally to decide the candidates' scores; Generally speaking, if the scores in the two comments are the same, then the oral test has no effect on the comprehensive score; If the scores in the two comments are different, the three examiners will discuss and decide the final score of the doctoral students.
The results of doctoral thesis and oral examination are divided into excellent, good, qualified and unqualified; Generally speaking, unqualified results rarely occur. The common grades are good and qualified. Doctoral students rarely get excellent grades, and professors generally don't give such scores easily. Although you can get a doctorate as long as you pass the exam, good grades are still very important, because good grades are also an affirmation of scientific research ability, especially for doctoral students who are interested in teaching and scientific research in the future. Good grades play a role.
Seven. award a degree
After the oral examination, even if the comprehensive score is above passing, doctoral students will not get their degrees immediately. In principle, only when you get a doctor's degree certificate at the annual doctoral graduation ceremony can you have the right to add the word Dr before your name. It is illegal to use a doctor's title before that. However, because the substantive procedures have been completed after the oral examination, doctoral students can apply for the right to use doctoral titles in advance; Generally speaking, if the doctoral thesis has been published, or the doctoral student has signed a contract with the publishing house to publish the thesis, then the doctoral student can get the doctoral degree in advance and use the doctoral title after applying.