All forms and documents mentioned below are available at eepostgrads.sun.ac.za.

Postgraduate applications

  1. Student finds a prospective supervisor who is willing to supervise them.
  2. The student and supervisor complete and sign the appropriate departmental application form.
  3. All students apply on SUNStudent. Please ask your students to do their utmost to complete the application steps described here. In order for Management Committee (DB) to consider an application, the student needs to have a SUNStudent application number.
  4. The supervisor sends the following to DB via Larry Morkel:
    • Completed departmental application form.
    • Student’s full academic transcripts.
    • SUNStudent application number. The student would have obtained this as part of their SUNStudent application.
  5. If accepted, DB notifies the prospective supervisor, who then notifies the student.
  6. Formal acceptances are sent out to the student via email by the university’s Registration Office.

Hand-in procedure

  1. The student uploads their thesis on SUNLearn (which then automatically runs Turnitin):
  2. The supervisor checks the plagiarism percentage on Turnitin.
  3. Once both the student and the supervisor are happy with the percentage, the supervisor completes the PG03 Supervisor Declaration form and sends it to Larry Morkel.
  4. Larry Morkel retrieves the thesis from SUNLearn and uses it for the examination process.

Note that the student is not not allowed to email their thesis to Larry Morkel directly. Only after the PG03 Supervisor Declaration form is received from the supervisor, is the thesis distributed to the examiners.

PhD proposals (also for upgrade by supervisor recommendation)

  1. The supervisor suggests the composition of the candidature panel to Management Committee (DB) via Larry Morkel. The requirements for the panel is given in the PhD processes document.
  2. If the candidature panel is approved at DB, it is sent for approval to the Vice-Dean (Research).
  3. The student submits a full Research Proposal and the PG07 Executive Summary form to the supervisor by the first day of the second semester.1
  4. Once the supervisor is satisfied with the Research Proposal and PG07 Executive Summary, they submit it to DB via Larry Morkel.
  5. Larry Morkel sends out the proposal to the panel for review.
  6. The panel sends their completed PG08 evaluation forms directly to Larry Morkel.
  7. For a PhD upgrade: After receiving the reports, the supervisor organizes an oral. The oral follows the same structure as a PhD oral, as specified in the PhD processes document.
  8. The PG09 form is completed and sent with the Research Proposal and PG07 Executive Summary to DB via Larry Morkel.
  9. DB notes the final recommendation from the panel.
  10. All the above steps must be completed by the deadline given at eepostgrads.sun.ac.za.
  11. The completed forms serve at Faculty Committee.
  12. If approved by the Faculty Committee, the final recommendation serves at Faculty Board.2
  13. For a PhD upgrade: After approval by Faculty Board, the student applies for the standard E&E PhD on SUNStudent.3 The student can upload their PG07 Executive Summary under each of the required document fields.

  1. This is the official deadline, but in practice the department gives extra time. See the dates on eepostgrads.sun.ac.za. ↩

  2. The deadline on eepostgrads.sun.ac.za ensures that proposals will serve on the last Faculty Board meeting of the year (at the latest). ↩

  3. This is required since otherwise the student isn’t on SUNStudent at the beginning of the year, making it impossible to register. ↩