Managing your Milestones

Your Milestones are a critical opportunity for you to receive expert structured feedback on your research to date and your future research goals to strengthen your research project. Milestones support the overall management of your thesis towards completion. Importantly, milestones provide a platform for you and your supervisors to raise and discuss issues that might be impacting your progress so that action to address these issues can be considered and implemented.

Completion of Milestones are a condition of ongoing enrolment.

Milestone Due Dates

Milestone due dates are set at commencement. The number and timing of Milestones is dependent on your course of enrolment.

For PhD students, milestones are scheduled at 12, 24 and 36 months (EFT). For Masters by Research students, milestones are scheduled at 8 and 16 months (EFT).

You and your supervisors will be sent automated email reminders to help keep you on track.

Reminder 1: 3 months before Milestone Due date
Reminder 2: -1 month before Milestone Due date
Action Required: +1 month after Milestone Due date

Note: you will continue to receive automated reminders until the Milestone is recorded as completed by your academic unit.

You can view your Milestone Dates at any time via your Research Enrolment Summary. The research enrolment summary also contains all your other key enrolment information such as scholarship details and thesis submission date.

Preparing for your Milestone

There are three steps when preparing for your milestone. A step-by-step guide can be downloaded as a PDF here for easy reference.

Additionally, you will need to complete any faculty specific requirements.

- Ensure you have completed all compulsory modules.
- Check with your supervisor and relevant academic unit staff on how Milestones are organised within your academic unit.
- Plan your Milestone dates and actions early with your supervisors: it can take some time to finalise a Milestone review panel and confirm a date and venue.
- It is strongly recommended that you plan and schedule your milestone by the due date to maximise the benefits of the feedback.
- As a minimum, a milestone includes an oral presentation, a written submission and a closed discussion with the panel, with written feedback to be provided to you.
- Students must indicate if they have used generative AI in their candidature and, if so, provide a brief statement on their responsible and ethical use of generative AI. For guidance and resources on the use of generative AI in research training, please see this website.
- Students who commenced prior to 2026 and are still enrolled in a course with a mandatory professional development or coursework program will be required to demonstrate appropriate progress towards completion of their program requirements at each milestone. Students who choose to transition to the new course versions will not need to continue to report on hours achieved at milestones. If you are unsure, check with your enrolling Faculty.
- The requirements of each milestone are defined by your stage of research and your discipline. You can review your Faculty and course specific requirements for each of your milestones on the web here.
- You should also familiarise yourself with your course specific requirements outlined in the University Handbook.
- You should discuss these with your supervisor when planning your milestone.
- Prepare your report and relevant documents to the panel using this form with the support of your supervisor/s. Please speak to your academic unit to confirm the initiation process of your Milestone review.

Milestone outcomes

Remember that your milestone is about work in progress and keeping you on track to a timely submission for examination. Your panel is looking to endorse your milestone as requirements met; but sometimes there are still things that need to be done. Your panel has the option of determining that there are some minor things to be undertaken to their satisfaction or more major things (this will result in the panel being reconvened at a later date to give you time to undertake some additional work).

In the event that your panel determines that you have not yet met the requirements for the milestone, they are required to provide you with clear instructions on actions to be undertaken and an appropriate period of time to undertake the tasks before the panel reconvenes to ultimately determine if you have satisfied the requirements of the milestone. In the (quite rare) instance that you are still unable to satisfy the milestone requirements, the panel is required to advise the Graduate Research Committee and your enrolment may, as a result, be terminated.