Graduation FAQ

The Graduate School posts information on graduation deadlines and paperwork here.

The Doctoral Hooding Ceremony typically takes place on the Friday of Commencement Weekend.  It is an important celebration of your completion of the degree and an opportunity to celebrate with your dissertation chair as well as your friends and family.

Is hooding basically a term for graduating at the PhD level?
More or less. It is certainly a vital part of Commencement Weekend. You are also invited to participate in the full commencement procession later that weekend.

What is the hooding ceremony?
The hooding ceremony is the ritual in which your dissertation chair formally conveys the doctorate upon you by hooding you. It is the final-final step after your defense, which is when you formally fulfilled all the requirements of the doctorate. Many of us (both chairs and candidates) find hooding to be a very meaningful event.

You will wear your gown and tam (aka graduation hat) , hood over your arm. Your chair will wear normal dress clothes. You will both process to the stage when your college hoods its doctoral candidates. You will hand your hood to your chair, you both will process to the middle of the stage when your name is called, and you will be hooded. If your chair is hooding several students that evening, all of you will likely be hooded together. Then you will continue off the stage and back into your assigned seats in the audience. Your family will be seated in the family sections and is welcome at the reception that follows the ceremony.

How much should I budget for regalia?
As you’ve likely discovered, you can spend as much or more than you ever wanted to on regalia. It’s easy to drop $1,500 on the campus bookstore on this in about five minutes. If you prefer not to do that but would still like to own your regalia, another path that will save you hundreds of dollars is to purchase generic robes and a generic tam on the internet and then order an SU hood from the campus bookstore.  You can also rent regalia from the bookstore for about $125. You can pick it up from the bookstore or have it delivered to your house. If you want to buy your own regalia through the bookstore, you typically need to do so by March 30^th (to have it for graduation). 

What are the pros/cons of buying regalia?
This is a matter of your own desires and situation. Does your job require you to go to graduation/commencement? Or do you otherwise enjoy celebrating those events with students and their families? Are you pretty sure you’ll do it once or twice a year and therefore drive your cost-per-wear down over the course of your career? Is now the moment you can swing this or do you want to rent for a few years and then invest? (Or wait for someone to retire and then inherit their regalia and wear it for an additional 20+ years, as one of our colleagues has done? It would be tricky to count on this option, though.)
 
Can I negotiate for regalia with a job offer?
Typically, you will be negotiating for more expensive items that will be more central to your career: technology, course loads, research funds, etc. We've heard of one instance outside this discipline where someone negotiated for regalia, but it's not common given the list of priorities.