How to Respond to Dissertation Committee Comments

Committee comments look like a verdict, and they are closer to a to-do list. Each comment is a request, an objection, or a question. Your job is to sort them, answer every one in writing, and show the committee exactly where you changed the document.

Students who treat the comments as one big problem stall for weeks. Students who sort them finish in days.

1. Read everything once without touching the document

Read all the comments, including the ones from different members, before you change a word. You are looking for two things: comments that repeat each other, and comments that contradict each other.

2. Sort each comment into one of four types

Fix. A typo, a missing citation, a formatting error. Do it and move on.
Clarify. The committee did not understand something that you thought was clear. Rewrite the passage so the point is plain.
Rework. The argument, the method, or the analysis needs to change. These take the time.
Disagree. You believe the comment is mistaken or conflicts with another member's. These need a reasoned answer, not silence.

Put every comment in a table with those labels. A table with forty rows and a "fix" label on thirty of them feels much smaller than a forty-comment email.

3. Resolve contradictions with your chair

When two members ask for opposite things, do not choose between them yourself. Write to your chair, quote both comments, and ask which direction the committee should take. Keep the reply, because it protects you later.

4. Revise the hardest comments first

Rework comments change the argument, and changes in one chapter ripple into the others. Make them first, and then fix the chapters they touch. Our guide to what to change when a methodology is rejected walks through the usual rework on a Chapter 3 objection.

5. Write the response table

Send it with the revised document. A table with three columns does the job:

Comment	What I changed	Where
"The sample cannot support the claim."	Limited the claim to the district and added a limitation.	Section 3.4, p. 28
"Define 'engagement' earlier."	Added a definition in Chapter 1.	Section 1.5, p. 9

Every comment gets a row, with the page number of the change. A member who can find the change in ten seconds is a member who approves it.

6. Disagree politely and with a source

If you keep something the committee questioned, say so plainly and give your reason. "I kept the purposive sample because Patton (2015) supports it for studies seeking information-rich cases, and the limitation is stated in Section 3.6." A reasoned answer with a source is respected. An unexplained refusal is not.

7. Return it clean

Send the revised file with changes tracked, and a clean copy. Check the table of contents, page numbers and references one more time, because revisions break them. Our guides to page numbering and the table of contents cover the usual damage.

What not to do

Do not answer a comment with "done" and nothing else. Do not change something the committee did not ask about without saying so. Do not wait for the next meeting to ask what a vague comment meant. A short, polite email asking "Do you mean X or Y?" gets an answer within a day.

Want help turning the comments into a revision plan?

The Two Dissertation Moms offers a Dissertation Committee Feedback Review that reads the comments beside your returned chapter, sorts them, and sets out what each one requires.