Who is VivaCoach Prep for?

PhD candidates preparing to defend their dissertation — across US public defenses, UK vivas, and committees of any shape.

Is my thesis kept private?

Yes. Your dissertation is encrypted, kept strictly confidential, and never used to train AI models — not by VivaCoach and not by its AI provider. Your data is never sold, and you can delete everything at any time.

Invite-only beta

Your viva shouldn't be the first time you hear the hard questions.

VivaCoach Prep reads your thesis, reconstructs your examining committee, and lets you rehearse the questions each examiner is likely to ask — out loud, with coaching, until walking in feels familiar instead of frightening.

"Am I ready?" stops being a feeling and becomes a number — every examiner, every question, covered or not.

For PhD candidates preparing to defend — US public defenses, UK vivas, and committees of any shape.

How it works

Add your thesis — or try a demo

Upload your thesis as a PDF and VivaCoach pulls out your research questions, your central claims, and a plausible examining committee. Not ready to upload? Open a demo thesis and see how it all works first.

Work the grid

Each cell maps a research question against an examiner — "what would this examiner probe about this question." Open a cell and answer: type it out, or speak it aloud. You get coaching and a score, and mark each cell ready or flag it. As cells turn ready, your coverage climbs — the grid turns "study everything" into a finite, trackable map of exactly what's left.

Run a mock viva, then read your debrief

When you've worked the grid, run a full mock defense — your whole committee, end to end, the way a real viva flows. Afterward you get a debrief: your strongest and weakest moments, and the single thing to drill next.

Isn't this just ChatGPT?

You can ask any chatbot to quiz you on your thesis. But it doesn't know who's on your committee, how each of your examiners tends to push, or how a real defense actually unfolds — the opening summary, the claim-by-claim probing, the big closing questions. VivaCoach Prep reconstructs your specific examining committee, drills you systematically across every research question, and runs the whole thing the way a real viva flows — out loud, with follow-ups that react to your answers, and a readiness map so you know exactly where you still wobble.

Your thesis stays yours. Your dissertation is likely unpublished research, and we treat it that way: it's encrypted, kept strictly confidential, and never used to train AI models — not by us, and not by our AI provider. We never sell your data, and you can delete everything, anytime, in one step.

A note on honesty. The questions and scores are AI-generated pattern matches — a study aid, not a prediction of what your real examiners will ask or how your defense will go. A high score doesn't guarantee a pass. Treat it as one tool alongside your supervisor's advice.

Rehearse it before it's real.

Free during the invite-only beta.