[caddemon]

4 first author pubs? Maybe this is field dependent but that sounds like a pretty extreme requirement. The most I've seen formally required in my field is 1 first author peer reviewed pub, but many programs don't even set that as an official requirement anymore.

[ash-ali]

EE & CS aim for that many. I've heard maths grads aim for 1.

[caddemon]

Makes sense, it'd still be kinda harsh as a strict graduation requirement for EECS though wouldn't it?

In biology I've seen a lot of more recent theses where a couple of the chapters are from middle author works with a bit of extra context on what the student did, and only 1 first author chapter. But besides being slower to do generally, bio still has a lot of people that don't believe in shared first authorship. Sometimes what is technically a second author chapter was pretty close to 50/50 in what the student actually contributed.

[markus92]

Four first author publications, yes. University guidelines say three, but in practice they'd like to see four or five to get it approved.

[hun3]

Yeah, it wildly depends on the maturity of the field it seems