Pass/Fail decisions on 1st year PhD report
When a candidate enters a program, the admissions materials are intended to help a committee and/or an advisor make a prediction about successful completion. If they are sufficiently conservative, then the predictions, when positive, are fairly, but not absolutely, reliable.
This interim analysis has the same purpose. We, the faculty, need to make a prediction of success. The sorts of things asked for in your description seem fairly well focused on that. The real question, is, &quot;is this a serious student&quot; who is currently &quot;doing the right things&quot; that will lead to success - probably.
But, if the student is really doing research, then, just as you suggest in your addendum, it is impossible to predict with perfect accuracy. True research can't be scheduled and the more you learn, the more questions should arise.
So, while the pre-admission judgement should be conservative, I think an interim judgement needs to be more &quot;liberal&quot;. That is, the benefit of the doubt should be given to most candidates if they are actually working. But the combination of the student's answers and the advisor's judgement should be able to find situation in which a student really isn't serious and is just wasting their time. I would think that 20% in this category is too high, however, and might indicate a failure of the system as a whole or the admissions process. Perhaps after the two month review it turns out a bit less.
But getting advice about life choices after a year of study seems like a good thing, as long as the student has a chance to explain what might be the reasons for an apparent lack of progress. And getting faculty advice about getting back on track, is also probably a good thing for those few having problems.
As I noted in the comment, I would also expect that a fair number of students for whom success was predicted don't, in fact, complete on time, due to a variety of factors, some personal, but many also related to the uncertain nature of research itself.
After all: “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?” ~~Albert Einstein