From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishdoctoraldoc‧tor‧al /ˈdɒktərəl $ ˈdɑːk-/ adjective [only before noun] SECdone as part of work for the university degree of doctor a doctoral thesis
Examples from the Corpus
doctoral• Hasse wrote his doctoral dissertation on ragtime music.• His doctoral dissertation was entitled History, Historians and Poetry?• But it is quite different in almost any university if one looks at the immediate post- doctoral level.• The anthropologist, Steven Mosher is a doctoral student at Stanford.• The research is part of a wider programme involving staff and doctoral students at Imperial College Management School.• From this initial dissatisfaction my own doctoral thesis developed.• The same differences are evident in pay disparity, which is greatest at doctoral universities and the least at four-year colleges. 