Thesis and dissertation help
The Thesis Office, which is part of the Graduate College, has an extensive list of resources for students writing a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation. Please take time to look at them.
For an overview of what to expect during this last stage of your thesis or dissertation, please see our detailed explanation of the steps involved in completing your deposit below.
Be sure to speak to your graduate advisor and to SLCL Student Services if you have questions about any part of the process.
Dissertation and thesis deposit information
We hope the following information will provide you with a clear idea of what to expect during the final steps of your thesis or dissertation. Most of it will apply equally to both master's and PhD students, but any differences in the procedure are indicated.
Deadlines
The deadlines to defend and to deposit are set by the Graduate College. These deadlines are firm; if you don't meet them, you will not graduate in that semester.
The SLCL deadline is somewhat flexible; missing this deadline does not mean you won't graduate, but it does mean you increase the likelihood of not meeting the Graduate College's deadline. The internal SLCL deadlines for format review are:
- Spring 2024: April 5 for PhD, April 19 for MA
- Summer 2024: TBD (previously June 30 for PhD, July 7 for MA)
- Fall 2024: TBD (previously November 13 for PhD (due to Fall Break), November 21 for MA)
Defense
Note: The Graduate College doesn't require master's students to defend their theses, although most of our departments do.
A PhD candidate must hold the defense on or before the Graduate College deadline for the semester in which they want to graduate. Even though the defense deadline falls relatively late in the semester, the number-one thing you can do to ensure you graduate when you want to is to hold your defense as early as possible. The earlier you defend, the more time you have for revisions and for the SLCL and Thesis Office reviews.
Revisions
After the defense, you will likely have to make at least some revisions. Great or small, they have to be completed before your committee will approve you for deposit. When your committee is satisfied with the revisions, your dissertation/thesis advisor will need to send an email to slclgradservices@illinois.edu and tell us you are ready for format review. Student Services cannot review your dissertation until they get this confirmation from your advisor.
Format review
After your advisor has sent us a confirmation email, you will need to email your dissertation or thesis to the same address in PDF format. We will review the formatting to ensure it complies with the Thesis Office guidelines. If anything needs to be corrected, we will return it to you and indicate what you need to change. After you have made the corrections, you will email it back to us and we will review it again. This will continue until the formatting is correct.
Three main factors can help speed up this part of the process considerably:
- following the Thesis Office's guidelines
- responding to any correction requests as quickly as you're able to
- keeping your table of contents as simple and streamlined as possible. (We have to make sure every numbered item in the TOC corresponds to the correct document page number, so the more complex it is, the longer it will take us to review it.)
Almost all theses and dissertations require at least some corrections (the title page if nothing else), so you shouldn't be too worried if we request a correction as long as you respond in a timely fashion.
After you've made all the necessary corrections, we will clear you to upload your thesis or dissertation to the Thesis Office. We will also upload the TDA form, signed by your committee, which the Thesis Office will require before they can accept your document for review.
Thesis Office
After you've uploaded on the Thesis Office website, the Thesis Office will conduct their own format review (in case we missed something) as well as a review of your academic record. They will contact you by email if there are any corrections or problems. When they're satisfied with everything, that's it — your deposit is complete!
Final considerations
We review all dissertations (and after that, master's theses) on a first-come, first-served basis without any other considerations. The later it gets in the semester, the busier we are, and the more students there might be ahead of you. Our internal SLCL deadline takes into account the Graduate College deadlines and the amount of time it can take to complete these final steps.
Contact us
This is a lot of information to digest. If you have questions about this or anything else related to your program, don’t hesitate to contact us!
Graduate Student Services
3070 Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics Building
slclgradservices@illinois.edu
(217) 244-5783