• Dissertation & Thesis Preparation
• Final Dissertation & Thesis Submission

All thesis-based master's students and all doctoral candidates must submit a PDF of their approved thesis or dissertation to the UBC Library's digital repository, cIRcle. The thesis or dissertation will be available online, and will be catalogued by Library and Archives Canada and other digital repositories.dissertations are also available at Library and Archives Canada.

The Faculty of Graduate Studies is responsible for ensuring that all submitted theses conform to the technical requirements of the UBC Library and Library and Archives Canada, and to the guidelines for presentation of a UBC thesis or dissertation.

Thesis Structure and Formatting

Please encourage your students to go to the Thesis Preparation section of the Faculty of Graduate Studies website as early as possible in the writing of their theses. Often students leave this until the last minute, and find that fixing formatting errors takes longer than expected. This can be stressful for students at a time when they should be celebrating the successful completion of their graduate degrees.

If your program has a library of theses written by former students, please advise students not to copy their formatting, but to go directly to the FoGS website for information. The formatting of older theses may be out of date, or corrections may have been made to the copy submitted to Faculty of Graduate Studies but not to the copy given to the program.

Submitting Thesis Forms to FoGS

After faculty have completed the Thesis/Dissertation Approval form, please do the following:

• make a copy of the form for your records
• give the original to the student to submit along with the other required thesis forms

Please do not send the form separately.
 

Missing a Graduation Deadline

To ensure fairness to those students who hand in their theses by the deadline date, exceptions to deadlines are only made in special cases.

If you know a student may miss a deadline for good reason, please contact FoGS BEFORE the deadline. It is far more likely that we can arrange an extension to the deadline if we know ahead of time.

A student who submits his or her thesis after the deadline and who would like to graduate in the current season must contact his or her Graduate Advisor, who must then submit a memo to the Associate Dean of Student Academic Services requesting an exception, and stating the reasons why the student was unable to meet the deadline.

The an extension to the deadline will only be considered in cases where the late submission is a result of circumstances beyond the student’s control. Failure to complete the thesis on time is not sufficient reason for an extension.