Dissertation Dates and Deadlines

Candidates who have completed all requirements for the PhD except the dissertation apply through their department or program in order to receive the Master of Philosophy degree. Applications for the MPhil can be filed at any point in the calendar year. Degrees are conferred three times during the academic year—in October, February, and May. 

MPhil Application

The MPhil application must be submitted by the department or program to the Dissertation Office by the appropriate deadline. Applications received after the submission deadline will be moved to the following conferral period for processing.

The Application for the Dissertation Defense form should be submitted to GSAS by the department or program office when the five proposed examiners, defense date and location have been finalized. This form must be reviewed and approved by GSAS before the defense may take place. The department or program office should send us the completed form ideally four—but no fewer than two—weeks before a defense takes place. Any forms received within two weeks of a defense will be rejected, and the defense will have to be rescheduled.

It is the doctoral candidate's responsibility to ensure that the dissertation is correctly formatted before the deposit deadline. For your convenience and use while you write your dissertation—or toward the end, when you are preparing it for deposit—we suggest using this Word template or this LaTeX template, which incorporate and comply with all GSAS formatting requirements, and can be used to eliminate common formatting errors that may delay your dissertation deposit.  

Students with any questions about formatting, or who would like to have their formatting reviewed, should contact gsas-dissertations [at] columbia.edu well in advance of the deposit deadline.

Please note that it will take three business days for a certification letter to be produced for deposits that take place in the week before a deadline. If you need your certification letter by a certain date, it is your responsibility to complete the process in advance. PhD students do not need to apply for graduation through the Office of the University Registrar.

For more information on the deposit, please click here.