Completing your thesis or dissertation is the culmination of your hard work and perseverance in your studies. The information here includes formatting requirements, templates, guidelines, resources, and other information that will help you complete your work.
For questions related to electronic theses and dissertations, email msuetds.approval@grd.msu.edu.
These resources will help you properly prepare and format your thesis or dissertation prior to its submission.
Though your work is copyrighted automatically upon creation, there are certain advantages to copyright registration.
You will need to submit paperwork depending on your student status, program, and other considerations.
Discover what you need to complete here.
Discover the steps that need to be taken to finalize and submit your thesis or dissertation.
Each semester has a deadline for the initial submission of theses and dissertations to ProQuest. The deadline is generally two weeks prior to the final deadline. Plan your defense accordingly.
The document submitted to ProQuest is expected to be a final version, meaning it has been successfully defended, corrections desired by the committee have been made, and there are no more content changes.
The Graduate School will not accept documents for review for the current semester after 5 p.m. ET on the submission deadline date.
Each semester has a final deadline where documents have met the formatting requirements, been accepted and delivered for publishing, all required paperwork has been turned in, and the thesis/dissertation milestone has been completed.
Your document must be accepted and delivered to the publisher, ProQuest, by 5 p.m. ET on the final deadline date.
In addition to the resources found on our Formatting Your Document page, we offer walk-in and Zoom Webinar workshops.
Do you have questions regarding formatting your thesis or dissertation? Stop in during one of our walk-in help sessions to talk to Graduate School staff about any specific formatting questions you may have.
These are walk-in sessions for Plan A master's and all doctoral students. No registration is required.
During this workshop, students will receive information regarding:
Students are encouraged to review the Graduate School's Electronic Thesis and Dissertation website where current information about formatting and requirements are listed prior to attending the workshop. Registration is required.
This webinar is designed for Plan A master's students and all doctoral students who intend to graduate this semester.