Graduation Rules for PhD and MS students

My requirements

  1. Your report, dissertation, or any writing must be free of typos and well structured. I will not read anything that does not fit these conditions. If you need help, hire a copy editor. Here is a simple tip that is often forgotten: turn on the spell checker of word, powerpoint, or any text editor you are using. (For a partial list of writing requirements check below).
  2. For anything that is longer than 2 pages or 3 powerpoint slides, you must give me at least 2 weeks to allow me enough time to give you my comments on it.
  3. All the code, documentation, and other requirements must be also part of the final draft.
  4. If your report, dissertation, or any writing must be accepted by other faculty members, it must be:
    1. Accepted by me.
    2. Given to the other people at least 2 weeks in advance of the time by which they need to give you feedback on that document.
  5. Please remember that the committee is under no pressure to graduate you, therefore, if your work is not up to the required standards, then your work will not be approved no matter what the official deadline is.

School and Department requirements

  1. Make sure you check with Santhi Nannapaneni (Assistant Director for Student Affairs), at santhi @ cs.uic.edu, 905 SEO, 312.996.2290 for deadlines, both written and unwritten. Given past experience, if the deadline for MS graduation is, say, October 30, then usually the last day for the defense should be at least two weeks ahead of that deadline (October 16), if there are no major changes required by the committee. If there are, then you would only be able to graduate the following semester. If you must graduate by a certain date, your defense would have to take place at least four weeks before the official deadline to hopefully give you enough time to make the changes and give time for the committee to approve the new version of your document (see also 5. above).
  2. Please note that the time to file the finished thesis with the graduate school takes at least 2-3 days.

Partial list of formatting instructions (this list is under construction!)

  1. All formatting requirements of the graduate school should be followed.
  2. The bibliography should be properly formatted and only cited entries should be included. Use BibTeX !
  3. All figures should be mentioned and referenced in the text.
  4. Read and follow the URL compiled by Renée Miller on Computer Science Writing. Pay attention to the use of that vs. which (I do pay attention to this distinction, and so should you).
  5. PhD theses should be typed using LaTeX (no exceptions). Other documents should also be typed in LaTeX, unless you were given permission not to do so.