Submission Policy
Dissertations for the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Doctor of Philosophy degree must be submitted to the Graduate School by 5:00 pm on March 15 for consideration at the May meeting of the degree committee, and by 5:00 pm on October 1 for consideration at the fall meeting of the degree committee. These deadlines are established to allow sufficient time for readers to make careful evaluations and for departments to review those evaluations and make recommendations to the Graduate School. No extensions of the deadlines will be granted. Dissertations submitted after the deadlines will be considered for degree conferral during the following term.
In accord with the traditional scholarly ideal that the candidate for a doctorate must make a contribution to knowledge, all dissertations that have been accepted by the Graduate School are published electronically through ProQuest and are deposited in the collection of the Sterling Memorial Library.
Students do not need to be registered to be eligible to submit the dissertation.
Students who complete all PhD requirements within four continuous years of full-time study in the PhD program will be registered and charged full tuition only through the term in which the dissertation is submitted. Students who take a leave of absence must complete the four-year full tuition obligation, regardless of when they submit the dissertation.
The Graduate School does not compel departments to evaluate the dissertations of degree candidates who are no longer registered. In practice, however, departments normally agree to evaluate these dissertations.