For doctoral students planning to graduate soon, here is a handy summary of procedures and deadlines for the current and upcoming semesters. Note that for those graduating in a summer semester the deadline for “first submission” may be earlier than the deadline for applying to graduate.
For more information on dates and deadlines generally for graduate students, see the graduate school academic calendars page. For additional help, see the Graduate School Editorial Office. They should have the most up-to-date deadlines on their editorial deadlines page. Note that all deadlines below are on the indicated date by 5:00PM US Eastern Time.
Step 1: Apply to Graduate
Deadline if graduating Summer 2024: July 3, 2024
Deadline if graduating Fall 2024: September 13, 2024
Deadline if graduating Spring 2025: February 7, 2025
Deadline if graduating Summer 2025: July 2, 2025
- This can be done in ONE.UF.
- If you apply but decide later not to graduate in a given term, we can remove you from the list. So it is best to apply just in case you are able to graduate during the term in question; it would be worse to be ready to graduate but not be able to simply because of a failure to complete the application earlier.
Step 2: First Submission
Deadline if graduating Summer 2024: June 14, 2024
Deadline if graduating Fall 2024: September 27, 2024
Deadline if graduating Spring 2025: February 12, 2025
Deadline if graduating Summer 2025: June 13, 2025
- Before you submit your first draft, you must request the transmittal letter from Megan Cooper and have it signed by your Committee Chair. Return to Megan for processing. Please allow adequate time for processing before submitting your draft. The transmittal letter is required to be posted before you make any submission.
- For information on the process of submitting the fully-formatted draft for review by the Graduate School’s Editorial Office, see the information here: https://success.grad.ufl.edu/td/submission/.
- You can find the formatting requirements at: https://success.grad.ufl.edu/td/formatting/.
Step 3: Defend your Dissertation
- The deadline for defending your dissertation successfully is in effect the same as the deadline for Final Submission (see below). However, as your committee must sign off on that defense, you should allow at least a few days prior to that dealine.
- Once you have successfully defended your dissertation, your committee will need to sign both an Electronic Thesis and Dissertation (ETD) form and the Final Exam form indicating your performance on the defense itself.
- The ETD must be submitted to the Graduate school before final submission,
Step 4: Final Submission:
Deadline if graduating Summer 2024: July 26, 2024
Deadline if graduating Fall 2024: November 22, 2024
Deadline if graduating Spring 2025: April 4, 2025
Deadline if graduating Summer 2025: July 25, 2025
- Remember: you must defend your dissertation successfully and have the committee sign off on those two forms (ETD and the examination form for the dissertation defense) before final submission!
- Submit your completed and fully-formatted dissertation.
The “Clear Prior” Option
Update as of July 2, 2024: A previous text we had here was based on what now seems to be a misunderstanding of the actual Clear Prior rules. It is our current understanding that the way it works is as follows. But we caution that the language on the graduate school website is somewhat opaque and the understanding below is based on verbal clarifications from staff at the Graduate School.
If you have applied to graduate and completed the First Submission by the posted deadlines for a given semester but are not quite ready to defend and upload the Final Submission by the deadline for that semester, it is possible for you to graduate using “Clear Prior” status. In effect, this just pushes your Final Submission deadline back to the very end of that semester. For instance, if you look at the deadlines posted for Summer 2025 (see the editorial deadlines page) you’ll see this as the last deadline of that term:
Clear Prior (to the upcoming term): August 20, 2025
If you didn’t make the regular “Final Submission” deadline for summer 2025, you can still complete the final steps (that is: successfully defend the dissertation, have the ETD form submitted, and submit the very final version to the Edtorial Office) before this “Clear Prior” deadline. If you make this later deadline, it is too late to have the current term (in this example, Summer 2025) to be the official term during which your degree is conferred, but the next term (in this example, Fall 2025) will be the official degree conferral term.
You can find official information on “Clear Prior” on the graduate school page with information on the submission process (scroll to the bottom). There is also information on “Clear Prior” on the general graduate school regulations page (https://gradcatalog.ufl.edu/graduate/regulations/) under the “Registration Requirements” header (scroll down quite a bit to find it). And the deadlines are found on the editorial deadlines page. Please see Megan for help in seeing whether you can take advantage of this option.