Congratulations on all you’ve accomplished here at the University of Iowa! The Graduate College wants to make sure you have all the information you need to successfully complete your thesis or dissertation. Here you can find our readability standards and thesis templates, guidance on submitting your thesis, and information on what happens to your thesis after you graduate. Looking for everything all in one place? Check out our updated Thesis and Dissertation at Iowa overview document.

The Fall 2026 thesis deposit deadline is 5:00 PM central time, December 8. At deposit, your thesis must be complete and in final form. Your thesis must include all edits or changes your thesis committee requested as a result of your defense. It must also include all required manuscript elements, including properly formatted preliminary pages, and meet our readability standards.

To support the creation of digitally accessible documents, the Graduate College is transitioning to readability standards that focus on helping students create documents that can be engaged with as broadly as possible. Contact Dr. Erin Kaufman (erin-kaufman@uiowa.edu) with general questions about this transition, to learn more about our thesis templates, or to set up an optional pre-deposit format check.