Thesis Year Checklist

MFA Thesis coordination begins in a student’s second year or, for students on an alternate pace, as a student approaches completion of 36 credits toward the MFA degree. This is when thesis director assignments are announced. The strategy leading up to this point is to take as many courses as possible with different professors in your genre so that they can get to know your work, and students get to know the faculty’s aesthetics and approaches. Poetry students are assigned their Thesis Director in the fall of their second year; prose writers are assigned their Thesis Director in the spring of their second year. The assignment process takes into consideration students’ requests and professors’ workload (number of thesis students, other university service, academic leave, etc.) to ensure the equitable distribution of labor across MFA faculty. Students are asked their first and second preferences, or whether there is no preference, as part of the Thesis Director assignment process.

At this point in your thesis year, typically a student's third year in the program, you have been assigned a Thesis Director, formed a Thesis Committee, and submitted your Thesis Proposal Approval Signature Sheet. And you have been writing...a lot!
 

Thesis-Year Checklist

• Friday Before Thanksgiving: First draft due to Thesis Director (November 21, 2025)
  
  
• Before Winter Break: Apply to Graduate on PatriotWeb (https://registrar.gmu.edu/students/graduation/)
  
  
• During Winter Break: Write like the wind!
  
  
• IMPORTANT January 30, 2026: Thesis Prep, Formatting, & Submission Info Session with University Dissertation and Thesis Services’ Sally Evans at 3pm via Zoom:
  (https://gmu.zoom.us/j/91490608398)
  
  
• February: Make an appointment with University Dissertation and Thesis Services (UDTS) to learn about formatting guidelines (contact Sally Evans at sevans13@gmu.edu and review https://library.gmu.edu/udts).
  
  
• Friday Before Spring Break: Final draft due to Thesis Director (March 6, 2026).
  
  Note: AWP in Baltimore, March 4-7, followed by Spring Break, March 9-13, 2026.
  
  
• Last Friday in March: Final thesis manuscript with any revisions due to readers (around March 27).
  
  
• Early April: Remember to submit your formatted draft thesis to UDTS@gmu.edu before the Format Review Deadline, which will be later in April. You must receive an email from UDTS stating that your thesis formatting is correct and that your Format Review is over. Then you are ready to make any final content edits and meet the final thesis delivery deadline. 
  
  
• April: When obtaining your Thesis Committee’s signatures for the thesis signature coversheet, complete and get signatures for the Thesis Embargo Request form. Unlike directions found on the library’s website, CHSS submits these directly from the Dean’s Office to the library. Contact the graduate academic coordinator for assistance (Jay Patel at jpatel2@gmu.edu). 
  
  
• DEADLINE First Friday in May: Completed and formatted thesis projects with coversheets signed by entire Thesis Committee due to the library (by 5pm on May 1, 2026).

Your entire Thesis Committee must sign off on your thesis before you submit it to the library on or before the scheduled deadline (each thesis contains a signature coversheet available here, click “Masters of Fine Arts" (signatures_chss_cw_mfa).