Dissertation Defense

Once you are working on your dissertation, you should talk with your chair about a tentative schedule for completion, defense, and graduation. NYU offers three graduation periods in January, May, and September, and graduation application and filing deadlines require advance planning. You should wait until you are ready to successfully defend your dissertation, but it can also be helpful to be aware of graduation deadlines, especially if you are approaching the end of funding. Remember that full time students have eight years to complete their degree; part time students have ten years.

MPAP follows Steinhardt’s dissertation defense procedures. The following are step-by-step guidelines. Forms and deadlines can be found on Steinhardt’s Dissertation Guidelines Website.

Instructions for Filing for Orals

In order to schedule your final oral examination, you must submit the following forms and materials to the Office of Doctoral Studies in accordance with the dissertation filing deadlines posted on the Steinhardt Doctoral Studies Website: Dissertation Filing Deadlines.

  • Three copies of the approved dissertation in black snap binders. Please note that these copies are in addition to the copies that you must supply for your committee chairperson and members.
  • The Approval Form for Final Oral Examination which must bear the signatures of the dissertation committee as well as a specific recommended date for the final oral examination (in accordance with the schedule outlined above). This date must be agreed upon by the chair and members of the dissertation committee.
  • One copy of the following statement typed in the first person, signed and dated:

I hereby guarantee that no part of the dissertation which I have submitted for publication has been heretofore published and/or copyrighted in the United States of America, except in the case of passages quoted from other published sources; that I am the sole author and proprietor of said dissertation; that the dissertation contains no matter which, if published, will be libelous or otherwise injurious, or infringe in any way the copyright of any other party; and that I will defend, indemnify and hold harmless New York University against all suits and proceedings which may be brought and against all claims which may be made against New York University by reason of the publication of said dissertation.

  • Three copies of an abstract not more than 350 words in length. The title page of the abstract is the same as the dissertation title page except that the words "An Abstract of" are inserted above the title of the study. One copy of the abstract must be signed by the chairperson of the dissertation committee.

All forms referred to above can be found on the Steinhardt Doctoral Forms Website or can be picked up in the Office of Doctoral Studies, Pless Hall, 2nd floor.

The Final Oral Examination

The final oral examination is a two-hour examination scheduled according to the guidelines outlined above. Attendance by the candidate and all members of the final oral commission, which consists of the dissertation committee and the two outside readers, is required. Outside readers must be approved by the dissertation committee chair and must be full-time tenured or tenure-track members of the NYU faculty (exceptions must be approved by the Vice Dean for Academic Affairs in advance of their appointment).

Please also note that attendance at the final oral examination is restricted to the candidate and members of the final oral commission. Other members of the University community may attend as observers with the permission of the Dissertation Committee Chairperson, however, The Office of Doctoral Studies must be notified in advance.

The following policies pertain to the voting procedures for the final oral examination.

One vote is to be taken with three and only three possible outcomes (all members of the final oral commission vote). These outcomes (pass, fail, or deferred pass with conditions) result according to the rules posted on the Steinhardt Dissertation Policies Website.

Final Dissertation Approval

After the final oral examination, you are required to submit an additional copy of the dissertation to be reviewed by the Office of Doctoral Studies for format. This copy should be submitted after you have made changes required by the final oral commission. If the required changes are minor, you may submit the dissertation for format review immediately after the final oral examination so that the format changes and the commission's changes can be completed simultaneously.

If the final oral examination results in a deferred pass outcome, you may submit the dissertation for format review only after the signed Deferred Pass with Conditions Final Report Form has been received by the Office of Doctoral Studies. Final approval of the dissertation will take place only after the edited dissertation has been reviewed by the Office of Doctoral Studies.

The deadline for the filing of the final edited dissertation is approximately three weeks prior to your anticipated date of graduation (the exact date will be emailed to candidates and is posted each semester in the Office of Doctoral Studies). In order to be eligible for graduation, your final edited dissertation must be uploaded to ProQuest UMI and approved by the Office of Doctoral Studies by the designated deadline date.

All candidates for the degrees of PhD and EdD are required to publish the dissertation through ProQuest UMI Dissertation Publishing and must upload a final dissertation electronically for this purpose. This electronic upload will take place through the Office of Doctoral Studies only after the dissertation has been approved in its final form. A final copy of the dissertation will also be submitted to NYU Libraries for our institutional repository.

Format for the final dissertation is available on the Steinhardt Dissertation Policies Website.