Graduation procedures

Forms and assistance

Students are responsible for obtaining the most recent version of the forms and submitting them with the appropriate signatures.

Enrollment requirements

Students must be registered for a minimum of one credit hour during all phases of their graduate education, including the term in which they graduate. This includes periods when students are engaged in research, conducting a doctoral prospectus, working on or defending theses or dissertations, taking comprehensive examinations, taking Graduate Foreign Language Examinations, or in any other way utilizing university resources, facilities or faculty time.

Graduation, format evaluations, and oral defense procedures

Step 1: Apply for graduation

You may apply for graduation through the “Graduation” tab on your My ASU, or by contacting the University Registrar’s Office online, in person or by mail. Information about the graduation application procedures and fees is available online: students.asu.edu/graduation. If you apply after the deadline for a semester, you will be assessed a late fee and your name will not appear in the commencement program.

Step 2: Submit materials for format evaluation and schedule the oral defense

When you have identified a suitable defense date with your committee and reserved a building and room number, you will request to schedule the defense through the “Defense” tab on your My ASU. The request to schedule a defense must be submitted at least 10 working days before the planned defense date.

In the “Defense” tab you will have a “Schedule my defense” link that will take you to the electronic schedule form. If the link does not appear on your My ASU, please verify that every item below has been completed and contact your academic unit should you need assistance:

1. You must be defending a Thesis or Dissertation

2. You must have an approved iPOS (no pending changes or petitions)

3. You must have met all minimum 3.0 GPA requirements (iPOS, Graduate and Cumulative)

4. You must have an approved full committee on the iPOS (no pending changes)

5. All milestone requirements have been satisfied (for example, written comprehensive examination, foreign language examination, etc.)

6. Doctoral students must have reached candidacy

7. You must be an active student and currently enrolled

You must submit a complete draft of your document at least ten (10) business days before your defense date by uploading your document to your iPOS via your MyASU. 

Please note that the supervisory committee usually requests content revisions after they review a document. Regardless, you need to submit your document fully developed with text in each section. You also need to use the Format Tool prior to submitting your document to the format office.

PhD and DMA students must also submit the Survey of Earned Doctorates through the website link.

Step 3: Approval to hold the oral defense

Once you have submitted the request to schedule a defense, the request must be approved by the academic unit through the iPOS approval system. 

When the defense has been approved, you will receive an email confirmation and your defense will be highlighted on the Graduate College Master’s/Doctoral Defense Schedule website that updates every Monday.

Step 4: Hold the oral defense

Students and supervisory committee chairs must attend the oral defense of the thesis, dissertation or equivalent research document. If, due to unforeseen circumstances, they cannot attend, then the oral defense must be rescheduled to another date.

After the defense, all faculty committee members will input the initial defense results via your iPOS within 10 days. You may monitor the status by checking the Defense Results tab in your iPOS.

Step 5: Submit thesis/dissertation to ETD/ProQuest

Final Document Approval Pathway:

1. Students submit the final version of their document that has been approved by the supervisory committee and a format reviewer in the Graduate College to ETD/ProQuest.

2. The approved document is then reviewed by Graduate College format advisors to ensure compliance with format regulations. Additional format revisions may be required.

3. When final format approval has been granted, the Graduate College notifies ProQuest that the document is ready for publication.

4. Once the document has been submitted to ProQuest and approved by the ASU format advisors for publication, the document cannot be recalled; no changes may be made to an approved document. Always double check to make sure you have submitted the correct version for publication.

Students may not receive a letter of degree completion from the Graduation Office until ASU has approved the final document and notified ProQuest.

ETD/ProQuest Submission Instructions

Students are required to create a new user account specific to the submission of their document and must use their ASU email address.

1. Select the appropriate Publishing Option but do not select “Open Publishing” as Graduate College does not allow open publishing. If you select the “Open Publishing” option your ETD submission will be returned to you.

2. ETD/ProQuest requires all students to submit a PDF version of their final document. ASU Graduate College requires that the PDF document is in compliance with the formatting standards. Students will receive final format approval only after the submitted PDF document has successfully passed a format review. To create a PDF version of the document, students can use the full Adobe suite for free by logging into asu.edu/myapps, or alternatively, ETD/ProQuest provides a free Word to PDF conversion.

Students have an opportunity to order bound copies of their document for themselves through ETD/ProQuest. They can also go to any third party bindery to obtain bound copies of their document if desired.

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Graduation Checklist 

You must complete all degree requirements in order to graduate. If you do not complete all requirements in the semester you intend to graduate, you will need to contact the Graduation Office to request to defer your graduation to the next semester and register for at least one graduate credit for that semester. Please make sure you have addressed the following:

1. Have you applied for graduation for the correct graduating term?
2. Is your iPOS approved with a full committee?
3. Does your iPOS coursework show green checkmarks next to each course? Do all courses have passing grades (no Z or I grades) and does the culminating event show completed? If you need to make corrections, please update and resubmit your iPOS.
4. Have you maintained continuous enrollment?  Check your iPOS summary page to see if this requirement says "met".
5. Are there any pending items in your iPOS? There can be no pending items.
6. Are you registered for the semester in which you are graduating? You must be registered in at least one graduate credit.
7. Are there any missing grades for courses taken any semester since starting as an ASU graduate student?  All courses must have a grade.
8. If you are completing a thesis/dissertation (or equivalent). Check your the format tab in your iPOS:
   • Did you receive final format approval from the Graduate College?
   • Did your committee enter final defense results on your iPOS?
   • Did you submit your document to ETD/ProQuest?
9. If you are a PhD or DMA student, have you submitted your Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED)?
10. If you had an internship, did your chair/internship director submit a letter stating that you have completed all requirements of the internship?
11. Is your grade point average 3.0 or above for the cumulative, college, and iPOS categories? Check your iPOS.

If you have any questions, please contact your graduate academic advisor.