Intention to Submit

Approximately 3 months prior to when you expect to submit your thesis you are required to notify the Adelaide Graduate Research School using the ‘notification of intention to submit form’. Upon receipt of the form the Adelaide Graduate Research School staff will update your records and send an email to your principal supervisor requesting that examiners are nominated. As finding examiners can take some time, if you submit your intention to submit too close to when you submit your thesis there may be a delay in your examination.

The Adelaide Graduate Research School is aware that it is difficult to determine when you are 3 months out from submitting your thesis and sometimes things go quicker or take longer than your expect. The date that you provide in your intention to submit form just needs to be your best guess. You do not need to submit on the date you nominate, just submit your thesis whenever it is ready.

The form asks you to select which program rules should be used for your examination. All students are encouraged to select the current year program rules for their examination as they are the most up to date and meet the standards for your degree that examiners expect.

You can check out the program rules from previous years. Changes such as the introduction of CaRST, which is required for students who commenced from 2017, will not be applied if you select the current program rules. The requirement to only submit an electronic copy of a final thesis, introduced from 2018, is applied to all examinations.

The following changes to program rules and specifications for thesis may be reasons why you may elect the program rules from your year of enrolment if you enrolled prior to the years listed below:

1. From 2008 the word limit for a PhD was set at 80,000 and Masters was set at 40,000, in previous years the word limits had been higher.
2. From 2010 the option for examiners to award a masters when examining a PhD was discontinued.

You can still elect to be examined under the current program rules for the year that you submit but may submit an application to vary thesis format. Example reasons for a variation include an increase in the word limit, or to submit your thesis in a language other than English.

Note that students whose candidature has been lapsed for more than 12 months, and who have been granted permission to submit for examination by the Dean of Graduate Studies, will have their thesis examined under the program rules for the year of the thesis submission.