Depositing Your Thesis

Congratulations! Your department signed off on your document and you’re ready to move forward with your deposit. Make sure you have formatted your document based on the Graduate College formatting requirements. The steps below will guide you through the materials needed in order to deposit your thesis, as well as how to submit your thesis through our submission system.

Your thesis deposit is not complete until you have made all corrections requested by the Graduate College Thesis Office and have submitted all supporting items required for the deposit. All corrections and additional materials must be received in satisfactory condition by the Thesis Office no later than 5:00 p.m. on the day of the deposit deadline for your intended graduation period. Once the thesis or dissertation has been approved for deposit by the Graduate College, no additional changes to the document will be allowed. Note: The Graduate College does not accept emailed or hard copy thesis submissions for review or deposit.

1. Set PDF Document Properties

In Adobe, select File > Properties. Enter the title of your thesis in the description box. Make sure your name is correctly listed as the author.
In the Securities tab, make sure there are no security settings applied.
In the Advanced tab, in the Reading Options box select the document’s primary language.

2. Prepare Your PDF

The thesis must be submitted as a single PDF file.
The PDF file should not contain embedded multimedia.
Make sure that your PDF is tagged. This means that your headings appear as bookmarks when the PDF is opened.
- If you are writing your thesis in Word, you can save your document as a tagged PDF by following these steps:
  - Select File > Save As
  - Select PDF as the “Save as” type. Then click “More Options.” When the dialog box opens, select Options.
  - Make sure the box “Document structure tags for accessibility” is selected.
  - Click Save.

3. Prepare Your Accessibility Report (Required Summer 2026)

At this point in time, we recommend that you prepare a digital accessibility report on your document. This report will flag areas that don’t meet accessibility requirements (such as missing bookmarks and issues with alt text). Adobe Acrobat Pro has an accessibility check that you can use through the following steps:

Select Tools
Select Accessibility
Choose Accessibility Check
In the dialogue box, you will first want to specify where you want your accessibility report to be saved. In the Report Options box, choose a folder where you can save your report and find it again later. Then, click “Start Checking.”
An overview of your report will open on the side of the screen with areas that pass and fail accessibility. You can also pen a full report with explanations and hyperlinks to tutorials to fixing these issues. Some common mistakes include:
- Setting the document title (we describe this process above in “Set PDF Properties”)
- Creating a tagged PDF (we describe this process above in “Prepare Your PDF”)
- Writing alt text (tips for adding and writing alt text are explained in the formatting requirements under the “Figures and Tables” tab. Please double-check to make sure your alt text has been written by you and is not autogenerated.)
- Tables have designated headers (we describe this process in the formatting requirements under the “Figures and Tables” tab.)

4. Upload Your Thesis

To create your thesis submission profile and submit your thesis to the Graduate College Thesis Office for review, click on the link below. (If your NetID is no longer active, you will be able to create your own temporary password once you begin the submission process.)

If you receive an error message as you are trying to submit your thesis, please either clear your cache or try a different browser (Google Chrome usually works well).

Submit Your Thesis

IDEALS Deposit Agreement and Release Options

In step 2 of your submission profile, you will be asked to agree to the IDEALS license and choose an IDEALS release option. See the Release Options page for detailed information about those choices.

(Optional) ProQuest Publishing Agreement - Doctoral Students Only

In step 2 of the submission profile, doctoral students will be given the option to have the Graduate College send their dissertation to ProQuest for inclusion in the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global and Dissertation Abstracts International databases. If you wish to send your dissertation to ProQuest, agree to the ProQuest publishing agreement during step 2. See the Release Options page for detailed information about the agreement and how your IDEALS release option will determine your ProQuest release option.

5. Await Confirmation Emails for Next Steps

After you have submitted your thesis for review, you will receive a series of emails from the Graduate College Thesis Office that will notify you that we have received your thesis and alert you to any required corrections or other steps you will need to take to complete your thesis deposit. You may also check the status of our review of your thesis at any time by returning to your submission profile via the submission link. Please note that the Thesis Office typically completes thesis reviews in 1-2 business days.

If you are a doctoral student and have not yet completed your doctoral surveys, please do so now. You can access these surveys on the Doctoral Surveys web page.

6. Complete Your Deposit

After your deposit is complete, your student account will be charged a deposit fee. The fee is:

$50 for doctoral students
$25 for master's students

The fee will appear on your student account approximately one week after your deposit is complete. If your account is no longer active or you would like to inquire about payment options, please contact University Student Financial Services and Cashier Operations after your deposit is complete.