Draft Reviews

The deadline for requesting a draft review during Spring Quarter is Wednesday, April 10, at 4:30pm Chicago Time.

A draft review is helpful but not comprehensive; we do not edit dissertations. Our goal is to be sure you are on the right track with the formatting and submission process. We want to help you understand the basic requirements so that you can check your final PDF yourself and graduate as planned. It is your responsibility to follow the requirements consistently in your final dissertation.

• We review drafts during the first few weeks of each quarter, not later in the quarter and not during the interim between quarters.
• If you plan to submit your dissertation early, you may want to request a draft review at the beginning of the quarter before you plan to graduate, even if your draft is incomplete.
• We are happy to respond to your questions at any time, but we do not review late drafts and we do not review more than one version of a draft.
• The turn-around time for a draft review is usually within two weeks.
• We review drafts in the order that reviews are requested via the Ask the Dissertation Office form per Step 5 below.

Follow these steps to ask us to review a draft of your dissertation.

1. Format your dissertation draft according to the University-Wide Requirements for the Ph.D. Dissertation.
2. Create an account on the ETD Administrator, and complete the Contact information section under Publishing information. You must enter your name in the Contact information section in order for us to see the author's name and locate the draft for review. The Institutional Student ID is your 8-digit University of Chicago Student ID and the first two numbers are 10 or 12.
3. Begin the About my dissertation/thesis step to enter details (title, department, etc.) in the Dissertation/Thesis details section.
4. Upload your draft in the PDF section. (You can upload a revised PDF later. You should not create a new submission.) Do not provide Administrative documents yet. You will complete this section when you are ready to submit the final version of your dissertation.
5. Contact us via the Ask the Dissertation Office form. We will use the email address you provide on the form to get back to you.
6. We will respond shortly after we receive your draft review request, usually within 24 hours. Let us know right away if you do not receive our initial response acknowledging your request. You should keep an eye on your junk mail in case our messages are filtered out as spam.
7. We will look at your dissertation while the submission is in progress on the ETD Administrator, and we will send comments on your draft within a week or two.