Finishing Your Studies

• What do you need to do before the state exam?

  1. In order to be allowed to take the final state exam, you need to complete your study plans. This means obtaining the required number of credits (180 for BA study, 120 for MA study) and passing all your mandatory and mandatory elective courses. If you are unsure about the program's mandatory courses, check your program's structure in Karolinka.
  2. Submit your thesis in SIS. Upload an electronic copy of your thesis in a PDF/A format to SIS. The tutorial can be downloaded on our SIS manual website. Make sure that you are submitting the final version of the thesis. If you encounter any issues while submitting your Thesis, please contact studentskeprace@fsv.cuni.cz
  3. You need to sign up for the final state exam dates in SIS. The deadlines for registering are always set up by the Academic calendar. Since the final state exam consists of multiple parts, you need to sign up for all of them. Please note that it is not possible to split these parts into multiple exam periods (e.g. you cannot defend your thesis in June and do your Oral examinations in January) - all of them have to be taken together.

  Our SIS manual will guide you through the process of signing up. Once you sign up, the supervisor of your program will check that you fulfilled all the requirements and confirm that you are ready to take the exams. 

  If you miss any deadlines, please contact the International Office as soon as possible. You will need to fill out a special request to the Vice-Dean for late enrollment. 

   

• What will your final state exams look like?

  This largely depends on your program.

  Apart from the Thesis Defence, you will be examined by the examination committee (minimum of three academics: the Head of the Program and two other professors, your Thesis Opponent, occasionally others).

  Your state exams can be oral, written, a project, a discussion over your readings, or a combination of any of those. Checking the Karolinka curriculum of your program should give you the answer to how many parts there will be to your exams, and what they will look like. Your program coordinator should give you more information on the details of the exams and specific exams topics. 

• When will your final state exams take place?

  When you register for the state exams and thesis defense, you register for a term/period. There are three state exam periods per each academic year - January/February, June and September. After you successfully register, your study obligations fulfillment is checked and once this is confirmed, you will be assigned a specific exam date.

  The organization of final state exams, including the assignment of exam dates, is up to each Institute. They will brief you on the exact form of the exams in advance, as well as the specific date, time and place of your exams. You should always follow your Institute's website so that you don't miss any announcements related to the State exams. 

• Registration for thesis defense and state exams

  The process of registering for the final state exams and thesis defense is quite similar to the way you are used to registering for exams of your regular courses, only this time, you will use the module called "State Final Examinations". Please remember that for each term, there is a deadline by which you need to register and submit your thesis! If you miss this deadline, you will not be allowed to take the exams in that term.

  We recommend following the FSV UK social media, as we post regular reminders for these deadlines. You can also find the exact dates for each year in the academic calendar. 

  Please check the step-by-step SIS guide for registering on our website, under "Examinations and Final State Examinations".

  Note: If your study is currently interrupted, you cannot register for the state exams. You need to unpause your study again before you register.

• How to submit your thesis in SIS?

  The thesis has to be submitted in SIS in electronic form in PDF/A format within the deadline set in the Academic Calendar. Do not forget to click Submit after uploading the files! Detailed instructions can be found in the section SIS manuals.

  If you have a problem with PDF/A format (problems do occur, mainly among Apple MacBook users), you will send the thesis to the following e-mail - studentskeprace@fsv.cuni.cz , no later than 24 hours before the scheduled submission date. You will receive your thesis converted to PDF/A. Make sure no damage was made during conversion to the content or formatting of your thesis and submit it via SIS. 

  If your thesis or its supplement is of a non-standard format, you have to file a request in SIS for non-standard format.

  Students of the degree programmes taught in English are required to submit an abstract in English only.

  After submitting the thesis through SIS, you should bring the printed version of your final thesis in two copies to the Secretariat of the Institute. Nevertheless, the submission of the printed version is not obligatory in general for all study programmes - it depends on the particular Institute. Contact the Secretary of your Institute to find out whether the printed version is really required.

• What should your thesis look like?

  Preparing and submitting the final thesis is guided by the DIRECTIVE S_SO_003 Determination_of_content-related, formal and technical essentials for elaboration and submission of final theses and acts of their filing and accessability in electronic form.

  The Final Thesis is an extended piece of original academic writing. Students have some flexibility in their choice of thesis topic. Generally, a thesis topic that falls into any of the main subject areas of the program will be acceptable, though individual thesis proposals are subject to the approval of the Head of the program.

  Each student will be assigned an academic who will advise and guide you in your research, especially in the early stages of the thesis. This is the Thesis Supervisor; you are encouraged to identify and propose a potential supervisor from amongst the regular teachers of the programme, according to your own interests. Your choice of supervisor is, also subject to the approval of the Head of the program.

  The Final Thesis is made public based on Czech law concerned with Universities. By submitting the thesis, you agree with the non-profit publication. All theses and dissertations are stored in a public digital repositary along with the reports.

   

  Preparing and submitting your thesis is a two-stage process:

  1. Thesis Project 
     At the early stages of your thesis, you are expected to submit a 2-4 page outline of your proposed thesis, for preliminary approval by the Head of the programme. This is the so-called Thesis Project and you will not be allowed to submit a final thesis unless you have previously submitted and received approval for the project.
     The project proposal should include:
     The proposed title of your thesis
     The name of your supervisor
     A short outline of your proposed line of argument  and the methodology you plan to use
     A bibliography of your main sources, relating to both the content and the methodology of the thesis
     
     At this early stage, you are not expected to go into any particular detail, but the text should be sufficiently well developed, so we can tell what your main topic is, how you plan to structure the text, and what sources you plan to use.
     The project is subject to the approval of the Head of the program, who may ask you to revise your proposal if he thinks this is necessary. It is therefore advisable to secure the approval of the programming head before you start writing in earnest.
     
      
  2. The Final Thesis 
     The finished text is submitted in the final semester of your studies, generally a few weeks before the date of the final exam. 
     
     The exact deadlines for submitting your final thesis will vary slightly from year to year, but you will always find them in the current Academic Calendar of the university. Generally, we will also send an announcement to your mailing list.

     The text must be submitted in standard manuscript format. Use a plain font (Times New Roman or Arial), point size 12, line spacing 1.5 or 2.

     The minimum length of the thesis is 30 standard manuscript pages, excluding supplements for Bachelor programs and 50 standard pages for Master programs. For the purposes of calculating the length of the thesis, a standard manuscript page is taken to be 1800 keystrokes long (including spaces). Pages should be numbered.

     The thesis must be submitted in the SIS system. Please check with your program, as some may require a hard copy of the thesis as well. 

     You can find templates for the Final Thesis on the Dean's provision website, to help you navigate the mandatory content of the thesis. 

  Note: Please, always make sure to check with your specific program, as some of them may have further requirements and deadlines beyond the general ones mentioned here. 

   

• What is the Thesis Defence like?

  Once you submit your final thesis, it will be independently assessed by an academic other than your thesis supervisor, who will submit a written report on the quality of the thesis. This academic is the so-called Thesis Opponent. His or her report will be available to you in advance of the thesis defence, so you can prepare yourself in advance to react to his/her comments. The Thesis Opponent will also be present at your defence.

  The Defence lasts about 15-20 minutes. As part of the defence you will be expected to speak briefly about the main points of your thesis, your methodology, choice of literature, etc., and to answer questions from your examiners. Given that you will be summarising your own work, it is perfectly acceptable for you to prepare what you are going to say in advance (indeed, it is advisable to do so). However, you cannot take previously prepared notes for the examination.

• Check the personal information for your diploma

  We highly recommend checking your personal information in the SIS before you graduate to ensure it’s correct. This especially applies to your name, date of birth and country of birth, as this information is going to be used to issue your diploma. Please make sure that there is no typo in your name, the punctuation is correct and all names you want on your diploma are entered. If you have multiple first or last names, your name in the SIS should reflect what you want to be printed on your diploma. 

  If you find an error, you can edit it yourself in SIS, or reach out for help to degreeprograms@fsv.cuni.cz