Final Exam and Thesis

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 pass all your mandatory and mandatory elective courses. If you are unsure about the program 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 your 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. 

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.
2. The Final Thesis 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.

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. 

1) THESIS PROJECT

The thesis project needs to be entered into the SIS system prior to your submission of the thesis (usually at the beginning of your research process). 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, we do not expect you 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 programme, 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.

In case you decide to change your topic or supervisor during the thesis process, please contact the International Office.

2) FINAL THESIS

Your thesis is an original piece of academic writing and must fulfil all the usual standards of an academic text (bibliography, attribution of sources, etc).

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. 

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.