Program Guidelines

Explore all resources available from the Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs (GSPA) Office for Current Students.

Find your official program requirements, including required courses and milestones in the GSPA Academic Calendar. Be aware of the calendar with important dates.

Note that some awards and program deadline for departments will be earlier than these posted deadline. Contact your Departmental Program Coordinator/Advisor if you have any questions.

Degree Completion Deadlines

If you are working on a thesis, you may want to consider the deadlines for each step of your thesis and still graduate before the deadline that is important to you. Please visit the link below to learn about degree completion deadlines and Thesis completion deadlines.

Steps to graduate

Please review the page linked below, to ensure you have completed all of your program's degree requirements in time for graduation.

PhD Comprehensive Exam

All PhD students at the University of Waterloo are required to successfully complete the PhD Comprehensive Exam. For more information, please refer to the PhD Comprehensive Exam web page.

Program Changes

All program change requests will be reviewed by the Associate Dean, Graduate Studies. You and your supervisor(s) will be notified by your departmental coordinator once the transfer request has been approved or denied. Please visit the page below, to learn more about how to request a program change.

Note: The forms also applies to students enrolled in Course-based Master's program looking to switch to a Thesis-based Master's program OR students enrolled in a Master's of Applied Science (MASc) program wanting to change to the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) program without completing their Master's degree.