Students missing either of these deadlines will be unable to graduate in 2025. Deadline Details
*All late theses require an extension. The student must submit the Thesis Deadline Extension Request Form by January 17, 2025, at 5 pm.
Consistent with degree requirements, MD-MHS students must present their thesis to their three-person committee prior to the January 17th deadline. Students are encouraged to start arranging the date of this committee meeting in the fall to avoid unanticipated delays. The MD-MHS process will be tracked in Medtrics.
Deadline | Details |
---|---|
August 22, 2024, at 5 pm* | Deadline for students to provide information regarding thesis title and thesis mentor/advisor to the OSR via Medtrics. |
August 23, 2024 – December 23, 2024 | Student finishes research and writes thesis draft. |
December 23, 2024 – January 2, 2025 | Recommended date by which student provides thesis draft to MHS advisor and committee members. Students should communicate with their committee to determine a mutually agreeable date. |
December 23, 2024 – January 17, 2025 | Student presents thesis to MHS committee. Student makes revisions and provides committee with revisions. Committee formally approves thesis and completes assessment. |
January 17, 2025, at 5 pm* | Deadline for students to submit their formally approved thesis to the OSR for the review and approval process. |
January 17, 2025-March 21, 2025 | The OSR reviews theses, and assessments, and provides formal YSM approval. Student receives notification of thesis approval and feedback from the OSR. Information for ProQuest upload will also be provided at this time. |
March 22, 2025-March 28, 2025, at 5 pm* | Student makes any requested changes to thesis and submits the approved, final version of thesis to the library via ProQuest (all students meeting the above deadlines). |
*Students missing the August 22nd, January 17th, and/or March 28th deadlines will be referred to the Progress Committee to ensure they receive adequate support to make progress towards this graduation requirement. Students missing the January 17th and/or March 28th deadlines will be ineligible for thesis prizes at graduation.
A different process applies to students in the MD-PhD program. For students enrolled in the combined MD-PhD Program, the dissertation submitted to and approved by the Graduate School will satisfy the MD thesis requirement. Therefore, MD-PhD students who have already defended their dissertation and received their PhD should provide this information to OSR via Medtrics.
To ensure compliance with YSM graduation deadlines, MD-PhD students in the class of 2025 who have not defended and submitted their dissertation to the Graduate School by the October 1, 2024, deadline will be required to submit a copy of their dissertation directly to the OSR in order to fulfill the MD thesis requirement. Further instructions and deadlines will be provided in the fall of 2024. Please note that MD-PhD students must also defend and submit their dissertation to the Graduate School no later than March 15, 2025, to meet the Graduate School spring degree deadline for conferral of the PhD degree. MD-PhD students who have not yet defended their dissertation should provide this information to OSR via Medtrics. If there are any questions about the process, please contact the MD-PhD Office.
Financial support is not provided for writing the thesis.
Preparation for thesis submission begins in the summer of the fourth year. At this time, timeline and practices are posted to the OSR website, distributed via email, and reviewed with students in class meetings. Because thesis approval is a lengthy process involving three levels of review, students are encouraged to manage their time well and start writing their first draft early in the fall semester of their final year of medical school. The thesis approval process will be tracked in Medtrics.
July: OSR website is updated, thesis deadlines are distributed via email to all students in the graduating class, and an informational session is held. Students should be on track to complete their thesis research by early-fall. Any student anticipating a challenge in this regard should contact the OSR as soon as possible. By mid-August, all students expecting to graduate in May must submit their tentative thesis title and thesis mentor/advisor through Medtrics. The OSR will contact all thesis mentors/advisors to confirm this role and to provide information and expectations regarding the thesis process. Therefore, students should confirm the faculty member’s willingness to serve as thesis mentor. Students missing this deadline, or whose mentors/advisors express concern regarding the student’s progress, will be referred to the Progress Committee to ensure adequate support for this graduation requirements.
August – December: Students should finalize research and draft their thesis. As the semester progresses, activities should shift from the data generation/analysis to thesis writing. Students should do their best to complete the first draft of the thesis by mid-late December. Because students are also involved in the residency application and interview process, they are discouraged from starting new projects at this time.
December – January: This period is devoted to reviewing and editing of the thesis draft that is ultimately approved by the faculty thesis mentor/advisor and submitted by the student to the Thesis Chair of their sponsoring department. The YSM faculty thesis mentor/advisor will be asked to complete a thesis assessment that evaluates the student’s performance on YSM’s research-related educational objectives and provides formative summative feedback via Medtrics.
January – March: The Departmental Thesis Chair coordinates thesis review by external reviewers. An “external reviewer” is defined as an individual who is not directly involved in the project. This individual may be a Yale faculty member internal/external to YSM or may hold a faculty appointment at an outside institution. This reviewer reads the thesis, completes the assessment, provides formative summative feedback, and makes recommendations for any required changes to the thesis. Departmental Thesis Chairs review assessments and transmit thesis approvals to the OSR. These assessments and approvals will be managed via Medtrics.
March: Theses and their associated assessments undergo school-level review by the OSR. Students receive YSM approval of their thesis along with summative feedback obtained during the review process. Students incorporate any required changes into their thesis and upload to the Yale Medicine Digital Thesis Library/Eli Scholar via the ProQuest platform.
April: The OSR confirms that theses have been deposited into the Yale Medicine Digital Thesis Library and the YSM registrar receives the names of students who have completed the thesis requirement.
The central role of the medical student thesis is to assess student’s performance on the YSM’s research-related educational program objectives. As such, all students are expected to produce an excellent piece of scholarly work. In recognition of these achievements, the OSR has worked to develop an award process that celebrates the outstanding research done by YSM students without creating a competitive atmosphere. Hence, thesis awards are based on milestone-based assessments submitted by thesis mentors/advisors and reviewers during the approval process, and internal review of the final thesis that was deposited into the Yale Medicine Digital Thesis Library. Consistent with all other graduation prizes, YSM MD Thesis Awards will remain confidential until they are announced in the YSM Commencement Program on May 19, 2025. While some departments may elect to confer thesis “honors” based upon their own internal review, this recognition is distinct from YSM graduation prizes and is not under OSR’s purview.
Read about the required formatting and components for the thesis .
See helpful examples for reference section formatting.
Read about avoiding the risk of copyright violation when submitting the MD Thesis.
Apply for a thesis extension.
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Prof. HR Ahmad, Department of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, The Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan. E-mail: [email protected]
Note: * Ahmad HR. In: Medical Writing. Eds. SA Jawaid, MH Jafary & SJ Zuberi. PMJA, 1997 Ed II: 133-142.
PATIENT care and teaching are rather well established components of our medical career. However, with the passage of time a third component has started to influence our medical culture, namely research. 1 - 4 How to accept this challenge is a question. 5 Indeed, teaching and research form a dialectic unit, meaning that teaching without a research component is like a soup without salt. It is a well-established fact that the research activity of an institution is directly proportional to the number of qualified and committed PhD candidates. An inspiring infrastructure, laboratory facilities and libraries are pre-requisites for a research culture to grow. 6 - 8 This forms the basis of a generation cycle for an institution, so that research activity and its culture continues to grow from one generation to the next. The main objective of doctoral work in biomedical sciences is to develop a galaxy of scientist physicians and surgeons possessing high degree of humility, selflessness and ethical superiority. Such a programme will add a scholastic dimension to the clinical faculty.
Education in how to write a doctoral thesis or dissertation should be a part of the postgraduate curriculum, parallel to the laboratory work and Journal Club activities during the PhD studies and/or residency levels. 9 , 10 The overall structure of a doctoral thesis is internationally standardized. However, it varies in style and quality, depending upon how original the work is, and how much the author has understood the work. Therefore a thorough discussion with supervisor, colleagues and assistance from other authors through correspondence can be useful sources for consultation.
The choice of a topic for a doctoral thesis is a crucial step. It should be determined by scanning the literature whether the topic is original or similar work has already been done even a hundred years ago. It is the responsibility of both the supervisor and the PhD candidate to sort out this problem by continuous use of internet and a library. 11 The work leading to the PhD degree can originate from research in following spheres: 12
The availability of internationally standardized methods, as well as research committed supervisors can enable physicians and surgeons to do PhD work in both basic and clinical health sciences. The importance of research in basic health sciences cannot be overemphasized. It is rather the base of the applied sciences. There are many instances where the elucidation of a mechanism involved in a process awaits the development of an adequate methodology. 13 In such a scenario; a new method is like a new eye. Research activity in the field of (a) and (b) illuminates the research directions for (c) (d) and (e). It is worth noting that sometimes important basic questions can come from (e) and stimulate research activity in the domain of basic health sciences. 14 , 15
TYPE-I: Book Form: a classical style. The blueprint of this form is shown in Table-I .
Type-I: The Classical Book Form
INTRODUCTION: | Literature review. Identification of unresolved problem Formulation of aims and objectives. |
METHODOLOGY: | Design. Outcome variable. Statistical analysis. |
RESULTS: | Figures and tables with appropriate legends. Description, though not explanation of figures. |
DISCUSSION: | Criticism of methodology and design Important observations. Interpretation and reasoning of results. Staging debate with the data of a literature table. |
CONCLUSION: | Based on the premises of outcome. Claim of original research. Implications for future research directions. |
REFERENCES: | Well analyzed. |
TYPE-II: Cumulative Doctoral thesis: A modem but quite useful practice.
A book containing the pearls of a PhD work has standardized divisions and formats, where the number of pages should be weighted in terms of content rather than container. The book includes summary, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusions, references and acknowledgements.
Two exercises are mandatory before starting a PhD programme:
Now comes the most crucial and functional part of the doctoral work, the materials/subjects and methods section. This part can be considered as the motor of the PhD work. The reliability, sensitivity and specificity of the motor must be checked before embarking on a long journey. Controlling the controls is the best guide for a precise and authentic work. Usually materials and methods contain components such as a description of the species involved, their number, age, weight and anthropometric parameters, types of surgical procedures and anesthesia if applied, and a detailed description of methodology. Continuous or point measurements should be thoroughly described. However, a dynamic method should always be preferred to static one.
The experimental protocol should be designed after a small pilot study, which is especially advisable in research on human subjects. A detailed and well-thought experimental protocol forms the basis of conditions under which the results would be obtained. Any deviation from the experimental protocol will affect the outcome, and the interpretation of results. It may be noted that great discoveries are usually accidental and without a protocol, based merely on careful observation! However, for the sake of a publication, a protocol has to be designed after the discovery. After having described the different phases of the experimental protocol with the help of a schematic diagram e.g., showing variables, time period and interventions, the selection of a statistical method should be discussed. Negative results should not be disregarded because they represent the boundary conditions of positive results. Sometimes the negative results are the real results.
It is usual practice that most PhD candidates start writing the methodological components first. This is followed by writing the results. The pre-requisites for writing results are that all figures, tables, schematic diagrams of methods and a working model should be ready. They should be designed in such a way that the information content of each figure should, when projected as a frame be visually clear to audience viewing it from a distance of about fifty feet. It is often observed that the presenters themselves have difficulty in deciphering a frame of the Power-Point being projected in a conference.
The results of a doctoral thesis should be treated like a bride. The flow of writing results becomes easier if all figures and tables are well prepared. This promotes the train of thoughts required to analyze the data in a quantitative fashion. The golden rule of writing results of a thesis is to describe what the figure shows. No explanation is required. One should avoid writing anything which is not there in a figure. Before writing one should observe each diagram for some time and make a list of observations in the form of key words. The more one has understood the information content of a figure; the better will be the fluency of writing. The interruption of the flow in writing most often indicates that an author has not understood the results. Discussion with colleagues or reference to the literature is the only remedy, and it functions sometimes like a caesarean procedure.
Statistical methods are good devices to test the degree of authenticity and precision of results if appropriately applied. The application of statistical technique in human studies poses difficulties because of large standard deviations. Outliers must be discussed, if they are excluded for the sake of statistical significance. Large standard deviations can be minimized by increasing the number of observations. If a regression analysis is not weighted, it gives faulty information. The correlation coefficient value can change from 0.7 to 0.4 if the regression analysis is weighted using Fisher’s test. The dissection of effect from artifact should be analysed in such a way that the signal to noise ratio of a parameter should be considered. A competent statistician should always be consulted in order to avoid the danger of distortion of results.
The legend of a figure should be well written. It contains a title, a brief description of variables and interventions, the main effect and a concluding remark conveying the original message. The writing of PhD work is further eased by a well maintained collection of data in the form of log book, original recordings, analyzed references with summaries and compiling the virgin data of the study on master plan sheet to understand the original signals before submitting to the procedures of statistics. The original data belong to the laboratory of an institution where it came into being and should be preserved for 5-7 years in the archive for the sake of brevity.
This is the liveliest part of a thesis. Its main goal is to defend the work by staging a constructive debate with the literature. The golden rule of this written debate should be that a rigid explanation looks backward and a design looks forward. The object is to derive a model out of a jig-saw puzzle of information. It should be designed in such a way that the results of the present study and those of authors from the literature can be better discussed and interpreted. Agreement and disagreement can be better resolved if one considers under what experimental conditions the results were obtained by the various authors. It means that the boundary conditions for each result should be carefully analyzed and compared.
The discussion can be divided into the following parts:
Another way of writing a doctoral work is a cumulative type of thesis. 11 It consists of a few original publications in refereed journals of repute. It is supplemented by a concise summary about the research work. This type of thesis is usually practiced in Sweden, Germany and other countries. It has the advantage of being doubly refereed by the journals and the faculty of health sciences. Additionally, papers are published during a doctoral work. A declaration has to be given to the faculty of science about the sharing of research work in publications, provided there are co-authors. The weightage should be in favour of the PhD candidate, so that the thesis can ethically be better defended before the team of august research faculty.
A critical review of this manuscript by Dr. Roger Sutton, Dr. Khalid Khan, Dr. Bukhtiar Shah and Dr. Satwat Hashmi is gratefully acknowledged.
Dedicated to the memory of Mr. Azim Kidwai for his exemplary academic commitment and devotion to the science journalism in Pakistan.
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Edinburgh Medical School is one of two schools at the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. The Edinburgh Medical School integrates research and teaching across our three Deaneries: Biomedical Sciences, Clinical Sciences and Molecular,Genetic and Population Health Sciences.
Identifying translatable biomarkers for syngap1 haploinsufficiency with explainable machine learning , investigating the disease-causing mechanisms of a novel nrros-associated microgliopathy , role of cxcr4 as a mediator to the response to teriparatide , role of nsun2-mediated mrna 5-methylcytidine methylation in colorectal cancer initiation and progression , developing granzyme b activity as a novel biomarker of inflammatory bowel disease , context-dependent gene essentiality in glioblastoma , investigating the impact of eef1a2 missense mutations on protein synthesis in neurodevelopmental disorders , investigating pulmonary fibrosis using a single-cell transcriptomics approach , understanding the reproductive biology of giant pandas: predictive biomarkers for reproductive success , role of double-negative 2 b cells in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis. , exploring bioorthogonal approaches to activate protacs , proteogenomic platforms establishing personalized and precision neoantigen therapeutics in cancer , epithelial regulation of macrophage function within the pulmonary micro-environment , mass spectrometry imaging of lung in pulmonary arterial hypertension , therapeutic potential of mesenchymal stromal cells for infected fracture non-union , using the head direction system of rats to model neuronal circuit alterations during development in fragile x syndrome , origin of acute neurovascular syndrome by means of ¹⁸f-sodium fluoride positron emission tomography-magnetic resonance imaging , multimorbidity in sub-saharan africa: focusing on the national prevalence and the response of primary care in botswana , multimodal decoding of the human mesenchymal landscape during progression of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis , sexual dimorphism in hemocyte responses to staphylococcus aureus infection in drosophila melanogaster .
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Starting with the Yale School of Medicine (YSM) graduating class of 2002, the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library and YSM Office of Student Research have collaborated on the Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library (YMTDL) project, publishing the digitized full text of medical student theses on the web as a valuable byproduct of Yale student research ...
The central role of the medical student thesis is to assess student’s performance on the YSM’s research-related educational objectives. As such, all students are expected to produce an excellent piece of scholarly work.
The dissertation is an integral part in the professional journey of any medical post-graduate student. It is also an important responsibility for a guide to educate his protégé, the basics of research methodology through the process.
The main objective of doctoral work in biomedical sciences is to develop a galaxy of scientist physicians and surgeons possessing high degree of humility, selflessness and ethical superiority. Such a programme will add a scholastic dimension to the clinical faculty.
HST MD students must conduct original research and present a thesis based on laboratory or clinical investigation. Learn about the timeline, procedures, roles, and resources for this academic requirement.
The Edinburgh Medical School integrates research and teaching across our three Deaneries: Biomedical Sciences, Clinical Sciences and Molecular,Genetic and Population Health Sciences. Recent Submissions