You are here

Senior Thesis Submission Information for Students

On this page: 

Thesis Central - General Information

  • Thesis Central is a system that allows students to upload senior thesis files for retrieval by their home department (and certificate program, if applicable) and from which the files will be transmitted to the University Archives.
  • All students, except those whose thesis work is in the form of a performance or exhibition, should upload their thesis file (or files) to Thesis Central.
  • Thesis Central will be available for student submissions starting in March 25th, 2024 thru the 2024 Dean's date, May 7th, 2024. To access the site, go to the Princeton Thesis Central homepage and login with your netid. 
  • Allow roughly 20 minutes to complete the upload process.
  • Note: be sure to check with your home department for additional requirements regarding submission of senior theses, such as the submission of bound or unbound paper copies.

Thesis Central- Step-by-step Instructions

Submission Status Page

  • This page lists a student's active submissions. Each student will have one in progress submission in the first row of the table. To submit your senior thesis, click the "Continue" button.
  • You should only click on "Start a new submission" if you made an error in your initial submission and need to resubmit your thesis, or if you are submitting two different senior theses, such as one for your home department, and a different thesis for a certificate program. 
  • If you are resubmitting your thesis due to an error in your first submission, you should notify the undergraduate administrator that you are doing so. 
  • Note: All submissions are timestamped to ensure that you are meeting your departmental deadline.

Verify Your Information Page

Student Information

Senior Thesis Type

  • In this section, most students should choose "Home Department Thesis."
  • Only choose "Certificate Program Thesis" if you wrote two different senior theses (one for your home department and one for a certificate program) and you are in the process of submitting your certificate program thesis.
  • This choice is typically only used for students who are in the Creative Writing Program and have written a separate thesis for that program.
  • If you have written one senior thesis that fulfills requirements for your home department as well as a certificate program, you should choose “Home Department Thesis.” You will have the opportunity to record the certificate program to which your thesis relates in a later step.
  • Please submit any questions to the Ask Us form.

Honor Code Page

You must agree to the honor code statement in order to complete your submission.

Senior Thesis Information Page

On this page you will enter information about your senior thesis.

Title and Abstract

  • Enter your thesis title into the title field. If your thesis has an abstract, copy and paste it from your PDF. The abstract field is optional; if your thesis does not have one, leave the field blank.
  • If your title or abstract has special characters, see the section below on LaTex Instructions.

Multi-author

  • Is this a multi-author thesis?
  • If you are the sole author of the thesis, select "No."
  • If you collaborated on your thesis with others select "Yes."
  • If you are submitting a multi-author thesis, your senior thesis file must include all coauthors’ names; and you and your coauthors must agree on an access level. Access levels are explained on Office of Undergraduate Reserach Thesis Archive webpage.

Certificate Program

  • If your thesis fulfills requirements for your home department as well as a Certificate Program, choose the program from the list.
  • If this thesis fulfills requirements for more than one program, record the first certificate program in Thesis Central and use this Google form to record any addtional certificate programs. If you have questions contact specialcollections@princeton.libanswers.com.

Your Adviser/s

  • If your adviser is not listed, enter their name in the fields provided. Please use the form of name found in the Princeton University Directory. For example, “Anthony T. Grafton” instead of “Tony Grafton.”
  • If you were advised by multiple faculty members, you may add additional adviser names.

Upload Your Files Page

  • In this step you will upload your senior thesis file. Optionally, you may upload additional supplementary files that will be available along with your document after publication.
  • In the Thesis Central system, the primary senior thesis document must be a PDF. To upload your thesis, click on the Browse button to find the file on your device, and then, once chosen, click on the Upload button to save the file to the server.
  • If your senior thesis submission does not include a PDF, you can upload a placeholder_file.pdf file in the Upload Primary Document section. You can then proceed to upload other file types in the Upload Additional Files section.

Large files

  • The size limit for each individual file uploaded to Thesis Central is 1 GB. If your main PDF file exceeds 1 GB, you must upload the placeholder_file.pdf file so that you can complete your submission. You should then email specialcollections@princeton.libanswers.com and your undergraduate administrator to let us know that you have taken this step. We will work with you to obtain your file through other means. 
  • There is no limit on the number of supplementary files you may upload, though total of all files must not exceed 4 GB. Executable files (.exe) are not allowed.

Below is a list of preferred file types for supplementary files:

    • Audio files: MP3 format (.mp3)
    • Video files: MP4 format (.mp4), and encoded in H.264/MPEG-4 compression format. See Video Compression Instructions for H.264/MPEG-4 format
    • Still images that are separate from a PDF: JPEG (.jpg), JPEG2000 (.jp2), or TIFF (.tif) format
    • Websites: see our Guidelines for Designing Preservation-Friendly Websites. Students whose entire senior thesis project is a website should complete a submission in Thesis Central using the placeholder.pdf file (entering the thesis title, abstract (if applicable), and adviser names) and contact specialcollections@princeton.libanswers.com to discuss options for capturing the website.

Confirm & Submit Page

  • On the confirm and submit page, you will see all of the information that pertains to your thesis. You can edit any of the information that you supplied by clicking on the edit links, such as “edit your senior thesis information.” You can also view the file/s that you uploaded by clicking on the file links. You can change the file that you have uploaded by clicking on the “edit your uploaded files” link.
  • Once you hit Confirm and Submit you will no longer be able to make edits to this submission. If you find that you have made an error in your submission, you should create a new submission with the correct information, and contact your undergraduate administrator explaining the reason that you have multiple submissions.

Further Questions?

For questions about, or problems with, the Thesis Central system, contact specialcollections@princeton.libanswers.com. For questions about your senior thesis requirements, contact your department's undergraduate program coordinator. For questions about access restriction requests, contact staccess@princeton.edu.

Student Options Regarding Access to Your Thesis

Using LaTeX to Display Special Characters in Submission System

If you have mathematical formulae or scientific expressions in your title or abstract that you cannot create using your keyboard, we ask you to use some basic LaTeX markup in the senior thesis submission site so that the characters will display properly in our digital repository. In most cases, the characters that need encoding are subscripts and superscripts, arrows and other symbols, and letters of the Greek alphabet. In order to display these characters, you must create an expression that begins and ends with the following tags: \( and \), and then insert the code for the character or symbol within the tags.

See these common examples:

    • Subscript: Na\(_{2}\)  displays as Na2
    • Superscript:  Na\(^{2}\) displays as Na2 
    • Left facing arrow: \(\leftarrow\) displays as ←
    • Greek letter Delta: \(\Delta\) displays as Δ

To find the code you need, see the ShareLaTeX website, especially in their documentation of superscripts and subscripts (see the Reference Guide section), and their library of codes for symbols and Greek letters. Another helpful site is the LaTeX Wikibooks page.
The Senior Thesis Submission Site contains a preview page to test how your markup will display before you enter it into the submission form.

If you have trouble with your markup, make a note in the comments of the submission form and submit your thesis. It is more important to submit your thesis on time than to have the markup exactly right!

Downloadable Documents