By December 3 of the first year of registration, students are responsible for presenting the Registrar with a request for approval of their dissertation's topic. The request is made with the appropriate form available from the Registrar, and addressed to the Dean of the School. It will be screened by the Department.

Approval of a thesis topic is valid for five years, beginning with the date on which the student registered in the third cycle. An extension can be granted annually by the School's Management Committee.

Each year, the School submits a report on thesis progress for evaluation. If the review is unfavorable, the student will have to follow a schedule provided for them by the School in order to continue their studies in the doctoral program.

Once completed, students must present the Registrar with a typed copy of their work. It must first be seen by the student's thesis Director, and is then given to a co-director chosen by the Dean of Faculty. The co-director has fifteen working days at his disposition (plus one day for every 25 pages over 350) to give the student his observations and suggestions, by means of the thesis Director. During exam periods, correspondence concerning the thesis is not carried out. During periods when there are no classes (Christmas, Holy Week, and summer), the deadline for correspondence work is entrusted to the discretion of the School's Managing Committee.

After taking the co-director's observations and suggestions into account, the student must turn in a set number of bound copies of the dissertation to the Academic Registrar. The thesis Director's signature must be on the first page of each bound copy, and a corresponding fee must be paid. Once the Academic Registrar has placed the University's stamp on the thesis' first page, one copy will be given back to the student.