Kathmandu University Thesis Format and Guidelines: What KU Publishes, and What Your School Decides
6 October 2026 · 8 min read
Kathmandu University students often search for “KU thesis format” or “KU thesis guidelines” and find nothing official. That is not a search problem. KU does not publish a university-wide thesis format. The School of Management, School of Education, School of Science, School of Engineering, School of Arts and the School of Medical Sciences each give their own requirements to their own students, usually through the programme coordinator rather than a public web page.
That leaves a gap that templates from other universities tend to fill, and that is where most KU formatting problems come from. This guide covers what KU schools do publish, what we could not verify, and a method for working safely until your school's own document is in your hands.
What KU does publish
Referencing: the School of Education's “House Rules” (May 2023) is a full APA 7th edition citation guide, with examples that include KU's own unpublished MPhil dissertations. It is the most detailed public KU writing document, and APA 7 is a safe default for most KU schools unless yours specifies otherwise.
A repository: the KU eLibrary (elibrary.ku.edu.np) holds theses and dissertations in separate collections for each school. A completed thesis becomes a searchable, matchable document, which matters for plagiarism checks later (see below).
Deadlines: schools post thesis submission deadlines as notices tied to convocation phases. The School of Education's notice for the second phase of the March 2024 convocation is one example. Your deadline comes from your school's notice, not from a university-wide calendar.
Ethics review at KUSMS: the Institutional Review Committee (IRC) of Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences publishes its submission requirements and fees (see the KUSMS section below).
What KU does not publish, and what not to assume
We could not find any public KU-wide rule on margins, font, line spacing, binding, the number of copies, or a plagiarism threshold. Some third-party sites quote figures for particular schools. We have not repeated them because we could not trace them to a KU document. If a senior student or website gives you a number, ask where it came from.
In particular, do not import Tribhuvan University's rules. TU faculties publish specific margins, spacing and a 20% similarity threshold at master's level, but those are TU faculty decisions and do not bind KU. A KU thesis formatted to a TU template can be wrong in small ways that are tedious to fix after printing.
A structure that works until your school says otherwise
Most KU research degrees use the conventional empirical structure, and supervisors recognise it immediately. Treat it as a starting point to confirm, not a rule:
Preliminaries: title page, declaration of originality, supervisor's recommendation or approval, acknowledgements, abstract, table of contents and lists of tables, figures and abbreviations, numbered in roman numerals.
Introduction: background, problem statement, research questions or objectives, significance, delimitations.
Literature review: organised by theme and ending in the gap your study addresses, with a conceptual framework where relevant.
Methodology: design, population and sample, instruments, data collection, analysis, and ethical considerations.
Results or findings, then discussion, as one chapter or two depending on your school's preference.
Conclusion, with implications and recommendations, followed by APA 7 references and appendices.
Qualitative theses at the School of Education and School of Arts often depart from this, with chapters organised around themes rather than a single results chapter. If your supervisor works that way, follow them; the structure above is for quantitative and mixed-methods work.
KUSMS: the IRC submission for residents and researchers
For postgraduate residents and researchers at Kathmandu University School of Medical Sciences in Dhulikhel, the ethics step is the part that is clearly documented. According to the KUSMS IRC page, a proposal goes to the IRC office at Dhulikhel Hospital and also by email to irc@kusms.edu.np, with:
A covering letter addressed to the IRC chairperson.
The completed IRC form (the 2026 version is on the IRC page).
Informed consent forms in both English and Nepali.
Commitment forms signed by the principal investigator and each co-investigator.
The principal investigator's CV, two pages at most.
A support letter from your department, and any earlier ethical clearance the study already has.
The published fee is NRs 500 for KU faculty and students, NRs 2,000 for a KU PhD proposal, NRs 5,000 for a PhD proposal from another institution, and US$100 for foreign researchers. Fees and forms are revised, so download the current form rather than reusing a colleague's.
KUSMS does not publish its MD/MS thesis timeline or protocol format. Residents are oriented on the online protocol upload when they join, and the department sets the rest. Collect your department's protocol format in the first weeks of residency. Our MEC guide covers the national postgraduate medical rules and the general shape of a thesis protocol, which apply alongside KUSMS's own requirements.
Plagiarism and the repository trap
Because KU deposits finished theses in its eLibrary, a later piece of work by the same student, such as a journal article or a PhD proposal, may match the earlier thesis when it goes through a similarity check. Cite your own thesis when you reuse its material, as you would any other source. Our guide to self-plagiarism and repository matches explains how this appears in a report.
With no published KU threshold, the safe approach is to ask your programme coordinator what similarity report, if any, is required at submission, and to run a check on the final file yourself before printing.
What to ask your school for, in week one
The current thesis or dissertation guideline for your programme, with its date.
The referencing style and edition (most likely APA 7).
Page layout: margins, font, spacing and binding, plus the number of hard copies and whether a PDF is required.
Whether a similarity report must be submitted, and the acceptable range.
The proposal defence and final submission deadlines for your convocation phase.
For KUSMS and other health research: the IRC form version and the expected review time.
Writing a KU thesis without a clear format from your school? Send your programme, draft and deadline on WhatsApp at +977 9768768340. We will review the structure, APA 7 referencing and formatting, and run a similarity check before you submit.
Not sure if your work has plagiarism? Don't worry. Send it to us.
Tell us what you need checked and when it is due. Your document is checked without being stored in any student-paper repository, so the check never counts against your real submission. The reports come back with what each match means, not just a percentage.
Plagiarism report — The full similarity report on your assignment, proposal or chapter: every matched source listed, every flagged passage marked, and a plain read of which matches matter and which are your reference list doing its job.
AI report — The AI writing indicator read separately from similarity, because the two scores behave differently. If the flag looks like a detector artefact on work you wrote yourself, we tell you so, and what evidence answers it.
Thesis report — Similarity and AI reports for a full thesis or dissertation, run chapter by chapter so a problem in the literature review is found while you can still fix it, with each flagged passage explained for your supervisor.