22 September 2026 · 8 min read
Pokhara University's MBA, run through the Faculty of Management Studies, does not require a conventional thesis. Its terminal research requirement is called the Graduate Research Project — GRP for short, course code RES 612 — and it sits inside a six-trimester, 66-credit programme rather than standing outside it as a separate submission. Knowing this before you start planning matters: search results and old templates that call it a "PU MBA thesis" are describing something PU's own curriculum document does not use that name for.
The MBA runs over six trimesters, each 12 teaching weeks, with a normal completion time of 24 months and a maximum of four years from registration. The 66 credits break down into seven foundation and analytical-tool courses (18 credits), ten core and functional courses (20 credits), two capstone courses (6 credits), four concentration courses in your chosen specialisation (8 credits), two electives (4 credits), and the Graduate Research Project together with the Internship, graduate seminars and other project work (10 credits combined).
Two courses earlier in the programme set up the GRP directly: RES 611, Business Research Methodology, taught in Term III, and the Internship Project in Term V — eight to ten weeks of supervised business exposure, evaluated 40% on a confidential report from the host organisation and 60% on a seminar presentation of the internship report. The GRP itself, RES 612, is a 3-credit course placed in Term VI, the final trimester.
PU's own MBA programme document describes it in one paragraph: towards the end of the study period, students undertake a research assignment and prepare an integrative research report in any area of management approved by the college or school, then attend a viva-voce examination and give a seminar presentation of the report to the college or school. That is the university-wide requirement. It does not, in the same document, specify a fixed chapter list, page count or word limit for the report — that detail is issued separately by each college or school running the MBA, the same pattern already established on PU's BBA side, where the syllabus is centralised but the report format, front matter and referencing preference are set by the individual college.
In practice, an integrative business research report of this kind follows the shape taught in RES 611: an introduction and problem statement, a review of relevant literature and models, a methodology section describing the data and analysis approach, presentation and analysis of findings, and a conclusion with managerial recommendations. Treat that as the working skeleton, and get your college's own GRP guideline in writing before you commit to a structure — PU's affiliated colleges are exactly where the specific formatting requirements (font, margins, spacing, referencing style, binding, number of copies) actually come from.
The GRP is evaluated on the same 75/25 split used elsewhere in Nepali postgraduate research: 75% for the research report itself and 25% for the viva-voce examination, plus the separate seminar presentation to the college or school. The college or school appoints both an internal and an external examiner for the report, with the external examiner drawn from a list approved by the Office of the Dean — so, as with other Nepali master's-level evaluations, the report is read independently by two people before you defend it, which is why consistency between your stated research objectives and what the findings chapter actually answers matters as much here as it does in a conventional thesis.
The wider grading rules of the MBA apply to the GRP course like any other: a minimum grade of C (GPA 2.0) is required in every individual course, and the CGPA needed to graduate is 3.0 or better on PU's 4.0 scale. A GRP that scrapes a pass mark but drags your CGPA below 3.0 is a real risk in a programme where, unlike a single make-or-break thesis, your GRP grade is only one line among many — but it is also the one course where a weak result is hardest to average away, since two independent examiners have both read the same document.
Because the GRP is only 3 credits and sits in the final trimester alongside other Term VI courses (Business Environment Analysis, Strategic Management, and the Corporate Governance graduate seminar), it is tempting to treat it as a smaller piece of work than a thesis. The research itself is not smaller — approval of your topic, data collection, and a defensible analysis still take real calendar time, and Term VI is a single 12-week trimester. Use RES 611 in Term III to settle your topic and methodology early rather than waiting until the GRP course formally opens, and treat your Term V internship as a possible source of both data access and a topic, since many PU MBA students build their GRP around the organisation they interned with.
Working on a PU MBA GRP and want your topic, methodology or findings chapter reviewed before the viva? Assignment Nepal works with PU School of Business candidates and affiliated colleges across Nepal — message us on WhatsApp at +977 9768768340.
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