Reviewer checklist

When you need this page: Optional

For an advisor, committee member, or Office of Graduate Education (OGE) reviewer: what this unofficial, community-made toolkit sets in a thesis or dissertation, and what still needs your eye.

This is not an OGE checklist: OGE's current manual and checklists on the OGE submission page (opens in a new tab) come first. Each rule below is quoted from the requirements map, which ties it to the manual; page numbers are the manual's printed pages, FC is OGE's Formatting Checklist, and LT its LaTeX Formatting Tips & Tricks.

If you advise students

What it is: a free LaTeX starter for RPI master's theses and doctoral dissertations, a plain-language guide, and a few browser tools. It is unofficial and community-made: RPI and OGE did not make it, and OGE has not reviewed it.
What students get: a thesis that compiles from the first day, on Overleaf or their own computer, with the title page, contents, page numbers, and references laid out by one shared class file. They write the chapters; no programming, Git, or paid software is needed.
What stays theirs: checking the PDF against OGE's current manual, and every decision this page lists under what still needs a human look.
Privacy: the tools run in the browser; nothing a student pastes or chooses is uploaded.
To recommend it: share the website, https://diyanko.github.io/rpi-thesis-toolkit/. It always points to the current version.

What the class sets

The class file (rpi-thesis.cls) supplies the layout defaults below; each area links to its rows in the requirements map. Content choices, optional short titles or captions, extra packages, and class edits can change the result. Check the finished PDF as well.

Area	What the class does	Manual
Page and fonts	US letter, 1 in margins on every page. Same font for text and page numbers; text ≥ 10 pt (12 pt Times-like). All text black, including URLs and links. Body double spaced (≤ 4 lines/in). Single spaced: captions, footnotes, block quotes, chapter attributions; references single with a blank line between.	§2.2 p. 16; FC; §2.1 p. 16; §1.3 p. 4
Page numbers	Front matter lowercase Roman; title is i, unnumbered; next page ii. Body Arabic from 1 on the first page of Chapter 1. Page numbers 0.75 in from the edge; bottom center on front matter and on the first page of each chapter, references, appendix; top right elsewhere.	§1.1 p. 1; FC; §2.2 p. 16; §2.2 pp. 16‑17
Title and copyright	Layout, degree wording, committee list, graduation month; optional copyright page ii	§1.1 pp. 1‑2; FC; §1.1 p. 1; §1.2 p. 3
Contents and appendices	Automatic contents and object lists; aligned numbers; lettered appendices. Short title or caption arguments can make entries differ from the document.	§1.3 p. 4; FC; §§1.4‑1.5 pp. 7‑10; App. A p. 38
Order (starter)	Set by the starter's `main.tex`, not the class: front-matter order, references before appendices	Table 1.1 p. 15; FC; App. A p. 38
Headings, captions, attributions	Four distinct heading levels; bold captions with a colon, numbered by chapter; `\chapterattribution` sets an unmarked note at the foot of a chapter's first page	§2.3 pp. 17‑18; FC; §§2.4‑2.5 pp. 18‑22; §2.8 pp. 27‑29

What still needs a human look

Contents and lists: Contents entries identical to body headings; the lists of tables and figures use the full captions, appendix objects included. Optional short arguments such as \section[Short]{Long} and \caption[Short]{Long} break this.
Manual: §1.3 p. 4; §§1.4‑1.5 pp. 7‑10; FC
Figures and tables: Tables/figures centered; table captions above, figure captions below; bold; one alignment; colon delimiter; chapter numbering with periods; no color. Each is legible and stays inside the margins on every page, long tables included. Lettered figure parts: only the letter in the figure, explanation in the caption, one letter style throughout.
Manual: §§2.4‑2.5 pp. 18‑22; FC; §2.5 pp. 22‑23; §2.2 p. 16
Landscape pages: caption reads with the table; the class keeps the page number top right, a placement awaiting OGE confirmation.
Manual: §2.4 p. 19, Fig. 2.4
Equations: Equations centered, numbered right in parentheses, multi-line number centered, every display numbered. Displays inside a lemma, algorithm, theorem, or proof may be unnumbered.
Manual: §2.7 pp. 26‑27; FC; §2.7 p. 27
Citation style: Citation style suited to the field, checked against the official guide. Sequential numbered styles: reference 1 is the first citation in Chapter 1; a caption's citation numbered where its table or figure appears in the body, not in the front matter. Access date for every URL (not DOIs), in the style's format.
Manual: §3.2 pp. 32‑34; FC (does not apply to non-sequential styles such as SIAM, §3.3 p. 34); §3.4 p. 34; FC
Copyright permissions: Reproduced tables/figures: full citation and permission or license wording in caption.
Manual: §2.6 pp. 24‑25
Attributions: Chapter attribution at the bottom of the chapter's first page, no mark, single spaced, citation style; wording per Table 2.1. Every reused paper needs one, sole-authored too.
Manual: §2.8 pp. 27‑29; FC; §2.8.1 p. 28
Wording: consistent heading and caption case, full department and committee names, no figures or references in the abstract.
Manual: §2.3 pp. 17‑18; FC; §1.1 p. 1; §1.8 p. 14

Where students record exceptions

Permissions appendix: one entry per uploaded permission file, listing the file's details, not the file (§A.1 pp. 38‑39).
Chapter attributions on each chapter's first page, and the Declaration of Co-Contribution for co-authored papers (§2.8.1 p. 28).
preamble.tex: the citation style and extra packages, which can override the class. The PDF's Creator property names the class version (changelog).

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