Each student is required to research, write and defend a formal thesis in the senior year in partial fulfillment of graduation requirements. Topic selection begins as early as the second semester of the junior year and students progress through formal stages of rhetorical development over a period of months. Students are free to choose topics of interest to them, and the bulk of the research and writing is self-directed. Students work with assigned faculty advisors and the Thesis Committee, and must orally defend their work in the spring of the senior year before the faculty and parent community. There is no set page limit, but the average thesis is twenty to fifty pages in length.
Oral defense takes about an hour for each candidate.