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DNB and DrNB thesis deadlines, counted from the day you joined

Enter your date of joining. You get the four dates NBEMS publishes, the examination cut-off your submission falls before with the margin in days, and five working-back dates of our own so the statutory ones are not a surprise. Nothing is stored and nothing is emailed.

Work out my datesRead the timeline guide
  • 180 days · protocol
  • 24 months · data
  • 26 months · submission
  • 80 pages

The calculator

The instrument

Your dates, counted from your joining date

Source · NBEMS thesis guidelines

Four NBEMS dates, five of our own suggestions, and the examination cut-off in between. Everything is worked out in your browser as you type.

Start with your joining date

Every date below is counted from the day you joined the post. DNB and DrNB trainees follow the same thesis calendar[2], so the course you pick changes the wording of the calendar entries and nothing else.

Your official date of joining the post, not the date of the counselling round.

Both three-year courses, on the same NBEMS calendar.

On the two-year post-diploma DNB? This calculator does not cover you. Your calendar is shorter at every point — the protocol is due by 90 days from joining rather than 180, the research is to be complete by 15 months and the thesis submitted by 16. Those figures and the document they come from are set out on the NBEMS format page.

The field is pre-filled so you can see the calendar working. Replace it with your own date — nothing is stored, nothing is sent, and no account is involved.

Next NBEMS deadline

—days

 

 

Counted from your joining date against the dates NBEMS publishes. It is not read from the portal, so it cannot know what you have already uploaded.

Submission and the examination cut-off

Thesis submitted by — month 26
The cut-off it falls before
31 December, for the June 2029 examination
Your 26-month date leaves 121 days of margin before that cut-off[2].
Late window closes — month 27
, on payment of a late fee[2]
Page limit
80pages

The cap on the submitted thesis, whatever your joining date[2].

If assessors ask for modifications
6weeks

From the assessors' remarks to submitting the modified thesis[2].

Your dated timeline

Nine dates, in order. Four are NBEMS rules[2]. Five are our own working-back suggestions, marked as such on every row: they are what we would put in a trainee's planner, not anything you can be held to.

  • Solid square — an NBEMS rule
  • Dashed circle — an MDThesis suggestion
  1. MONTH 3MDThesis suggestion

    Topic and design settled

    Our suggestion: topic, design and primary objective agreed with your guide by month 3, so the protocol has something definite to describe.

  2. MONTH 5MDThesis suggestion

    Protocol drafted

    Our suggestion: a complete protocol by month 5 — objectives, sample size with its source, proforma and analysis plan — leaving room for your guide's corrections.

  3. MONTH 5.5MDThesis suggestion

    Protocol with the ethics committee

    Our suggestion: with the Institutional Ethics Committee by month 5.5. That is only about a fortnight before the 180-day date, so treat it as the latest safe date and not an early one, and aim for the earliest meeting you can reach.

  4. DAY 180NBEMS rule

    Protocol with ethics approval uploaded

    Protocol, with Institutional Ethics Committee approval, uploaded on the NBEMS portal. 180 days from joining.

  5. MONTH 21MDThesis suggestion

    Analysis begun

    Our suggestion: start analysis at month 21 on the data already collected, rather than waiting for the last case at month 24.

  6. MONTH 23MDThesis suggestion

    First full draft complete

    Our suggestion: every chapter written by month 23, which leaves three months for your guide's corrections, the page limit and formatting.

  7. MONTH 24NBEMS rule

    Data collection complete

    Data collection completed. 24 months from joining.

  8. MONTH 26NBEMS rule

    Thesis submitted

    Thesis submitted. 26 months from joining.

  9. MONTH 27NBEMS rule

    Late window closes

    Late submission window, on payment of a late fee. 27 months from joining.

Take these dates with you

The calendar file holds the four NBEMS dates as all-day events, built in your browser. The dated list is plain text, for a planner or a message to your guide. Our planning suggestions are included in the text list, labelled, and deliberately left out of the calendar file.

Show the plain text
DNB THESIS TIMELINE
Joining date: 1 July 2026

01 Oct 2026   Topic and design settled (planning suggestion)
01 Dec 2026   Protocol drafted (planning suggestion)
16 Dec 2026   Protocol with the ethics committee (planning suggestion)
28 Dec 2026   Protocol with ethics approval uploaded
01 Apr 2028   Analysis begun (planning suggestion)
01 Jun 2028   First full draft complete (planning suggestion)
01 Jul 2028   Data collection complete
01 Sept 2028  Thesis submitted
01 Oct 2028   Late window closes

Submission cut-off: 31 December 2028, for the June 2029 examination.
The 26-month date is 1 September 2028, which is 121 days before that cut-off.
Page limit: 80 pages. Modified thesis: within 6 weeks of assessors' remarks.

Dates marked as a planning suggestion are from MDThesis, not from NBEMS.
NBEMS publishes these rules and may revise them. Confirm every date on the NBEMS portal and
against your own institution's instructions.
Calculated at mdthesis.com/tools/dnb-deadlines
What this tool is not. NBEMS publishes these rules and may revise them[2]. This page does arithmetic on the figures it publishes; it is not connected to the NBEMS portal and cannot see your submissions, your fees or any extension you have been granted. Confirm every date against the current NBEMS circular on the portal and against your own institution's instructions, and treat your guide's deadlines as the ones that govern. Dates marked as an MDThesis suggestion are ours, not NBEMS requirements.

The four dates

Stated, and explained

The four dates NBEMS publishes, and what each one really governs

The dates are short to state and easy to underestimate. What follows is what each one is for, and — where the published instrument says nothing about a penalty — a plain admission that it says nothing.

  1. Day 180

    Protocol, with ethics approval, uploaded on the portal

    The rule
    The protocol, carrying Institutional Ethics Committee approval, is uploaded on the NBEMS portal within 180 days of joining.[2]
    What it governs
    Two things have to happen before this date, not one: your ethics committee has to sit, consider your protocol and issue an approval letter, and only then can the protocol be uploaded. A committee that meets quarterly is the constraint that decides whether 180 days is comfortable or impossible, which is why our suggested dates work backwards from it rather than forwards from your joining date.
    If it is missed
    NBEMS publishes the date. It does not publish a schedule of consequences for a late protocol, and we will not invent one. What we can tell you is the arithmetic: data collected before ethics approval is data you cannot use, so a late protocol does not only cost you a deadline, it costs you whatever you collected while waiting for it.

  2. Month 24

    Data collection complete

    The rule
    Data collection is completed by 24 months from joining.[2]
    What it governs
    This is the date that makes or breaks a thesis, because it is the one you cannot recover from. Analysis, writing, your guide's corrections, formatting and the page limit all have to fit into the two months between this date and submission. A sample size that needs twenty-six months of recruitment is not a sample size problem at month twenty-three; it is a design problem at month three.
    If it is missed
    Again, the published instrument gives a date rather than a penalty. The practical consequence is the two months that follow it: every week of recruitment that runs past month 24 is a week taken out of writing, and those are the two months in which a thesis is actually made readable.

  3. Month 26

    Thesis submitted

    The rule
    The thesis is submitted by 26 months from joining.[2]
    What it governs
    This is the date the calculator puts in its own panel, because it is the one that interacts with the examination calendar. The 26-month date is not, on its own, the thing that decides which examination you sit: the cut-off it falls before is.
    If it is missed
    A late window runs to 27 months, on payment of a late fee. That is a published route and not a disaster, but it is a month of late-fee anxiety bought with a month you could have spent writing.

  4. Month 27

    The late window closes

    The rule
    Submission in the late window, up to 27 months from joining, is on payment of a late fee.[2]
    What it governs
    The late window is the end of the arithmetic this page can do for you. Anything beyond it is a conversation with NBEMS and with your institution, governed by the circular in force at the time, and no calculator should pretend to predict it.
    If it is missed
    Out of the published window, there is nothing for us to calculate and nothing we are willing to guess. Speak to your institution and read the current NBEMS circular on the portal.

The cut-offs, which are a separate question

Submission cut-offs are 30 June for the December examination and 31 December for the June examination.[2] Your 26-month date and the cut-off ahead of it are two different things, and the gap between them is the only number on this page that answers the question a trainee actually asks — which examination am I sitting?

Because the cut-off governs which examination a submission feeds, a thesis that arrives after one works to the next, and therefore to the following examination. That is a consequence of the published rule rather than a separate rule, and it is the reason the calculator prints the margin in days rather than a reassuring sentence.

One ordering rule sits underneath the 180-day date and is worth stating on its own: Institutional Ethics Committee approval precedes data collection.[5] A protocol uploaded late is a deadline; a patient recruited before approval is a record you cannot use, and no extension recovers it.

Two limits do not move with your joining date at all: a maximum of 80 pages, and 6 weeks to submit a modified thesis where assessors ask for one.[2]

Our advice

MDThesis planning suggestions — not NBEMS rules

Five dates of our own, worked backwards from the statutory ones

These are not requirements and nobody can hold you to them. They are the dates we would put in a trainee's planner, each one placed so that the NBEMS date behind it stops being a surprise.

Month 3Topic and design settled
Not a shortlist — one topic, one primary objective, one outcome and one analysis, agreed with your guide. Most of the trainees who lose the 180-day date lose it here, in a fourth month spent still choosing between two ideas.
Month 5Protocol drafted in full
Objectives, inclusion and exclusion criteria, sample size with the paper its assumed values came from, proforma and a named statistical test for each objective. A protocol your guide has not yet corrected is not a finished protocol, and the correction takes a fortnight you have to own.
Month 5.5Protocol with the ethics committee
Submitted for the earliest meeting you can reach. Work out what month 5.5 actually buys you: day 180 lands about a fortnight later, so this is the latest safe date rather than an early one. The approval letter is not in your control and the committee's calendar is not negotiable, which is why everything above it is dated backwards from here.
Month 21Analysis begun on the data you already hold
Master chart cleaned, coding settled, descriptive tables out. Starting analysis at month twenty-one on two-thirds of the data is how you discover a coding problem while there is still time to fix it, rather than in the week before submission.
Month 23First full draft, every chapter
Introduction through discussion, references in Vancouver order, tables numbered. This leaves three months for corrections, formatting, the page limit and the uniqueness check — which is roughly what those four things actually take.

Said once more, because it matters: the five dates above are ours. NBEMS publishes the four in § II and may revise them.[2] Your institution’s own internal deadlines and your guide’s instructions take precedence over anything on this page.

Questions

Asked most often

Questions trainees arrive with

The short answers, each one either the published rule with its reference, or a plain statement of what this page cannot know.

When is the DNB thesis submission deadline?

The thesis is submitted by 26 months from your date of joining, with a late window running to 27 months on payment of a late fee. Which examination your submission feeds is decided separately, by the cut-offs: 30 June for the December examination and 31 December for the June examination. Enter your joining date above and the calculator gives you both dates and the margin between them.

What is the 180-day rule for a DNB thesis?

The protocol, with Institutional Ethics Committee approval, is uploaded on the NBEMS portal within 180 days of joining. Two steps sit inside that one date: the ethics committee has to approve the protocol, and only then can it be uploaded, so the committee's meeting calendar usually decides whether 180 days is comfortable.

Is the DrNB thesis timeline different from the DNB one?

The NBEMS thesis guidelines cover DNB and DrNB trainees on the same calendar, which is why this calculator asks for your course only so that the calendar entries it builds are labelled correctly. Your own institution may set earlier internal dates, and where it does, those are the dates you work to.

What happens if I submit after the 30 June cut-off?

The published rule is that 30 June is the cut-off for the December examination and 31 December for the June examination. A submission that arrives after a cut-off therefore works to the next one, which means the next examination session rather than the one you were aiming at. That is a cycle rather than a fee, which is why the calculator shows the margin in days between your 26-month date and the cut-off ahead of it.

How long can a DNB thesis be?

80 pages is the published maximum. It is worth knowing at month three rather than month twenty-five, because a page limit is a decision about how many objectives a thesis can carry, not a formatting problem to be solved at the end.

What if the assessors ask for modifications?

A modified thesis, where assessors ask for one, is due within 6 weeks of their remarks. Reserve the time: six weeks is comfortable for rewriting a discussion and uncomfortable for recalculating an analysis.

Can I rely on these dates?

Rely on the arithmetic, confirm the rules. This page counts forward from the date you enter using the figures NBEMS publishes, and it shows its working on every row. It is not connected to the NBEMS portal, it cannot see your uploads, your fees or any extension you have been granted, and NBEMS may revise its guidelines. Confirm every date against the current circular on the portal and against your own institution's instructions, and treat your guide's deadlines as the ones that govern.

If you would rather read it than calculate it

The DNB and DrNB thesis timeline guide sets the same calendar out in prose, with the bonafide declaration and the assessment fee alongside it. This page is the arithmetic; that one is the reading.

The practice

Beyond the calculator

A date in a planner is not the same as a protocol on the portal

A calculator tells you when. It cannot sit in your ethics committee's queue, calculate your sample size or read your discussion chapter. That is the work, and it is what we do.

When a DNB or DrNB trainee onboards with us, these dates go into a tracker against the joining date, every milestone carries a countdown, and the senior doctor guiding you is alerted before a date rather than after it. The thesis stays yours: you satisfy the authorship criteria and we do not, and our contribution is mentoring, statistics, editing and compliance review.[4]

What we will never tell you is that a deadline can be waived, that an examination cycle can be negotiated or that a thesis will be accepted. Your institution, your guide and the NBEMS circular in force decide all three.

The same commitments, in summary

Protection of your work

  • Row-level security

    Every table enforces row-level access. You read your own record, and nothing else.

  • View-only streaming

    Drafts are streamed to you through an authenticated route, not handed over as a file.

  • Watermarked to you

    Every page you read carries your own name and email across it.

  • Download gated

    The final file unlocks when the fee is settled in full, and not before.

  • Mumbai region · DPDP 2023

    Your record and your documents are held in the Mumbai region, so India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 applies to them.

  • Anonymised data only

    We accept no patient identifiers. An NDA is available on request.

How this works

Instruments we work to

  • NMC PGMER-2023

    The thesis obligations set out in the postgraduate medical education regulations.

  • NBEMS

    DNB and DrNB protocol and thesis timelines, and the page limit, as published.

  • UGC 2018 · <10%

    The academic integrity convention we work to on every draft.

  • ICMJE · Vancouver

    Authorship criteria and reference style, applied as published.

  • No affiliation

    We work to these published instruments. We are affiliated to none of the bodies that issue them.

How this works

Authorship and the uniqueness check

  • Sole author

    Mentoring, editing, statistics and compliance. You remain the sole author of your thesis.

  • Not ghostwriting

    We will not write your thesis for you, and we will not be named in it.

  • MDSoftune

    Word-level uniqueness checking, built with REDENN Informatics Inc., Canada.

  • Every version

    Each draft is checked word by word before your university sees it.

How this works

MDThesis is an independent academic mentorship practice. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting for the NMC, NBEMS, UGC or any university.

Free feasibility call

Tell us your joining date and where the thesis stands. A senior doctor will tell you what to do next.

A senior doctor replies within one working day. No obligation. DNB, DrNB, MD, MS, DM, MCh, MDS and international programmes.

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Prefer to write to us first? Contact the practice. We mentor and edit; you remain the sole author of your thesis.

Document: DNB and DrNB deadline calculator · Revision 1 · Last reviewed

Issued by MDThesis, a brand of REDENN Informatics Private Limited

MDThesis is not affiliated with, approved by, accredited by or endorsed by the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences or by any university. The calculator is arithmetic on figures NBEMS publishes; the current circular on the NBEMS portal governs. Terms