In my experience, formatting is just about the only thing that a department/university cares about (outside of the folks on the committee), and they will send back a thesis until they're satisfied with the formatting, and that means lost time. Perhaps throwaway_7274's department has a reputation for particular attention to (meaningless) detail.
The matter isn't really that something is possible only in latex, but that a department/university might have its own template/document class of arbitrary complexity that you would have to reimplement
> department/university might have its own template/document class of arbitrary complexity
I think there is a limit to how complex they can be. If you can't do it relatively easily in Word, then it's probably going to create too many complaints for the bureaucrats
I think there’s a Latex template you can use, or you have to make your own document that looks as similar as possible. It’s not a list of guidelines but a template that specifies how it’s supposed to look.
that is a good observation, but it actually proves that the riskiest thing you could do with your time is a meaningless credentialist PHD, instead of actually learning skills that rich people will pay you for immediately without the pomp and circumstance
