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.

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contrarian1234 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

While there are formatting guidelines, I've never seen them so specific that you could only easily do it in Latex. Is that really common?

I've never actually see it as the assumed default option.. Maybe a decade back I could see that.. but not now.

	▲	afiori 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		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
	▲	echoangle 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		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.

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chickenzzzzu 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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