Latex-mimosis: A minimal and modern template for your thesis
github.com
github.com
in the US at least, individual (universities, schools, departments, degrees) have pre-existing Officially Sanctioned Templates For Theses, and normally failure to comply with them means your document isn't going to be accepted until it's reformatted.
For example, one of my degrees was awarded in 2016, and the version history of the thesis template I used goes back to about 1988, complete with commented out lists of contributors and notes to future generations.
There is scientific research done outside the US, and they even have PHD students. ;)
This class is perfectly good for most of Europe, as highlighted by the Readme. Most of the time, the only thing that is imposed is the general shape and the title page.
I would be very surprised to discover that universities as old as many in Europe are would have _less_ byzantine document requirements than the comparatively young American unis have.
I wish my MS granting university provided a template. We had guidelines that were in conflict with one another and some previous graduate's hobbled together template that matched "close enough". Every two or three students would get their document back from the graduate school for revision. It's one of the most frustrating parts of the process.
Another example (that I used): https://engineering.purdue.edu/~mark/puthesis/
I think the line is "will this be archived by the university library / indexed on proquest". If yes, the institution is very likely to have a template that you are required to use.
https://gsas.columbia.edu/student-guide/dissertation/formatt...
doesn't seem to be anything that particularly hard to follow with any template.
KOMAscripts wins, hands down. This is cute, but KOMAscript is just ridiculously featureful and customizable. It's also very well documented, can be adapted to any page format and has very good typography.
\KOMAoptions{paper=letter}