Josy might not have any other choice but to stay with the HOTs if it means keeping her from being discovered by Maya's Dad.
I've theorised that Maya's Dad won't find out about Josy because a CPD (Convenient Plot Device) will stop her from going in the room and allow her to hide until he's gone. Knowing that Maya's Dad can come back into her room at any time, it will be decided among the 3 that Josy should stay with the HOTs to avoid discovery, hence the preview of her in their pool.
It won't be an ideal situation and Maya and Josy may not like it, but it would be necessary for the time being.
Dissertation, not thesis. There is a difference between the two, although it can sometimes be quite muddled, but generally a speaking a dissertation is done at the end of a bachelor's/undergraduate degree and a thesis is done as part of a Master's degree which comes after the bachelor's/undergraduate degree.
Also, getting your bachelor's/undergraduate degree doesn't mean you have to do a Master's degree or even have to do it at the same college/university, particularly if they don't offer such a course. From how Sage speaks in Ep 4, it would seem that she's not going to do a Master's degree as she talks about how she'll be done after this current academic year.
I doubt we're going to see any particularly long time jumps in this game, at least not long enough to move the story by months or years at a time. We might skip a few days or maybe a week, but that's probably about it.
Also, we don't necessarily need new characters and conflicts just because of the potential episode length. Most TV shows tend to have the same conflicts and main story threads continue throughout their whole 20+ episode season, they just move them along gradually throughout the season whilst throwing in several side stories to pad it out.
Will this be the winter of our discontent?
For an epilogue like in AL, we're likely to get some big time jumps. It could just be that it will jump to the graudation at the end of the 4 years or it will jump to 5, 10, or 20 years after college is finished, or maybe it could be both; graduation, then a jump to 10 years in the future.
Quinn rigged the rules of the game against Maya, so her and Josy "cheating" was fair game, as was them using the Arieth loophole to get around Quinn.