How much input did you get into your master's thesis?

[psychgirl77]

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[cara susanna]

My advisor basically gave me a choice: I could do an idea of my own, or use a "prepackaged" study idea. I chose the former. But my program is really flexible in terms of letting students contact the research they want, even if it isn't necessarily a perfect fit with the professor's interests.

 

[edieb]

Most of the professors at my school almost explicitly tells us what we are going to study. For my dissertation and thesis, my advisor sent an e-mail saying "I strongly suggest the topic of your paper be XYZ."

 

[Ollie123]

Varies greatly across schools and even by advisor.

I had complete autonomy, aside from the obvious requirement that it fit within our general program of research (lab-based, experimental addiction research). Obviously if we want to pursue a known dead end, do something meaningless, or a 50th replication of something, they would probably not let that fly. Other people get pre-packaged ideas. Some people have a combination of their own idea with heavy input on design. Sometimes the advisor has a lot more input in the thesis then the dissertation. Some programs/advisors have a VERY strong "just get it done" philosophy about the master's and really discourage people from doing their own data collection, or anything that might slow progress. We have wide variation here...some master's theses are larger than the average dissertation, others are quite small.

Bit late now, but for those still applying - this is definitely a great question to ask students when you are interviewing. It also speaks to the importance of fit - in case you DO end up with an advisor who is more rigid about topics.

 

[aagman01]

Your masters thesis is basically a worthless exercise.

The best that can come out of it is either (a) a publication or (b) a product that is useful for your dissertation. However, that can be tricky because of the size of the thesis and requirements.

Its like my advisor said.....a good thesis is a done thesis. No one will ever look at it again, so try to turn it into some sort of useful product. If you can't do that or don't care, just get a quality product done as efficiently as possible.

I'm wondering what the norm is for the amount of input that you all got into the topic you wanted to do for your master's thesis. I've met with my advisor, and they literally told me 2 topics and said to pick one of them. I have no input into what I want to do, and was told that I should not add any of my own measures into the study (it is part of the prof's larger study) because that would take too long. I feel like I had more input into my honors thesis project and am kind of disillusioned here. Is this normal? I know all advisors are different, but I thought I would at least be able to brainstorm some ideas and contribute my own thoughts to the project.

 

[psychgirl77]

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[WisNeuro]

My advisor actually made me come up with my own topic and study to do, which was not like the experience that any of my classmates had, who just got handed a topic. I'm glad I had to do it that way, and I've got 2 papers under review from it right now.