length and magnitude of thesis

[anwang]

I am about to start grad school this fall. I will obviously have to write a thesis in the first two years. I am honestly not too worried about course work, I'm more worried about my thesis. What is the length of a typical thesis? What has been your thesis experinece? Any advice?

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[WaitingKills]

My master's thesis was about 110-120 pages.

My advise, start early! I am a total procrastinator and it didn't leave me very sane towards the end of my program because of it. If you are able, start as quickly as possible when you get into your program and work steadily on it all the way through. Don't get caught in the "I have X years to complete it" crap.

 

[Ollie123]

The actual writing varies greatly in length depending on your committee. Some want you to cite every article ever written on the topic, others want something closer to a typical manuscript. Most want something in between.

Magnitude is what you make of it. Everyone I know encouraged students not to feel obligated to try and change the world with the thesis. Find an unanswered question you can reasonably do, and get it done seems to be the advice. Obviously it should be something people care about, but I wouldn't delve into anything longitudinal or anything like that. Work hard at it and you'll be fine. I think that's true of just about everything in grad school.

 

[cmuhooligan]

I am about to start grad school this fall. I will obviously have to write a thesis in the first two years. I am honestly not too worried about course work, I'm more worried about my thesis. What is the length of a typical thesis? What has been your thesis experinece? Any advice?

Mine was about 70 pages, and I also was worried about it a priori, but honestly, it was pretty painless!

 

[paramour]

As Ollie's already mentioned, it's going to vary based upon your institution and what your committee members want from you. My thesis was relatively short when it was completely done but my previous university & committee were of the belief that it needed to be kept manageable for later (and quicker) publication if we went that route. My current university, however, does not have that viewpoint and students are expected to spell out every single little detail, which usually results in a couple hundred pages.

Another piece of advice: Develop an organization system for your references as soon as you start searching. It will make life easier later in the process.

G'luck!

 

[JockNerd]

We can first-author a published paper and defend that instead of writing a masters thesis where I am. 😀 Yes, it does rock.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

We can first-author a published paper and defend that instead of writing a masters thesis where I am. 😀 Yes, it does rock.

Sweet!

What are you going to write yours on?

 

[JockNerd]

Sweet!

What are you going to write yours on?

Yeah, it really is awesome. I shortened a popular scale. I'm collecting the validation data shortly (which will also provide me with a nice big data set for one or two more papers).

There's no proposal or anything, so anything empirical you publish can work. If things start looking bad you aren't bound to the plan either, so you can transform your journal submission into a thesis.