Undergrad Thesis

[medical22]

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How many of you have done an undergrad thesis? Is it required in your school or is it optional? What did you write it on? How long did it have to be? What are the benefits of writing one?

 

[Warren P. Cheswick]

Did it as a Fellow Research Project. It was optional but I am one of 70 stduents at my school to do it. It ended up being around 75 pages all saidand done. It looked at Agression and self-esteem (psychology department approval) based off an experiement I ran for the year.

As for eenefits it was fun jsut running an experiment, jsut really redious work and hard to do sometimes. There were days I'd go to lab and sign people's form jsut cuz i was tried of running it.

Oh well i loved it...when I turned inthe paper and got my 6 hours of "A" credit

 

[amonkeybutt]

at my school, one could choose to do an undergrad thesis in order to graduate with honors in their major. the benefits are of course, the actual experience of researching something you're interested in, the honors, the experience of defending your work in a public forum, and if you haven't published, a thesis serves as a proof of your scientific writing and research abilities.
the length and topic of course depends on the work you do and your school's requirements (but generally there shouldn't be a "minimum" length, as many of my professors would say, "make it as long, or as short, as you need to say what you want to say").
i definitely recommend doing it if you have an interest in your topic and have the time. i talked about it in my personal comments and during my interviews.

 

[MorningLight2100]

I am currently working on a thesis in Biochemistry. At my college, the "protocol" for theses vary with the department; in some cases, all students are required to do a thesis, in others, you can just choose to pursue one, as an elective. In my department one can actually only do a thesis if invited, through the Chemistry "Senior Honors Thesis Program."

I absolutely love the work. Certainly, the hours are long and the anxiety of completing it can be draining, but the rewards are wonderful. I'm studying brominated tryptophan and its role in antimicrobial peptides; the typical length of a thesis in this department is 80 pages, I'm halfway there so far.

The only thing I would suggest is that if you complete a thesis, make sure you have a bit of flexibility in terms of your other classes. Last semester my schedule was packed, and it didn't make working on the thesis a joyous task. But as long as you're realistic, it can be a tremendously enriching experience.

 

[irongirl]

I'm working on my required senior thesis right now. I'm a biology major, and I decided to do a research project on the expiration of antibiotics. I'm looking at the effectiveness of expired antibiotics and the effect of long-term exposure to various environmental factors on the effectiveness of antibiotics (temperature, light, and air). Similarly, I was required to do an independent research project during my sophomore year (it's like we do a senior thesis twice here). That time I studied antibiotic resistance in beta hemolytic Staphylococci that I isolated from throat cultures of students at my school.

 

[THE instiGATOR]

Yeah...the senior thesis...I should be working on that now, shouldn't I??? Thanks for the reminder.

In my major, it's optional. Basically you have to keep a 3.5 upper division GPA and a 3.3 chemistry GPA to get any honors. If you want high or highest honors, you are required to perform 1 year of research (minimum) and submit a thesis. A committee then looks at the quality of your thesis and your grades to determine whether you will get high or highest honors.

Kinda sucks if you kow your thesis is going to be pitiful. I guess I'll have to make my reseach sound more exciting than it actually is.

Mine will probably be about 40 pages total. Any more would be overkill. Maybe they'll give me high honors for saving them time! 😀

 

[cm7b5]

I did an honors thesis in biochemistry at my school...I was the only one in biochemistry to do one...as it is quite grueling...as compared to chem or bio alone....mine was over 80 pages in length....but it's not so much the length of the thesis, but the EXPERIMENTS!! I was doing protein purification, which is quite tedious.....and difficult..especially when you design your own protocol....but the benefits of graduating with honors are great...as well as the excitement one gets when they publish....i think overall..it was worth it.....

 

[Hopkins2010]

I recommend the experience, and had similar experience with it as MorningLight did. It was severely taxing at times, but well worth it in the end.

My thesis was on the design of a novel type of combination pacemaker/ICD based on an FPGA model.

Total length, about 120 pages, but like everybody else said, its highly variable for each person.

My thesis was part of the schoolwide honors program. 2 years of research required, submission of an undergraduate honors thesis, and about 25 semester hours worth of honors courses and honors colloquiua to complete.

 

[megkudos]

I chose not to do one (they are optional at my school) and I am very glad I don't have the work to do right now and can relax!

 

[Sonya]

We're NOT allowed to do one. We can do research, but that's all. No thesis associated. There isn't even an Honors program!!! Just magma cum laude and stuff when we graduate.

Maybe that's b/c i'm engineering??? other engineers noticed this? If i were a bio major, there would be honors thesis, and honors program and all that snaz. I suppose i'd do it. There IS the senior design class, which i'm managing to avoid.

 

[Jova]

I did one. It took a lot of time, like over a year. In all, it was 8 pages!--in journal format. (I cannot believe some of you wrote over thirty pages!--What could you possibly have to say that takes that many pages?)

 

[dustinspeer]

I am doing one for Math honors. Mine is Income Stratification and so far looks to be around 75 to 100 pages. I am presenting at seminar in April and hope to submit for publication by then too.

 

[jase133]

Doing an honours here as well, except they make us do NOT ONE but TWO separate research projects. Right now looking at smooth muscle cells and the mechanisms by which they contract (independent of Calcium). Did some clinical biochem research last semester, really medicine related. Looking forward to talk about these things in interviews, of course. 🙂

Oh yah, the capped our limit to the # of pages to be 20. Really sucked coz I needed 1 extra page to thank my supervisors (which I didn't).

 

[gizzdogg]

I'm with JOVA. My thesis will be between 10 and 15 pages and in journal format. The attitude in the department here is that a 50+ page thesis is a waste of the faculty's time. Still, I'm amazed that people can reach the 80 page mark! what do you all put in those 80 pages? Just curious....

 

[dustinspeer]

Originally posted by gizzdogg:
•I'm with JOVA. My thesis will be between 10 and 15 pages and in journal format. The attitude in the department here is that a 50+ page thesis is a waste of the faculty's time. Still, I'm amazed that people can reach the 80 page mark! what do you all put in those 80 pages? Just curious....•••

Mine is going to be about 0 in journal with less graphs, but most of mine was charts and graphs.

 

[Hopkins2010]

Originally posted by Sonya:
•We're NOT allowed to do one. We can do research, but that's all. No thesis associated. There isn't even an Honors program!!! Just magma cum laude and stuff when we graduate.

Maybe that's b/c i'm engineering??? other engineers noticed this? If i were a bio major, there would be honors thesis, and honors program and all that snaz. I suppose i'd do it. There IS the senior design class, which i'm managing to avoid.•••

I was a EE/CE major and we had the normal honors program/honors thesis like any other major. Not too many EEs elect to pursue it however, since you really dont need it to get a job. Only if you are going to grad/med school does it make much significance.

By the way, my senior design class was BY FAR the best course I took in college. Enormous time commitment, but it was great working in a big team with all my friends. I'd highly suggest it.

I dont see why there are a lot of people asking about length. Its very project-dependent. For my project, giving only 20 pages just wouldnt do it justice because I needed to describe all the components of my design in detail and do lots of experiments in the model, as well as in vitro and in vivo. For publication purposes, obviously I'd only cover the highlights in a "black box" sort of fashion, describing only the top level functionality.

Our honors program also requires 2 separate research projects, each one lasting 1 year. Its no wonder that 90% of the people that enter the program drop out before graduating. If I wasnt planning on pursuing medical research, it would be a great waste of time in my case.

 

[Coalboy]

At my school, in the computer science department we had to do a thesis; if you did a good job, you got honors at graduation. My topic was Digital Signatures, which is a branch of cryptography. It wasn't original research like some of you all are talking about (my hat is off to you), but more of a survey on the subject. It ended up being about 50 pages long, I think. It was a pretty hellish experience, but I was happy with the result, and I think I got a lot out of it. Anyway, here's a link if you're interested:

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/carruthe" target="_blank">Thesis</a>

 

[Firebird]

We have to do what is called a "capstone project".

It's basically a written paper and an oral report. For chem majors like myself, it usually includes some kind of research. For education majors, they count student teaching as their capstone.

So I suppose it's something similar