Thesis

[sticky1]

Hey guys. I was just wondering how long does it take to write the thesis for a masters degree?

[janny_jan]

depends on the program, person, and study. Mine took 1.5 years. Some do it in 1 some take 2 years. most schools give you funding for 2 full years of study.

Check into the program you're interested in and talk to potential advisors about this.

[janny_jan]

Oh do you mean the actual physical typing out of a thesis? or the whole process of a Masters degree?

 

The actual "writing" of my thesis took about 4-5 months which included sending along sections to my supervisor, waiting for them to come back and making revisions. Again, this varies with each person and program.

[sticky1]

depends on the program, person, and study. Mine took 1.5 years. Some do it in 1 some take 2 years. most schools give you funding for 2 full years of study.

Check into the program you're interested in and talk to potential advisors about this.

 

When you finish doing all the experiments in the lab and the graduate committee gives you permission to start writing the thesis, how long does it take you to write it?

[astrogirl]

The actual writing can take anywhere from a few months to more than a year. It depends partly on you and partly on how easy it is to get your committee members to actually read things. I don't recommend waiting until your research is done to start writing. Start as early as you possibly can. Start writing introductory and lit search chapters as soon as you get your topic approved, and write up results from your experiments as you get them. Just set aside a couple of hours a week for writing from the very beginning, and you will get done a lot sooner. And give people drafts of chapters as you go along, even if you're still doing research. Sometimes you'll give people a draft to read, and they'll take a month to read it and then give it back to you with a bunch of changes to make. Then it's another month before you get the next draft back and so on. That's what can make it take more than a year.

[sticky1]

The actual writing can take anywhere from a few months to more than a year. It depends partly on you and partly on how easy it is to get your committee members to actually read things. I don't recommend waiting until your research is done to start writing. Start as early as you possibly can. Start writing introductory and lit search chapters as soon as you get your topic approved, and write up results from your experiments as you get them. Just set aside a couple of hours a week for writing from the very beginning, and you will get done a lot sooner. And give people drafts of chapters as you go along, even if you're still doing research. Sometimes you'll give people a draft to read, and they'll take a month to read it and then give it back to you with a bunch of changes to make. Then it's another month before you get the next draft back and so on. That's what can make it take more than a year.

 

Hi astrogirl.Do you usually finish the lab experiments within the first 1.5 years of masters and then start writing the thesis?

[RiceWine]

Hi astrogirl.Do you usually finish the lab experiments within the first 1.5 years of masters and then start writing the thesis?

 

you can definitely start writing the introduction before doing any experiments

[sticky1]

you can definitely start writing the introduction before doing any experiments

 

How can you start writing the thesis before doing any experiments?? How is the thesis usually structures?

[janny_jan]

Yea I started writing my lit review before my experiments started. if you do a little bit every day, it'll make your life easier. Also, keep in touch with your supervisor and send him regular excerpts from your writing to make sure you're on the right track. the last thing you want is all your work to be moot because its not what he/she wanted

[synch]

I just did the actual writing of my thesis. I did it in 2.5 weeks. I do not recommend this to anyone, ever, unless you really enjoy not sleeping or eating, and being a stress mess all the time.

 

I did try to start earlier, as has been recommended here, with the introductory sections, etc. I had several false starts, and didn't get started in earnest until a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, the date that my thesis has to go to my external reviewer is this week, so it had to be done on this ridiculous timeline.

[astrogirl]

Yeah, if you wait to do the actual writing until all the research is done, there's a good chance you won't get done on time, especially if your supervisor and committee are busy and take a long time to give you back drafts and are then really picky when they do give them back. And in an ideal world your research will get done after 1.5 years, but that's not always the case. Here's a general outline of my master's thesis so you know what the structure is like:

 

1. Introduction - What is the problem and how are we going to solve it? How is solving the problem useful to the field in general and how is this approach different or better than others?

2. Background - Basically a lit review and definitions and explanations where necessary.

3. Observations and Data Reduction - Where my data came from, how I got it, why I used these particular techniques, problems I encountered, how I processed and calibrated the data, how I made the measurements I needed from the processed data, how I did my statistical analysis.

4. Data and Analysis - What I found and what I think it means.

5. Conclusion - To what extent did my research help solve the problem and what do I think the next steps need to be.

6. Appendix - Tables of data that no one will look at except for the one master's student who is now doing something similar.

 

Some people might split things up differently, but that gives you an idea of what all you have to cover. Chapters 1 and 2 and even probably much of 3 can be done before you have any results! And they are good things to work on if you're sitting around waiting for an experiment (or in my case, sitting in the observatory taking pictures all night long and going up to move the telescope every so often). You can get a good start on 3, but you may end up doing some editing if some of the stuff you try doesn't work and you need to change your approach.

[Starling]

Also, starting to write early will help you figure out where the holes are and what experiments you need to do to fill them. It's a good way to organize your data, too.

[The Law]

Great tips guys!

[LostLamb]

If you're like me, it isn't worth starting to write until you know that your project is feasible. Things can change and if you start an introduction along certain lines it may not be very useful if your project goes in a completely different direction.

 

If nothing else, you *must* start doing literature searches AND reading from the start. Collect papers and file them under topics so that you can find info easily when it does come to writing time. I highly recommend getting a hold of a reference managing software (ie. EndNote) and to start building your bibliography sooner rather than later.

 

In terms of writing...I was a bit of a procrastinator so I took probably 9 months (yea, it was like gestation sometimes!!) but I think I did the bulk of writing/analysis in 5 months.

[janny_jan]

Oh! And if you hit a writers block (as I did every 30 seconds during my discussion), write your acknowledgments! They make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside but also make you feel like you've been productive since you just wrote a legit requirement of your thesis!

 

Also, your discussion will be the toughest part to write. Dont leave it to the last minute and think you can bang it out in one night. This is the part where you actually prove you can be a 'Master" of something

[GoReds]

I would check with your supervisor if you can insert your papers as chapters of your thesis. That is what many students in my lab have done.. it will save you a lot of time..

[Dr.Henderson]

My writing has taken about five months, with the majority of that time being spent waiting to get drafts back. To write the entire first draft it took about two months.

 

Fortunately I had saved a whole lot of time by having done a very thorough thesis proposal (required at my school) as well as a funding proposal. Most of my methods and a lot of my introductions were already done for me.

 

In my program its pretty standard to have your thesis broken up into chapters, an introductory chapter that is much like a lit review and provides background information and an introduction to the overall issue to be examined. That's followed by 2-4 data chapters which are the actual experiments themselves- each is written up as though they could be their own publishable paper. Finally there is a synthesis or concluding chapter where you bring everything together.

 

I concur with the advice given before me, do what you can as early as you can, even if you have to change some things its a lot easier to edit than it is to write from scratch. Get your introduction stuff done as you're planning what you're going to do, write your methods as you are actually implementing them, then you're left with data analysis and discussion, and that's not that bad.

 

Good luck!

[astrogirl]

I would check with your supervisor if you can insert your papers as chapters of your thesis. That is what many students in my lab have done.. it will save you a lot of time..

 

This is an awesome thing to do if they will let you, but many departments will not, which I think is ridiculous.

[Charms]

This is an awesome thing to do if they will let you, but many departments will not, which I think is ridiculous.

 

Yeah, I don't know of any departments that allow Master's students to use the "alternative" thesis format.

[skp1187]

what does it mean when they say you have to be able to defend your thesis??

 

thanks

[Dr.Henderson]

what does it mean when they say you have to be able to defend your thesis??

 

thanks

 

Defending your thesis is an oral examination in front of your committee members (your supervisor and however many others are required to be on the committee) and an external examiner (someone who is an expert in the field and is from a different school or at least a different faculty).

 

There is some variation on the theme, but at my school you give a 20 minute presentation summarizing your work and then there are 3 rounds of questions from each person on the examining committee. You need to be able to answer their questions satisfactorily in order to pass the defense. After that, they ask the audience and the candidate to leave the room, and they deliberate on the result.