In R Is My Friend, in order to slow down his own thesis, Beckmw reviewed the length of the thesis in the University of Minnesota Digital Archive.
I selected the top fifty majors with the most theses and created boxplots to show their distributions. You don’t see much difference between the majors, although there are some obvious exceptions. Economics, Mathematics, and Biostatistics had the lowest median pages, but Anthropology, History, and Political Science had the highest median pages. This distinction makes sense given the nature of the disciplines.
How many pages should your master’s/doctorate have. thesis to be?
It depends on your field of study, the subject you have chosen to study and the university where you study.
It has a maximum range and a minimum range. However, many may think that there is only a minimum for him. Indeed, if your thesis exceeds the maximum range, you must write a request to your thesis director to receive the certificate.
STEM vs Non-STEM
As part of Dr. Ian Brailsford’s analysis, he also compared the duration of STEM PhD theses to non-STEM theses. He found that STEM theses tended to be shorter. In fact, he found that STEM theses averaged 159 pages and non-STEM theses averaged 223 pages. That’s a 40% increase on the average length!
While most universities will let you go over the word count if you need to, this comes with the caveat that you must have a very good reason for doing so.
In addition, your supervisor will need to endorse your application. This is to acknowledge that they have looked into your case and agree that it will be absolutely necessary to exceed the word limit to avoid unnecessary damage to your work.
Guidelines and approval: what to expect
No matter how long or short your thesis, the jury must approve it. The committee is responsible for thesis reviews of all papers. This team consists of the advisor and up to two faculty members. More often than not, staff members are more interested in the intellectual rigor than the word count of the thesis. However, it is better to follow the long requirements. It may be possible to have a shorter word count while still meeting all the other requirements of a great article. However, you shouldn’t risk being short.
The central objective of a thesis is to create a document that brings value to the academic world. Once approved, it will join the shelves of the university library. This is why you should consider the quality of research. If the professors set a minimum page requirement of 200 pages and you cannot reach 120 pages, it means that the main parts of the questions have not been examined. It can also mean that there are research gaps.
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