Graduate Skills To Know: Writing A Masters Dissertation

Most masters programs in graduate school require you to complete a kind of capstone project before earning your degree. A masters degree dissertation is common in most social sciences and usually involves extensive research on a focused topic and the creation of a comprehensive document (usually 50 – 75 pages) presenting your findings. This is one of the few documents very few students get enough practice creating, because it’s usually one that students will tackle just once in their lives. However, a lot of the skills students learn by writing research papers can be applied to a dissertation for masters degree. This article details everything you need to know about working on this capstone project:

How comprehensive does a dissertation have to be?

As mentioned above, the dissertation usually ranges between 50 – 75 pages and focuses primarily on a single topic with a handful of research questions answered in-depth. It’s significantly longer than master’s thesis length because it often incorporates much of the academic research you have covered over the course of your undergraduate and graduate work. While there are some limitations you might find in terms of the available resources – the dissertation is expected to be a definitive work to be used by other academics.

What is the first step towards writing a dissertation?

Working on a dissertation is often a year-long project that requires you to consult frequently with your academic graduate advisor. Before you embark on your research study, however, you must first receive formal approval by your advisor. You can find a masters dissertation proposal sample by searching online, by asking your advisor, or by checking with your department’s main office. You’ve probably benefited by the use of samples before for some of your other assignments, so it’s a good idea to use one for this part of the project as well.

What are the major sections of a dissertation?

The major required sections of your dissertation depend entirely on your department, but there are several sections that you can expect to have to include within most disciplines. For instance, a master’s thesis literature review is a common section that provides a summary of the available literature already in existence. Your inclusion of this section speaks to your background study and your justification as to why you believe the proposed research study should take place. Other sections include: an abstract, an introduction, a methods, a discussion, a results, and a conclusion.

Where can I find a sample resource to use as reference?

And finally you should aim to find a well-written masters dissertation example you can often refer to when you want to see what your own work should look like. Again, you can find examples in several places – but the best recommendations for you are checking on the web for professional service offering custom samples, asking your advisor for any copies he has archived, or by checking your school’s library for prior completed dissertations done by former students in your discipline.

You can get more information about the requirements of earning a masters by dissertation by checking with a professional writing and editing company. Several places have free resources for you to use at your convenience or you can pay to have an expert work with you personally on any of a number of things to successfully complete your project.