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How long should a dissertation be?

Captain Evidence sagely notes that the thesis research is a voluminous work. The diploma is 3-5 times more in volume than the abstract and 2-2.5 times more than the coursework (although the difference between the diploma and the coursework is not limited to the number of sheets). The standard volume of the thesis is 60 - 70 sheets. Minimum - 50 sheets. Bust, which will not cause any special questions - 80 sheets. It would seem that Cap can be thanked for this and complete the article. But we still try to consider the issue in more depth.

There are several nuances associated with the volume of the thesis, which students either do not know about or simply do not take into account. On special services that help students in their studies, there are many teachers and just knowledgeable people who will help in matters of the amount of work. Here is one of the good website to pay for essay writing or thesis writing.

Exceeding the volume of the thesis

For some reason, many students believe that the more they write, the higher the grade for the thesis will be. Perhaps this comes from a school where diligence and hard work were encouraged. It is interesting that if the lack of volume of the diploma is perceived by all students as a problem, then in case of exceeding the norm, many do not understand point blank: what is the mistake? What did I do?! On the contrary, I wrote a lot!

Do not think that if you write twice as much as you need, you will definitely get an "excellent" on the thesis defense. The main goal of writing a thesis is not to dump tons of facts on the members of the state commission, but to demonstrate the ability to independently think, analyze, and draw conclusions.

No monograph or dissertation is required from the student. And there are no monographs among bloated diplomas. Inflating the volume comes from the inability to highlight the main thing and passion for compilation. Often, guys who are sincerely in love with their topic and want to tell the world as much as possible about the subject of their research suffer from the “compilation syndrome”.

The theoretical part is usually inflated, as the student throws in there, as if into a piggy bank, pieces of other people's texts. And with the best of intentions! Here he sees something terribly interesting in an article or book, and well, he just cannot resist dragging it into his thesis!

Do I need a degree in liposuction?

A student who really wants to give out three hundred sheets to the mountain needs to clearly understand one important thing:

“An obese poodle is not yet a wolfhound. It's just a fat poodle.”

An excess of material that does not improve the quality of the thesis, does not contribute to the formation of new conclusions - this is the "obesity" of the text. The thesis should be in an athletic form: only carefully selected facts, conclusions. So do not be offended by the teacher when he demands to reduce the work. It's a pity? Imagine that you are a plastic surgeon. And perform liposuction of the diploma to give it the perfect shape and demonstrate the harmony of thought.

The "compilation syndrome" must be crushed in oneself with an effort of will. Understand a simple thing: if you find interesting material, others will find it in the same book. No need to plagiarize. Only unique ideas are valued. Someone else's material is only a support for the formation of your own text, and if you can do without it, do it. The diploma student should not suppress the scientific instructor, the reviewer and the state commission with already known facts, but should introduce something new into the development of the problem.

The volume of the thesis, which will not raise questions, is approximately 80 - 90 sheets. This is a third more than the minimum, so try to keep within. In exceptional cases, if you have everything on the case, and the volume is overtaken by data from empirical research, which, like words from a song, you cannot throw out, the scientific instructor may allow you to increase the volume to 100 - 110 sheets or use a font size, line spacing is smaller (for example, Times New Roman 12 and spacing 1.2).

But keep in mind that even if the scientific instructor allowed to increase the volume of the diploma, at the defense they will definitely ask you: “And what is it, dear, in your diploma there are more than a hundred sheets? Justify!".

Stretching volume

However, stretching the volume is also a serious problem, which can lead to the non-admission of the student to the defense. If the topic is disclosed deeply, with the permission of the teacher, the number of sheets can be reduced to a minimum of fifty, taking into account the title (there are topics where, with all the desire, it is difficult to type a lot of material). But with a superficial disclosure of the topic, it is better to work on filling the work, and not on trying to stretch a dozen pages by formatting.

The tricks that students go for are well known to teachers. This is an increase in margins and spacing between lines (and sometimes between letters), unreasonable division of the text into small paragraphs, the completion of a paragraph or chapter with several lines on a separate sheet, as well as attempts to inflate the volume by formatting the list of references, links. Please note that attempting to count the pages of the Applications is a violation of the standard for graduation theses.

If you really need it, you can only very carefully increase the line spacing from 1.5 to 1.6 or add a millimeter to the margins.this will not work, but sometimes it is enough for Word to move the paragraph to a new page. Just keep in mind that among the teachers there are such animals that the fields are measured with a ruler!

Incorrect counting of sheets in the diploma

This mistake is extremely rare, because by the fifth year even the most powerful brake usually learns that when writing abstracts and term papers, the text is printed on only one side of the sheet. For a freshman, ignorance of this fact is excusable, but the graduate student, of course, has already found out in practice for five years that the reverse side of each sheet should remain clean.

Nevertheless, just in case, we will use the help of Captain Obviousness once again and recall: the number of pages in the thesis that carry a text load coincides with the number of sheets. Sheets are numbered in the diploma.

Insufficient volume of the main part

A common drawback of the thesis is that the volume of the main part is too small. That is, in general, the volume of the diploma fits into the norm, but, say, out of 60 - 65 sheets, the main part is less than forty. It is quite normal if the introduction, conclusion, list of references, references, table of contents, title page as a whole take up 20, even 25 sheets. But at the same time, the main part should not be similar to the coursework. As a percentage, the main part usually makes up 70 - 80% of the total volume of the thesis research. Less than 60% is already a reason for improvement.

The ratio of structural elements is of great importance. One can imagine a diploma of fifty sheets, in which the main part will take up thirty (in some specialties this is enough). But, you see, the work in which the list of references takes as many as 10 pages, and the main part - 30 with a tail, does not look too adequate.

The ratio of the volume of structural elements

The insufficient volume of the main part is a special case of violation of the ratio of the sizes of the structural elements of the thesis. The disadvantage is too large or too small introduction, conclusion, too short chapters and paragraphs. The structure of the thesis implies compositional harmony.

For example, one of the common problems of graduate students is the imbalance of the theoretical and empirical parts. It is rare to write strictly 50/50, but a ratio of 2:1 is quite acceptable (usually a theoretical chapter comes out more voluminous, although it happens the other way around). The 3:1 ratio can already be considered problematic.

What to do, because there are no indications regarding the exact size of each structural element? We'll have to use logic and a sense of proportion!