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Master Thesis: Writing Tips

Writing a thesis is not the most enjoying part of a student’s life. After all, you are most likely done with all your classes and exams, and what keeps you away from graduating is this goddamn document called “Thesis”(or dissertation)!!!

Inevitably, I had to write a Master Thesis too, in order to graduate from my Master’s in Strategic Management, after two years of studying in Rotterdam School of Management. Unlike most students, I think I worked quite efficiently and methodologically, and for this reason I am going share the wisdom and knowledge, which I gained during the past four months…

Tip 1: Topic Selection

Tip 2: Cooperate with your professors effectively

Tip 3: Plan your project in advance

Tip 4: Set goals

Tip 5: Study A LOT of academic articles related to your topic

Tip 6: THEORY

Tip 7: Keep notes for everything interesting

Tip 8: Save your thesis everyday with a different file name

Tip 9: Find a fellow student to give you feedback

Tip 10: Presentation

Extra Tip: Be positive

In more detail:

Tip 1: Topic Selection

First of all, find a topic you really like. I repeat A TOPIC WHICH YOU ENJOY. You’ll have to work for a quite big amount of time on your thesis, so you have to love what you are writing about. OK, you heard this tip before from your professors, but you never really took it seriously into consideration. Do you like Social Media? Write a thesis about them! Do you studying about M&As? That’s your topic!

You will become an expert on your topic, so it has to be interesting for you. If it can help you with your future career, that’s even better! BUT BE CAREFUL: Don’t select a topic which is understudied and there is no theoretical background or accepted methodology in that specific field! This is what happened on my first attempt to write a thesis, I picked an understudied topic, and so after a couple of months struggling hard, I had to give up…

And how you find a topic? By reading reading reading academic articles, old theses, books etc…

After you find your “topic category”, eg Strategic Alliances, then you have to find a “niche” topic that haven’t been studied, as a category is really very broad. For example, my thesis category is “Strategic Alliances”, and my topic is “the selection of governance structure of an alliance”. Even more specifically, I am studying how different types of uncertainty affect the selection of governance structure! Try to do the same for your thesis, and then it will be much more clear what you have to do…

Tip 2: Cooperate with your professors effectively

Your professor (or coach) is probably the most important person in your life, while writing a thesis, if you don’t have a girlfriend/ boyfriend ! You have to gain as much as possible from your coach! I do not mean to take advantage of her/him, but rather to create a cooperative relationship that will be beneficial for both of you (yeah, professors don’t enjoy either reading your thesis, so you have to make it easy for her/him).

Here, you need to be particularly careful. Firstly, if you have the choice, ask a professor with similar research interests to yours to be your coach. If you don’t have that choice, simply ask if there is a possibility to switch to another coach (that’s what I did). Well, if you are stuck with a thesis coach, then you can ask about her/his research interests, maybe you share the same… If not, then probably you will not be able to help you as much…

BUT still, in order to create a good relationship you have to contact with your coach regularly and keep her/him up-to-date with what you are doing, arrange meetings every two-three weeks and discuss your progress and more importantly DO THE JOB THAT YOU HAVE TO DO. If a professor sees a lazy student, (s)he will not be either very keen on cooperating with you.

In case you need two professors, a coach and a co-reader, try to do the same. For me, the case is that my co-reader is like my coach, so I got help from 2 professors simultaneously! There are some of my fellow students that were close to finish their thesis, and met their co-reader only once, HUGE mistake…

Tip 3: Plan your project in advance

Plan your whole work in advance. Have a specific time frame, with final goal when you want to graduate, and set specific deadlines for yourself. Eg, you can say that I need 2 weeks to find a topic, 1 month to write the theoretical part etc…

Communicate your plan to your professors, so that they are informed on when you are planning to graduate and how intensively you are going work for your thesis.

Tip 4: Set goals

This is a tip very similar to the previous one… But it is worth mentioning it. Have a goal every day/ week/ month, depending on how you prefer to work. I had the goal of writing 1,5 pages per day. After my work was done, I could go home and relax or do whatever! In some cases I wrote 1,5 pages in 3 hours, so I had the opportunity to rest of the day, while in some days I had to stay at the library till late in the evening!

Tip 5: Study A LOT of academic articles related to your topic

Before you start writing your thesis or your proposal, before you do anything, start by reading a lot of journal articles, which are related to your topic. A LOT OF THEM. Study more than 30-40 articles, and keep the ones who are more related to your topic. Be careful at this point, don’t over-read, because it will take you a lot of valuable time. You will understand that after a while, you have read all the important stuff so there is no added-value in reading 20 more articles!

How to find articles? There are various ways… Let’s see:

a)    Google Scholar, type key-word that are related to your topic

b)   Older theses. Find other people at your Uni who studied the same, and see what literature they used

c)    References from the articles you already read. Eg if article A writes something about your topic, referring to article B, go download and read article B!

d)   Citation. This is quite similar to references, but it can be found from Google Scholar, it’s quite the opposite way. From Scholar you can see who used an article, so pretty important stuff can be found there!

Tip 6: THEORY

If you are writing an academic Master Thesis, you need THEORY to support your arguments. Most people can’t understand this point, that’s why they don’t write well-structured theses. For example, if you are writing about Strategic Alliances like me, there are various theoretical frameworks than can be used to explain them, from Transaction Cost Economics and Real Options to Knowledge-based View and Competence perspective. You have to study a lot of articles on your topic, and find which specific theories are used (can’t give better advice on that )

Tip 7: Keep notes for everything interesting

Keep notes for everything interesting you find. Keep notes for every article! When you find something interesting, don’t just underline it, but have a note book and write on Page ## of that article I’ve found this.

Tip 8: Save your thesis everyday with a different file name

I got this advice from a PhD student, and it really works. Save your document everyday with a different name. Eg Thesis_25-4 for 25 of April etc… This is specific useful. In my case, I had one part written and my coach told me to delete. Well, now after 2 months, she asks for that part back, so it will be no problem from me adding it again!

Also, save it in various locations… Save it on your laptop, on a USB stick and on an external hard-drive. It’s not a few times that I heard people losing some documents, by deleting them accidentally or because their laptop broke down! The best location to keep your thesis doc

The best way is to create a Dropbox account, which is actually a 2GB online hard-disc. You can upload there all your articles and Thesis documents, so even if you don’t have your laptop with, you can just login on your Dropbox account and continue your work…

Tip 9: Find a fellow student to give you feedback

It is very important to have 1-2 friends that can you give feedback on your work. I did this, mostly for the grammatical corrections of my Master Thesis. Of course you should do the same for your fellow student! Well, if I have some mistakes on this article is because I am writing it really in a hurry, and… I didn’t give it to any fellow student to correct it

Tip 10: Presentation

If you have to give a presentation, you should make it really simple, but complete, so even if people haven’t read your thesis, they would still be able to understand what you are talking about. Also, don’t go so much in detail; keep it short, 15 minutes and 10-15 slides! Moreover, you should practice a couple of times your whole presentation, as you will feel much more confident when is time to do it in front of your professors.

This is a very important tip too… Before your professors go out of the class to discuss about your grade, finish with the phrase:

For a Master Thesis, very satisfactory it was I think…

Extra Tip: Be positive

I meet a lot of people who complain all the time about their Master Thesis. They complain about how difficult it is, how boring it is, how miserable their lives is… Of course it is, if you cry all day about your thesis, how do you expect to feel better? Avoid complaining so much, and be positive! Also, try to be surrounded by people with a positive mood… The more you complain, the more it’s getting worse. Try to enjoy it, after all it’s your last months as a student! (This tip is dedicated to a good friend of mine, be positive, girl!)

I hope my tips helped you…

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May the Force be with you,

Master Tasos