Making the Step Up to a Masters Dissertation

If your undergraduate dissertation is a painfully fresh memory (or even a task that you’re currently toiling away on), the Masters thesis might not be something that you’re too keen to hear about.

However, we’re here to give some reassurance that a postgraduate-level dissertation won’t be an impossible ordeal. It’ll certainly be challenging, but it’s a challenge that you should relish – when it’s finished you’ll have something that you can be truly proud of.

With that in mind, I’d like to explain some of the ways in which a Masters dissertation is a step up from the Bachelors one and offer a few tips from my own experiences writing a thesis.

One of the most daunting aspects of a dissertation – at any level – is the word count. Longer than anything else you’ll have written at university and clocking in at around 15,000-20,000 words, the Masters dissertation is a bit of a beast.

I found that the best way to make the dissertation feel more manageable was to think of it as a series of interconnected essays, rather than as one huge piece of work. The outline of my own thesis followed this broad pattern: a 2,000-word introduction, three 5,000-word chapters and a 1,000-word conclusion.

In fact, I would say that if you pick a topic you’re genuinely interested in, the word count won’t be an issue. As long as you plan it properly and give yourself plenty of time, you won’t be struggling to bulk out your dissertation by the end (indeed, you might even find yourself wishing for a longer word limit!).

Even though the prospect of a 15,000-word piece of work is intimidating, this length does give you ample opportunity to chase down any number of odd academic tangents that a shorter piece of work wouldn’t have the scope for.

One of the joys of embarking on an extended research project is simply seeing where it takes you: before beginning my dissertation (in English Literature) I never would have imagined that I’d end up delving into 18th-century calendar reform, hollow Earth theory and the history of clocks.

During your Masters dissertation, you’ll be expected to situate your work within a wider scholarly context, assessing what others have written and explaining why yours is an original academic contribution.

You’ve probably already done this to some extent in your undergraduate thesis, but at Masters level the onus will be on you to demonstrate a nuanced critical awareness of the existing body of research. You should be able to identify gaps in this scholarship and give your own unique take.

To give an example from my Masters dissertation, I decided that the significance of a hi-tech duck automaton in a Thomas Pynchon novel had been sorely underestimated and set about righting this terrible injustice. True story.

Another difference between the undergraduate and Masters dissertations is the time of year in which you’ll be writing it. While many Bachelors theses are done and dusted by the end of the second semester, if you’re studying a Masters in the UK it’s likely that you’ll be given the whole summer to write your dissertation, with a deadline in early September.

This does have the advantage that you’ll be able to dedicate yourself to the postgraduate thesis, rather than juggling it alongside other modules. However, it’s obviously not fun when you’re toiling on your dissertation on a sunny July afternoon while your non-student friends sample the delights of a beer garden. And I pity the football fan whose dissertation clashes with a World Cup or Euros tournament (thankfully that wasn’t the case for me).

My advice would be to start writing as early as possible, leaving plenty of time to return to your draft with fresh eyes. Re-reading your work after a decent break away from the dissertation grind will most likely reveal plenty of opportunities for improvement (as well as quite a few typos!).

As I’m a pretty slow writer, I found it helpful to set myself extremely manageable daily targets (think 350 words per day), knowing that as long as I kept to this fairly lax schedule, I’d have a rough draft finished in plenty of time. Of course, everyone works differently, but this method did the trick for me and stopped me getting too burnt out.

Easier said than done when you’ve spent hours trying to track down the source of an elusive reference, or your data simply isn’t making sense any more. But your Masters dissertation is an achievement that one day you’ll be look back on with pride.

It’s a perfect opportunity to devote an extended period of your life to a subject that you’re (hopefully) extremely passionate about. And, when the dust has settled, chances are you’ll have made a genuinely original contribution to your scholarly field – and that’s something to be incredibly proud of.

For more information and advice, check out our guides to Masters dissertation proposals and writing a Masters dissertation.

Editor's note: This blog was first published on 08/05/19. We've checked and updated it for current readers.

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