masters dissertation word count: how much was yours?

My last masters asked for 12k as a dissertation word count whereas my current one is asking for 16k give or take 10%.

The above is fine with me because I feel on track with my project and I'm looking forward to doing it but I just find it interesting that wordcounts vary so much from one course to the next. At undergraduate my dissertation wordcount requirement was 10k and my friends was 6k.

I've also seen PhD courses that range from an end goal of wordcounts ranging from 40k to 100k.

All examples I'm referring to here don't seem to follow a subject specific pattern by the way.

What's your masters dissertation wordcount target for this year? How's your dissertation going? I'm trying to get some literature review written up already because I don't want to rush but on the other hand I can't justify procrastinating.

Reply 1

arguendo

14

Mine is 15k. I have an outline and some of the research done, but otherwise I'm leaving it until after exams are done.

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Reply 2

Jantaculum

10

Mine was 15,000 give or take 10% - but ended up as 49,000 including bibliography and appendices…….

Reply 3

sj27

14

My masters thesis is 25k (excluding bibliography but including references and appendices). No "give or take", it's a maximum. We can go under if we want (though it has been suggested to not do it by much) but not over. Quite honestly, it sounds a lot compared to the above but I am glad for it as it really allows me to get into the meat of it. If I had to limit it to 15k it would feel very superficial, though I guess I would have not chosen quite the same topic in that case.

Reply 4

Klix88

17

My Masters diss max word count was 20,000, with a 5% penalty for every 500 words over the limit.

However the numpty who re-wrote the postgrad handbook for our year included the bibliography in the word count and the department head wouldn't overrule it - despite agreeing that he'd never seen it done before. That knocked a few thousand words off for those of us who made a good job of the lit review.

Reply 5

Floob

1

The aim of my masters project is to produce an original research or review paper for a scientific journal.
No specified word count except that it must comply with the guidelines for the journal chosen.

So around 4k-8k excluding references as an estimate.

Seems like a bit of a cop-out now haha

Reply 6

jelly1000

21

My wordcount is 12,000. Haven't even got a supervisor yet so I've no idea what I'm doing on it.

Reply 7

k3ro

16

Mine is 6k words. Just hit 4500; I think it's going to end up being more like 5k, haha.

Reply 8

beautifulbigmacs

OP

19

I am so envying you guys with smaller word counts right now! Mind you there's a skill in being able to be succinct yet detailed within a smaller word count so fair play to that :smile:

Reply 9

Josb

6

There wasn't any wordcount, but I wrote 40K and 32K (I have two masters in history), some people wrote much more though.

Reply 10

gutenberg

14

Mine was 25k excluding bibliography and references.

Reply 11

redferry

19

Mine was 8000 excluding references.

I actually think its harder to have such a short word count, you end up having to cut a lot out.

Reply 12

Josb

6

Original post by redferry

Mine was 8000 excluding references.

I actually think its harder to have such a short word count, you end up having to cut a lot out.

Only 8K?

Was it a taught master?

Reply 13

redferry

19

Original post by Josb

Only 8K?

Was it a taught master?

Nope, just a science. I had to do all the fieldwork, data analysis etc before I could even start writing. Its pretty time consuming.

I did two research projects though, one was 6k and on 8k.

When you think about it the vast majority of publication word limits in the sciences are under 8k so it doesn't make sense to ask for a lengthy thesis.

Reply 14

Jgco2chem

11

Here's a story...my teacher's friend wrote this in his dissertation "If you have read all of this I will give you a bottle of Champagne" He then went to the tutor to receive feedback with a bottle of champagne and the tutor asked why the champagne and the student said no reason, because the tutor hadn't read all the dissertation.

Reply 15

Josb

6

Original post by redferry

Nope, just a science. I had to do all the fieldwork, data analysis etc before I could even start writing. Its pretty time consuming.

I did two research projects though, one was 6k and on 8k.

When you think about it the vast majority of publication word limits in the sciences are under 8k so it doesn't make sense to ask for a lengthy thesis.

I also had to do a lot of field work before writing my 40K words. :biggrin:

But it's more "quantity over quality" in France. :s-smilie:

Reply 16

ChaoticButterfly

20

Original post by redferry

Nope, just a science. I had to do all the fieldwork, data analysis etc before I could even start writing. Its pretty time consuming.

I did two research projects though, one was 6k and on 8k.

When you think about it the vast majority of publication word limits in the sciences are under 8k so it doesn't make sense to ask for a lengthy thesis.

Plus like you said you spend a lot of time doing experiments or other work before you can write stuff :yes:

Reply 17

redferry

19

Original post by Josb

I also had to do a lot of field work before writing my 40K words. :biggrin:

But it's more "quantity over quality" in France. :s-smilie:

There's a big difference between the social sciences and sciences as well. In science your thesis is more like a journal article., I didn't have to do much to mine to be able to submit them for publication.