5.4 Q&A Thesis process

Prevent such a situation by having at least a few leads in your pocket. Continue searching.

Yes, as long as he or she works at CiTG, ME or TPM and fulfils the other mandatory criteria for a committee member. This also holds for the chair of your committee.

You can change your supervising team before the kick-off and as long as TIL-1 is not signed and sent to the Board of Examiners,

Possible reasons could be: 

- You attracted supervisors before you had a contract with a commissioner;

- You changed commissioner, field, topic, focus;

- Your can't agree on direction with your supervisors;

- Personal mismatch.

You have to communicate the reasons for change to them of course.

If you want to change your supervising team after the kick-off/TIL-1, do this after you have consulted the TIL Graduation Coordinator. Use form TIL-1a to inform SPA.

Formally it is the day of your kick-off meeting. Ask for a signature at the end of that meeting or later (digital is also valid).

Planning: Always plan the four mandatory meetings via the secretary of the chair. She has agenda access and can also reserve a meeting room. Count with a lead time of at least a month before a mandatory meeting (KO, MT, GL, FP) can be held. The kick-off can be planned when you have the final draft of your kick-off document ready for discussion (discuss with your TUD supervisors). The mid-term meeting is not exactly in the middle of your planning period, but depends on actual progress. Some professors want to see results (from experiments), while others have an open agenda. That is why you have to schedule the MT, GL and FP meetings after communication / agreement with your TUD supervisors. These meetings should also be included in your Gantt chart. Be in control of your planning, otherwise you may loose a lot of time waiting for something you are actually in charge for.

Regularity: Try to have the regular supervising meetings every 3-4 weeks with your TUD supervisor(s). Alternate only if it suits you, because these supervisors rarely communicate. In the final stage of your thesis project you can ask for a shorter lead time and then have a few short meetings.

The summer break is useful if you can work on topics that do not ask for (frequent) supervision, like literature review, data manipulation, programming and writing. Lecturers are either free or prepare papers, prepare or update their courses etc. Few may have more time than during the regular course season. Study planning can therefor be challenging in this period.

If you have your mid-term meeting before the summer break, an ideal planning would be

- Greenlight meeting by the end of August
- Final presentation  / exam in September (at least 20 working days in between).

If one of the Thesis Assessment Committee members, not the chairman, is not available and postponing your defence leads to a major delay due to congested agendas, then the Board of Examiners has decided that he or she must prepare an assessment document and share this with all Committee members before your final defence meeting. Online attendance may be hampered by failing IT, which is why it should remain an exception.
A sudden illness is regarded as force major. The Chairman of the Committee should contact the missing Committee Member and try to find the same solution as mentioned above.
Changing the date of the Final Defence meeting is preferred, although it is not always feasible or acceptable.

Article 24 1b of the R&G BoE MSc says: "Before the actual presentation date, the student must have completed all the other examination programme obligations." As a consequence, you have to wait until that has happened.

My friends follow other - non-technical - masters. They have just two months for this project.
Non-technical studies, in particular mono-disciplinary ones, are organized differently. They are shorter, hence a shorter period is also available for the thesis. In many cases, supervision is fairly limited, if at all available. This is usually related with the high(er) number of students. Exam sessions are either mass-organized or not organized. Graduation at an external commissioner is less common or sometimes regarded as too risky, also in relation with the available supervision.

Preparation

• There are too many topics of your liking. Make a choice and focus on it.
• It takes more time than you planned to contract a commissioner. Start your search process as early as possible.
• You find it difficult to find the right supervisors. Discuss this with the TIL graduation coordinator or a lecturer/potential supervisor.
• You take far too much time to prepare a proposal. A proposal will never be perfect. Discuss with your supervisors when enough is enough and organise your kick-off meeting.
   

Making choices

• Your scope is too wide. As a result, you are busy with many issues, which may not be relevant for your main goal. The reason may that you oversold yourself or that your own ambitions do not match with the limited time available. Discuss a refocus with your supervisors.
• You cannot get the required data for your research (on time). Discuss solutions and responsibilities with your supervisors; involve the commissioner supervisor in this meeting.
• You postpone report writing in favour of action-oriented topics, like building a tool or applying it. This may lead to loss of overview, uncertainty about progress, planning issues, etc. Start writing just after the kick-off meeting and do this regularly.
   

Motivation

• You may be bored by literature analysis or don't like writing. Both are essential elements of a scientific study. Tool specialists also have to write about their work, otherwise non-experts (and managers) can't use their work. Adapt to the challenge. It may be nicer than you think.
• Your overall motivation fluctuates considerably. Take a break to find out if the study is the problem or something private. Depending on the outcome, either discuss with your supervisors and study advisors or find solutions to improve your private life.
• There is plenty more on motivation in other parts of the thesis portal.
   

Personal issues

• Illness or disorders (ADHD, dyslexia, etc.). Mention these briefly to your supervisors (when you start). We can provide more guidance and stability early on.
   

Supervision

• You don't match with one of your supervisors (content-wise or at a personal level). Discuss the matter and if necessary, ask for a change.
• It is very difficult to schedule the mandatory thesis meetings. Unfortunately, the agendas of chairs and many supervisors are quite full. Try to schedule some of these meetings well ahead, with a less strict connection to your actual progress. Change dates and purposes later on.

It may help if you not only send them a document to discuss but also a deadline (for a meeting). If they have to respond to an updated text, mark the changes clearly in your document or add a reading list to your accompanying email. Otherwise, they may think that you are not in a hurry, hence your request is put aside to make room for (seemingly) more urgent matters.