What is the difference between a master’s thesis and a PhD thesis?
Essentially, both are scientific, but there are some important nuances you should know in order to get the best possible results for each type of thesis.
In this article, I will show you the 5 most important differences that you must pay attention to when writing your master’s or phd thesis.
By knowing these, you will not be surprised by the requirements of professors and examination offices, but will be perfectly prepared.
#1 Scope
The most obvious difference lies in the scope of the work. On average, a Master’s thesis is expected to have 60 to 150 pages of text, excluding bibliography and appendix.
A PhD thesis typically ranges from 200 to 400 pages. However, there are also outliers that lie outside of this spectrum. It all depends on the discipline you are in and the requirements of your research institution.
What is certain is that a PhD thesis should be more comprehensive than a Master’s thesis.
#2 Time spent
The second major difference lies in the temporal dimension.
Master’s Thesis
For a Master’s thesis, you usually have 3 to 6 months from the time of registering your topic.
If you’re worried that this time isn’t enough, you can also game thy system a little. In most cases, you have to write an extended abstract before registering your thesis. This is a 3-5 page summary of your research project. There is usually no deadline for submitting an exposé.
Consequently, if you want to maximize the time you have available for writing your thesis, you can already use the unlimited time you have for the extended abstract to work on your thesis.
In my view, registering your thesis is more of a bureaucratic formality. So why not start researching interview partners or reading more into the theory than necessary for the extended abstract before your timer counts?
Apart from that, you shouldn’t stress too much about time. If your priorities are clearly focused on your thesis and you divide your work into smart work packages, the time you have is completely sufficient.
It’s just part of the examination – are you capable of creating such a work within a defined period of time?
PhD Thesis
Writing a PhD thesis usually takes 3 to 5 years. It took me 4 and a half years to complete mine.
How long it takes you to write a PhD thesis depends on a lot of factors:
- The requirements of your supervisor(s)
- Whether you are part of a graduate school or some other fast track
- How you fund yourself
- Your teaching load
- The administrative work that is expected of you
- Whether your thesis is based on publications or a monography (more on this in a minute)
Here, I can give you the same advice as before. Do not stress out about the time.
Who cares if it takes you 4 years or 5 years. If you want to pursue and academic career, you can game the system here a little bit, too.
In academia, the clock starts ticking the moment you graduate from your PhD. Nobody care how long it takes you to finish your PhD but everybody cares about what you do in the time after that.
The best strategy here is to write up the thesis with a little effort as possible and put as much effort as possible into publishing papers.
It does not matter whether they are part of the story of your PhD thesis or not. The only thing that matters is having a lot of papers in your pipeline immediately after you graduate.
If you do your PhD to get two letters in front of your name and pursue a career in industry, then your strategy should be to write up your thesis as fast as possible. Let me know in the comments if you are interested in how I would do this.
#3 Originality
Originality can mean two things.
First, it can mean that you are pursuing a really unique idea. This could be bringing together different (theoretical) perspectives on an old topic or investigating an entirely new topic.
Second, originality can also mean to do “original” research. This means collecting unique empirical data that no one else has collected. In a master’s thesis, collecting original data is great, but it is not a must. For example, a great literature review could also make a great master’s thesis.
But for a PhD thesis it is almost inevitable that you collect or at least analyze a unique dataset. A PhD is only awarded if you can show that you have investigated a specific topic in more detail than anyone ever before.
Even if you do a PhD in let’s say English literature. You might not collect unique data, but you must deal with a specific question in so much detail that you can contribute to the current state of knowledge in your discipline.
#4 Theoretical Contribution
What often leads to question marks in the eyes of students is the role of theory within a thesis. Therefore, I would like to address this once again. Just because a PhD thesis requires added theoretical value doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use theory in your master’s thesis.
If you’re not clear on the difference between literature and theory, or you’ve previously assumed that the two are the same thing, watch a couple of more videos on my channel about what a theory is in social sciences. It’s really important to understand this difference. For other disciplines outside of the social sciences, it is not the quality of the theory but the degree of innovation you can achieve with your thesis.
In a master’s thesis, you’re not expected to independently develop or extend a theory. But anything you can contribute in this direction is very good! Approaches of new theory are for example inductively formed categories in a thematic analysis or the statistical verification of a theoretical relationship in a model.
For literature-based work, which can also constitute a thesis, the laws are always a little different, that’s clear. Here, it is most important that you not only summarize the literature descriptively, but that you analytically identify and reflect on patterns, themes, and contradictions. In the social sciences, you can also generate a theoretical contribution from synthesizing literature. Outside of the social sciences, a similar thing is possible, for example, with a meta analysis.
A good decision here would be to follow an established approach and do a systematic, narrative, or meta review. This way, you have a clear blueprint for your thesis and don’t have to come up with a structure for your literature review yourself.
#5 Assessment Criteria
Both master’s and PhD theses are scientific works. If, for example, you quote incorrectly or your illustrations are full of pixels, then this is not good in either case. In this respect, no differences can be made here.
Criteria for a Master’s Thesis
Of course, the bar for master’s theses is not so high in terms of the added value of the work for the general research landscape. If you write a master’s thesis that is formally and methodologically flawless, then you can’t really fail.
But you can earn a lot of goodwill by exceeding expectations. After all, no one says, “Oh, but 12 interviews are too much for a master’s thesis. That’s not good.” So if you really want to get the top grade, try to overdeliver in every category of a scientific study.
If you make the mistake of limiting yourself by the demands of a master’s thesis, then that would be a pity. At the same time, of course, there is no pressure at all to do that – but if you were to ask me, “What do I have to do to get the best grade?” – then overdelivering would be my answer. Surprise your referees by doing more than they are used to. This increases the chance that they will give you a better grade than usual.
Criteria for a PhD Thesis
For a PhD thesis, I can only give you the tip to team up with an early career researcher such a postdoctoral researcher or an assistant professor as your supervisors. This group of academics, to which I also belong, relies heavily on generating a high research output. If your PhD thesis can help with that and it answers a relevant research question or provides valuable data for that person’s research, then it will be reflected in your grade.
The more research output you can generate from the work on your PhD thesis, the better your grade will turn out to be.