A Sophomore or Junior’s Guide to the Senior Thesis

Written by Christine Rose

A senior thesis can offer an amazing opportunity to dive deeply into a subject that intrigues you. It can also be an incredible, perhaps daunting, amount of work. So below, to add some clarity and hopefully make this seem less daunting, we’ll explore 

• what exactly a senior thesis is

• how to decide whether to write one

• how to choose your subject matter

• how to find an effective advisor

• a time management checklist

• an example to illustrate how you can work toward your research question

• a sample timeline

Sound good? Good. So …

What is a Senior Thesis?

A senior thesis is a chance to investigate a topic, author, literary or artistic style, historical event, policy problem, philosophical or theoretical question, or psychological-sociological issue. It is a substantial piece of original research and writing that you’ll need to start contemplating during the first semester of your junior year (or earlier). Want to see a sample timeline? Click here.

The truth is, when it comes right down to it, senior theses don’t have a lot in common. Once you factor in what discipline you are writing in, such as the humanities (e.g., philosophy, literature, art history, classics), social sciences (e.g., anthropology, sociology, psychology, politics, economics, history, geography, linguistics), or natural sciences (e.g., physics, math, chemistry, biology), they don’t tend to look alike. A senior thesis in psychology, for example, is often a year-long research project—perhaps in conjunction with one of your faculty advisor’s labs—where you might design and conduct your own study utilizing human subjects. Or maybe monkeys. 

A senior thesis in literature, on the other hand, will likely involve studying a movement, trope, author, or theme, and your sources will involve a combination of fiction, historical context, literary criticism, and literary theory. At many schools, a thesis ranges from 80 to 125 pages. At other universities, as few as 25 pages might fill the requirement. Regardless of department, topic, and length, the senior thesis is: 

• Likely the most daunting academic project you’ve taken on thus far

• A major commitment of time, brainpower, and energy

• A stepping stone to graduate-level research

• A marathon, not a sprint

• A precious opportunity to work closely with a professor

• A rewarding endeavor for those with a genuine interest in research and analysis 

• A living nightmare for procrastinators and people who don’t enjoy wrestling with the same concept for an extended period of time

When Should I Start Thinking About It?

Now! If you are reading this your first or second year of college, outstanding! If it’s your junior year, great! If you’re already a senior, it’s never too early to begin thinking about graduate school! 

If you haven’t already, here is some invaluable advice:

Get to Know Your Professors!!!

This advice holds for all students, whether or not they write a senior thesis. How?

• Take a seminar that limits the number of students so you have more time with them in intimate, discussion-based scenarios.

• Go to office hours. Professors love it when students show up to ask questions or talk further about a topic that came up in class. It’s also a good opportunity to realize that they are human.

• Investigate the possibility of a research assistantship (RAship).

• Attend campus lectures sponsored by your department on topics pertinent to your major. Professors will be there, and there is often a chance afterward to socialize informally (if you’re lucky, with free snacks). 

Good Reasons to Write A Senior Thesis

Deciding to write a senior thesis is a personal choice (unless you attend one of the few schools that require it of all graduates, such as Bates, Haverford, Princeton, Reed, and Scripps). It’s also a significant time commitment! If you are trying to determine if this experience is right for you, read through the following descriptions to see if they resonate. If so, you might enjoy writing a senior thesis.

• You love digging deep! The thought of knowing everything that has been published about whether woodpeckers get headaches, mosquitoes like cheese, or if “Netflix and chill” qualifies as a modern courtship ritual excites you.

• You like the idea of engaging in detailed scholarly conversations by analyzing, dissecting, and critiquing really, really, shockingly specific topics, such as William Randolph Hearst and the power of the press (history); the Latinx vote, immigration, and identity in political campaigns (politics); cisnormativity in patient-provider interactions (gender studies); the effects of low-dose radiation on zebrafish (biology); iterations of critical race theory in the 21st-century American popular imagination (African-American studies); random matrix theory over finite fields (mathematics); conversion narratives in the wake of 9/11 (religion); or Zulu traditions in pregnancy and birth (anthropology). 

• You’ve written a short paper about something and in doing so realized how much more complicated and fascinating it is than you initially thought. 

• You are pretty sure some kind of graduate school is in your future and want an opportunity to test the waters to see if this kind of endeavor is right for you.

• You like thinking about research designs, methodologies, conceptual frameworks, and theoretical concepts.

• You feel well prepared to tackle the challenge, and you have identified a faculty member you trust to guide you through the process.

• Your college requires one.*

*If you read through this list and landed on this one, reread the list and reinvent yourself! There is always something—some angle, some topic, some approach, no matter how weird, nerdy, alternative, or conventional—that can get you genuinely engaged.

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Tip: Talk to current seniors in your major and ask them the pros and cons. Then, take that information and create your own personalized pros and cons list. Once you have your lists, read through them and ask yourself how you feel about the possibility now. And don’t simply go by the number of items you have on one side. It might be that you have a bunch of cons and only two pros, but the way you feel about the two pros outweigh the negatives on the con side. 

Good Reasons NOT to Write One 

There are a lot of myths surrounding the senior thesis, as well as very good reasons to decide that this is not the best way to spend your senior year (and likely the summer before it):

• You think you need to write one to get into law school.

• Your parents think you need one to get into law school.

• You tend to put things off or struggle with time management. 

• You get bored easily or you don’t want to sacrifice all the cool classes you could be taking your senior year to focus on one topic in depth.

• Wikipedia is still your go-to resource when you have a research assignment, and you aren’t excited to discover that there are far better (and more reliable) resources out there written by experts in the field.

• You want your senior year of college to be heavy on the social and cultural opportunities college provides and light on the academic challenges.

• We all find writing to be sometimes scary, frustrating, intimidating, tedious, or even painful (you are definitely not alone), but you are someone who never feels the reward after the struggle is over.

Preliminary Work

If you're still here, that probably means you're leaning toward writing a senior thesis. Congratulations! Let's talk through the important pre-planning considerations that can make all the difference between a positive and negative experience. 

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Tip: Before you begin, it’s good to understand what kind of document you are expected to produce. Ask where your department keeps copies of past senior theses and glance at a few. Pay attention to their style, language, organization, length, use of secondary sources, and number of citations. Ask yourself, Does this look like the type of thing I’d like to produce?

Identify Research Interests and Potential Topics

Not sure how to decide what to focus on because the commitment feels like marital “till death do us part” and you see lots of fishies in the sea? Try the following brainstorming exercise:

Get a piece of paper and jot down all the possible topics you can think of. Nothing is off-limits here—nothing is too trivial or grandiose. For the moment, don’t even limit yourself to traditional topics in your major, since there is tons of room for cool interdisciplinary projects. The only rule for this exercise is that you must be genuinely excited about the topic. Explore questions like these:

• What do you want to know more about? 

• What fascinates you? 

• What ideas do you find yourself mulling over? 

• What bothers you? 

• What surprises you? 

• What compels you? 

Spend 20-30 minutes on this list. Sleep on it, then revisit the next day. Spend another 10 minutes adding anything new that has come to your mind and crossing off anything you’re not still keen on. Then …

Narrow Your Options

A few possibilities here for narrowing your options if one doesn’t leap out at you as the clear winner:

1. Try clustering them to see if there is rhyme and reason behind the mad brainstorm

2. Ask yourself what resources you’d need access to in order to do the topic justice, and find out if those will be available to you (online, on campus, or during the summer)

3. When in doubt, make a pros and cons list for each topic

4. Rank your list in order of how likely you think it is that you will still be deeply invested in this topic after 6 months of exploring it

5. Look at the faculty interests in your major, and make sure it would be possible to match up with a professor for every topic still on your list (NOTE: it doesn’t have to be an exact match! It’s enough that a professor has a research interest in the same general area)

6. Ask yourself how difficult it will be to produce an original body of research on the topic

Narrow the Scope

Once you’ve landed on a topic and done a little digging, you’re likely to find out that it needs to be narrowed. Lots of students make the mistake of deliberately picking something too broad because they are afraid they won’t have enough to fill 80 pages if they narrow it, or are afraid that by focusing too closely on a specific aspect of their original topic, their work won’t have as wide of an appeal or will seem too insignificant or random. Au contraire! 

Overly ambitious (read: too wide) topics are a perfect setup for disaster. If you try to tackle too much in one thesis, you wind up doing many different topics a disservice. Far better to do justice to one clearly delineated topic, as that will set you up to do the in-depth type of scholarship expected of one such as you, embarking on a senior thesis! 

To illustrate this process, here’s an example from a student in anthropology:

Topics of Interest = Indigenous Populations; Colonialism; Healthcare; Globalization (Wayyyyyyyyyy too broad!)

Topic Idea  = How We Can See Colonial Legacies in the Healthcare Struggles of Indigenous Populations (Still wayyyyyyy too broad)

First Attempt to Narrow = Dietary and Lifestyle Changes of Indigenous Populations in Peru (Starting to get the idea, but a wayyyyyys to go)

Second Attempt to Narrow = How the Indigenous Quechua of Peru Navigated Local Healing Practices with Westernized Biomedicine (Even closer! Still…all Quechua? All Local Healing Practices? All Westernized Biomedicine? For all Medical/Health Issues?)

Third Attempt to Narrow = Current Experiences of Indigenous Quechua of Peru with Type II Diabetes Navigating the Choice Between Herbal Remedies, Dietary and Lifestyle Changes, and Insulin (Bingo!)

Note: This student already knew, from taking previous anthro courses, that there would be one or two faculty in the department qualified in these areas. Once you have your topic in hand, your next step is to choose an advisor. Speaking of …

Choosing an Advisor

Your advisor’s role, in a nutshell, is to guide and inspire you to reach your scholarly potential. They will work with you closely as you determine your interests, topic, thesis, and research questions. They will help you design your study (when applicable) and choose the most appropriate methodologies. They will provide feedback about your ideas, drafts, writing, and research. They will also encourage and motivate you to persevere through frustrations and setbacks. 

Whereas this is the first time you’ve ever taken on such a significant academic challenge, they have done this kind of thing for years, so they are in a unique position to help you avoid pitfalls and steer you in fruitful directions. If you are considering a senior thesis, it’s never too soon to start weighing your options for which faculty member would be a good fit, both academically and personally.

Before You Pop the Question …

Ideally, you will already have taken several classes with them and have established a good rapport. Before you pop the question, do your research! Once you identify one or more potential advisors to interview, find out their specific research interests by looking at departmental information and reading their faculty website page, their CV, and some of their recent publications. There is no better way to start off on the right foot than to let them know you have read their work and take a genuine interest in one or more of their areas of specialization.

Qualities to Look For

• A good advisor has a genuine interest in your topic and your intellectual development

• They believe in you and your commitment to accomplishing this feat

• They reply to your emails in a reasonable amount of time

• They can be understanding and supportive when necessary, but they are also capable of pushing you if that’s what you need

• Your conversations with them are intellectually stimulating

• When you leave their office, you have more clarity than when you entered

• They are someone you feel comfortable exploring ideas with

• You aren’t embarrassed to let them know if you don’t understand something

• You admire them but are not afraid of them

• They communicate their expectations clearly

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Tip: Beware of falling for the tendency to pick the “nicest” person. Niceness is not going to help you create a stellar piece of scholarship. Look for someone who can be supportive, intense, and rigorous simultaneously.

Search Within Yourself

Like friends and lovers, professors come in all shapes, sizes, and personality strengths and weaknesses. Some veer toward laissez-faire, while others battle the urge to micro-manage. Some are known for being impossible to please, while others are more lenient. The same principle holds for students: some are Type A, fastidious go-getters who turn assignments in early. This kind of student might work well with a hands-off advisor who relies on students to keep their own deadlines. Other students are Type B, contemplative philosophers who tend to mull things over, possibly long enough to need an extension. These students might need someone a little more demanding to direct their project. What makes one advisor compatible with one student might not be a dynamic that suits you. Before you approach professors, ask yourself what you bring to the table and what kind of personality will complement your work style. 

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Tip: Talk to current seniors being advised by the professor you have in mind! They can offer valuable insight into the professor’s approach to directing a senior thesis. Also, ask your department where you can find past theses that your potential advisor directed.

Questions to Ask During Your First Meeting with a Potential Advisor 

1. How promising do they find your research topic? Are there particular directions they think you should explore in developing a research question? 

2. Do they consider themselves hands-on or hands-off?

3. How many drafts are they willing to read? How many days do they typically need to turn around a draft with commentary and revisions? 

4. How available will they be during your senior year? During the summer before your senior year?

5. Do they have any books or journal articles they think you should read before your next meeting?

6. Are they currently researching a project or running a lab that intersects with your interests?

Best Practices for Managing Your Relationship

In relationships, communication is critical. This holds just as much for your relationship with your thesis advisor. 

1. Establish frequency of meetings early on (Every week? Twice a week? Every other week?)

2. If you aren’t clear about what is expected of you, ASK!

3. Working backward from the final deadline, create a timeline of mini-deadlines guaranteed to ensure no last-minute disasters

4. Ask for feedback

5. If you get behind, explain your situation to your advisor. Don’t leave them out of the loop

“Google can bring you back 100,000 answers; a librarian can bring you back the right one."    –Neil Gaiman

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Tip: Before Day One of research, schedule a meeting with a campus librarian to learn about your library’s resources! They can show you how to customize Advanced Searches and sort through the overwhelming amount of information that will likely appear in your first basic searches. They can give you examples of primary, secondary, and tertiary resources in your major and point you to scholarly databases (e.g., JSTOR, Web of Science, psychINFO, Pub Med) and peer-reviewed journals likely to be useful for your topic. For more details check out these guides on evaluating resources and avoiding plagiarism.

Time Management Checklist

You've got an advisor, and you're ready to begin! Before you start digging through databases, it can be helpful to develop a plan of attack for managing your time and getting your work done. Here are some tips for managing your time:

☐ Work backward to create deadlines. If you know that a certain kind of deadline is in October of your senior year, create deadlines throughout your summer. Design doable mini-tasks (e.g., reading 15 abstracts, conducting fieldwork, reading 1-3 articles, researching several keywords in one database; developing the first half of your outline for your methods chapter, drafting a section of your introduction; learning to fix the kinks in your citation program).

☐ Block out reasonable and specific chunks of time rather than having a generic commitment to “work on my thesis” today. Ask your advisor how many hours per week they recommend on average.

☐ Be realistic! Track how long it takes you to settle down to work and do typical tasks like complete a search, read an abstract, read a short article, read a systematic review, take notes, summarize arguments, and understand different methodologies or theories. Plot your goals and plan your schedule accordingly.

☐ Don’t fall for the myth of busy! In our hectic, multi-tasking world, it’s easy to confuse the appearance of being busy with actual progress. Make sure you are actually checking things off your To Do/To Read/To Write/To Summarize list. 

☐ Before you finish for the day, jot down a note to yourself about where you should begin tomorrow.

An Example, From Topic to Research Question: Lessons from Cats

It can be confusing to understand the difference between your research interests, your topic, and your research question. So let’s climb out on a limb and take a look at these distinctions by using cats as our subject matter. 

Nothing immediately leaps out at you as an obvious thesis topic. In the meantime, you are obsessed with cats, so let’s pretend you have a single-minded, perhaps ill-advised, dogged (pun semi-intended) determination that cats will meow their way into your thesis, regardless of your major.

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Side note: Of course, this is a terrible way to approach your actual topic! If you aren’t interested in an actual topic in your major, you probably shouldn’t be writing a senior thesis. We’re just using this example so that all of our readers, regardless of major, can learn about the process of narrowing a topic and formulating a research question. 

A recent library search yielded 806,541 results on “cats” from studies in biology, literature, history, psychology, animal science, statistics, art history, economics, public health, gender studies, and—alas—theater/performance studies. You need to narrow your topic! 

First, by discipline. Literature students might quickly rule out Margaret Atwood and Kurt Vonnegut (neither The Cat’s Eye nor Cat’s Cradle is actually about cats, to your chagrin). Search engines might steer you toward Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allen Poe, Ursula Le Guin, T.S. Eliot, or Colette. 

Physics majors might already be investigating Schrödinger’s cat, and medieval studies majors might tackle why depictions of medieval cats look like furry humanoid devils. 

But let’s pretend you are a psych major. Using your library resources, you try “cats” and “psychology” and comb through every title, saving each one that piques your interest. It dawns on you that there aren’t any articles addressing how to interpret cat’s dreams, or how bullying affects cats’ cognitive development. You get excited because you think you’ve identified a gap in the literature, but then you remember: they are cats, and Freud didn’t tell us how to interpret cat’s dreams. So you try “cats” and “humans.” You see what the results yield, and then try other combinations: cats, felines, kittens, pets, animals, animal studies, psychology, people. 

It’s best to be open-minded and discover the full range of options (given your refusal to write about something typical in psychology, like mindfulness and smartphones, or the effects of cocaine on rats). After glancing at 100 titles and reading abstracts about owner personality and cat’s well-being, owner scent, pheromones, and feline anxiety, lo and behold! You come across the article, “Not the Cat’s Meow? The Impact of Posing with Cats on Female Perceptions of Male Dateability.” You read the abstract and are eager to read the whole article. Bingo! You’ve discovered a specific passion for the relationship between gender, desire, and cats. 

At this point, you go back and try new combinations of all things cat with words like “women,” “females,” “men,” “males,” and “relationships” to see what else is out there. With each article you find, you mine its bibliography and add new articles to your “To Read” list. You also pay attention to the language in the abstracts and refine your search terms. This will be critical for your literature review, so make certain to keep track of your search terms and author/titles.

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Tip: Prepare an elevator speech! As in, get the topic down to three sentences that you could explain to a stranger on an elevator. If you find yourself going on and on and the stranger would have already arrived at their floor, practice more.

In this phase, you are skimming titles and abstracts to understand what’s already been said. You are also noticing how to write about cats in a scholarly way. Finally, you are discovering what hasn’t been said. In the meantime, you have figured out that you want to find out if there is a difference in the way that women relate to cats versus how men relate to cats. Later, you might refine this to factor in gender identity and sexual identification. You will keep honing your language and clarifying your terms, but for now, you’ve landed on your topic, you’ve conducted some background research, and are ready to write your research question!

So what’s a research question?

A research question is an answerable question that will guide your inquiry and help you navigate the flood of information that you are going to encounter. Here’s one possible one for cats. 

Is there a difference between the way that females relate to their household cats and the way that males relate to their household cats? If a difference is identified, do gender identity and sexual identity account for some of those differences? What other variables might influence the outcomes? (Note: this question likely sets you up for a qualitative project where you conduct semi-structured interviews or an observational study conducted in households). 

Locating Your Primary Sources 

Your sources are who or what will provide answers to your research question/s or thematic focus. Know where to find them!

• Do answers to your question reside with a population, a key informant, panel of experts, or a first-person account of an event?

• Archival materials, government documents, maps, or a museum exhibition?

• A healthcare system? A lab? Pharmaceutical companies? 

• A social issue like poverty, immigration, racism, or homophobia?

• An advertising campaign or political cartoons?

• Tangible objects, extreme weather, or the neocortical circuit?

• A leadership style or political system?

• A mathematical or computational model?

• A novel, play, or poem, films, paintings, photographs, or sound recordings?

• Cryptocurrency? Human rights discourse?

• Manifestos, treatises, religious, or philosophical texts?

Locating Your Secondary Sources

The majority of your academic resources should come from peer-reviewed (also called refereed) journals, the most respected source of academic information. Peer-reviewed means that an expert has written the article and that several experts in the field have reviewed it before it is published. Secondary sources can also come from academic books. How do you know when a book is academic? Look at the publisher information. If the publisher is a university press, it is likely an academic book or anthology written by a professor. With a few exceptions, the word “university” will be part of the publisher’s information. Non-university presses that are still considered academic include Routledge, Sage, and Wiley. Not sure? Ask a librarian!

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Tip: Learn a Citation Program From the Get-Go! This is something you can do the summer after junior year. Stay on top of your citations. Find out which citation management programs your university supports (e.g., Mendeley, Zotero, Endnote). There are pros and cons to all of them, but the basic idea is the same: you import the details for each reference (author’s name, date of publication, title of article and journal, volume number, page number). Once you are ready to write, insert your citations for your paper using the citation program instead of typing them in manually. This will automatically format your citations and generate your bibliography in whatever citation style (MLA, APA, Chicago) you need.

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Tip: Use your sources, don’t let your sources use you! Tackle them actively, always asking yourself how they relate to your own project. Try not to absorb information passively, as if their results and conclusions are just Truth or Facts to regurgitate. Want to know more about evaluating sources? Click *HERE.*

Junior Year

First Semester Junior Year:

• Decide on a thesis topic or approach and start to narrow your focus.

• Start identifying potential advisors and ask about their availability … and make sure they aren’t on sabbatical your senior year.

• Try to take at least one class with each potential advisor.

• Draft a description of your potential topic and a statement of your preliminary ideas about how to go about researching it.

• Talk to seniors currently writing their thesis.

• Read past theses in your department.

• Take a statistics class if you are in the social or natural sciences.

Second Semester Junior Year:

• Decide on your advisor and discuss plans.

• Conduct enough background research to determine the viability of your topic and make changes if necessary.

• Draft a thesis proposal and write a prospectus (unless your university doesn’t want this until senior year).

• If you plan on working with human subjects (psychology, sociology, anthropology), submit an IRB protocol. Even if you just plan on interviewing people, you’ll need approval first. You may need to attend a training workshop. Find out sooner rather than later.

• Seek funding for your research.

• Make a one-on-one appointment with a reference librarian in your area of focus and ask for help conducting advanced research through electronic databases.

• Take a research methods class.

• Plan your summer with your advisor. Ask them what they recommend, and establish deadlines. Find out how often they want you to give them updates, and ask about their availability for check-ins.

Summer Between Junior and Senior Year:

• Read! Read more! Nope, even more!

• Conduct research! Conduct fieldwork!

• Take notes! (Note on notes: Develop a note-taking system that works for you.)

• Learn your citation program!

• If you are in the humanities (actually, even if you aren’t), order and devour Umberto Eco’s How to Write a Thesis. Check out Powell’s Books, Alibris, ThriftBooks, and AbeBooks for second-hand options.

Senior Year

September:

• Confirm your primary thesis advisor and the rest of your committee.

• Establish healthy and reliable communication patterns! Fix a regular meeting time with your primary advisor and provide regular progress reports or written drafts to advisor/s.

• Imagine your finished thesis. Consider chapter breakdowns or other forms of presenting the finished product. How long will it be? How many chapters? What might the breakdown of chapters look like? Sections within chapters?

• Attend all informational meetings your department offers and understand all requirements and expectations for both the process and the finished product.

• Create your own project timeline and goals. 

October:

• Conduct research. Conduct more research.

• Meet with librarians for guidance on conducting advanced electronic database research.

• Categorize information as you find it. Keep accurate bibliographic notes and organized files.

• Establish a place to keep notes on your ideas, questions, confusions, and research discoveries.

• Consider drafting some introductory sections of your thesis, as well as your literature review, methodology, and definitions of terms.

November/December:

• Begin to outline and draft a chapter (does not necessarily need to be the first chapter).

• Plan a detailed research and writing agenda for winter break. 

January/February:

• Submit a draft of a chapter or section of your thesis to your advisor. Remember to include a bibliography with any draft you submit to your committee members.

• Schedule a meeting with your thesis advisor to discuss your work over winter break.

• Plan a new timeline for spring. Plan to have the thesis substantially written BEFORE spring break.

• Continue to send regular progress reports to your committee.

February/March:

• Tackle your thesis one section at a time. When you have a section or two completed, ask your advisor if they can tell you if you are heading in the right direction.

• Along the way, be scrupulous about citing your sources correctly! You don’t want to have to go back and check your sources at the end because you got sloppy! Accidental plagiarism is still plagiarism.

• Set a date and time for your defense. 

April:

• Rewrite, revise, rewrite, revise: think about tackling any organizational and structural revisions to make your logic as sound as possible.

• Pay careful attention so that you address all of your advisor’s comments. If anything doesn’t make sense to you, ask them!

• Keep in frequent and positive contact with the rest of your committee so that you aren’t in for any surprises during your defense! You can even ask them what you should be prepared for.

• Double-check your citations and references.

• Submit completed thesis to your committee. Protocol typically offers them the thesis at least two weeks before your defense. Check with each member individually to see if they have an alternative timeframe.

May:

• Complete any revisions your committee requires.

• Prepare the final document for archives according to your university’s instructions.

Sound good? Good.

Dive in.

Special thanks to Christine Rose for writing this post and contributing to other College Writing Center resources