Finishing a dissertation in eight weeks

First, find your real deadline

Many scholars count eight weeks from today as the deadline. Actually the deadline is the day your bound copy must reach the department office, and mostly it comes earlier than students remember.

Take Osmania for example. The MBA (Day) syllabus says the project report has to be given a full 30 days before the final semester exams start. In Bengaluru City University, the MBA guidelines ask for at least 45 days of work on the dissertation, and a progress report every fortnight. After that a Panel of Experts reviews the draft, and only then it is recommended for submission. So the panel should get your draft much before the last date.

Anna University gives some more time after the semester is over. As per its Regulations 2021, the final project report for M.E., M.Tech or MCA has to be submitted within 60 calendar days from the last working day of the semester. But a scholar who scored below half of the internal review marks cannot submit at all. So treat the reviews during the semester also as deadlines.

Take a paper and write down your real date. From there, count back eight weeks. Some scholars will see that this start date has already passed, and for them the part on what to cut, lower down on this page, is more useful to read first.

Weeks 1 and 2: topic, objectives and the first chapter you write

Week one is for fixing the topic and writing three or four objectives, not seven or eight like some students try. Every objective should say what you will measure and roughly how. Look at this one, “To find whether job satisfaction differs between permanent and contract staff.” From that line itself you know what data to collect and which test to run. Ask your guide to approve the objectives in writing. A WhatsApp reply from the guide saying okay is enough for this purpose. This helps a lot when someone tells you in week five to change the topic.

Some colleges want a synopsis also, and that has to be ready within this same week. The BCU guidelines want a synopsis of 7 to 10 pages covering the problem, objectives, sampling, data sources, tools and plan of analysis. This is nearly your method chapter in short, so the effort is not wasted.

Week two goes for reading, and you should know why you are reading each paper. Pick 20 to 30 studies close to your topic. For each one, note down the sample, the scale they used and the main result. Draft Chapter 2 from these notes in the same week. Side by side, prepare the questionnaire using the scales from those previous researches. When you change the wording of a published scale, sometimes it stops measuring the same thing, and our questionnaire design guide talks about how to adapt it carefully.

Weeks 3 and 4: data, and nothing gets in its way

Start week three with a pilot. Give the questionnaire to 15 or 20 people who are similar to your actual respondents, and notice where they hesitate. Correct the confusing questions on the same day, and then start collecting.

Many scholars are asking us how many responses they need. Fix that number before you go to the field. Most MBA surveys end up somewhere from 100 to 300 responses, but your number has to come from your population and the tests you plan to run. Our guide on sample size for a thesis explains how to justify the number, and the sample size calculator does the calculation.

While the responses are coming, write Chapter 1 and the method chapter. You already have the synopsis, so mostly you only expand it. If the company profile goes in Chapter 3, write that also now, in your own words.

The data should be in a clean file by the end of week four. By clean we mean each respondent is in a separate row and each item has its own column. Write down somewhere which code stands for which answer, and blank answers also you have to mark. This is the one deadline in the plan you cannot shift. If the data comes one week late, Chapter 4 loses that same week.

Weeks 5 and 6: analysis, then the chapter that carries the marks

Do the analysis one objective at a time. First prepare the respondent profile tables. Then check reliability for each scale, and after that run the test that answers each objective. Not sure which test to use? Then go through our guide on choosing a statistical test before you run anything in SPSS.

Complete all the tables before week five ends. Show them to your guide before writing any interpretation. Many times the guide asks for a different test, and it is much easier to change now than after the chapter is written.

In week six you write Chapter 4. Give every table a number, a title and a source line, and below it write two to four sentences on what it shows. For how to write these lines, there are sample sentences in our guide to reporting SPSS results, you can copy the pattern. You don’t need to explain each and every cell. Write what answers the objective and go to the next table.

Weeks 7 and 8: finish, check, print, practise

Finish the writing in week seven. Chapter 5 comes directly out of Chapter 4. Write one finding for each objective and a short conclusion. Whatever suggestion you give, the examiner should be able to see from which finding it came. Then write the abstract, which you could not write earlier, and set the front pages from your college template. The usual order of pages is listed in our MBA project report format guide. Send full draft to your guide before week seven is over.

Week eight is for the checks that nobody keeps time for. Do the similarity check in the beginning of week eight, because fixing matches takes longer than expected. Check each reference one by one. Match the contents page with the printed page numbers. Print one copy first, read it on paper and do the corrections, and only then print the rest.

At least two evenings should go for viva preparation, so don’t leave it for the morning of the viva. Practise explaining, in about one minute each, why you selected this topic, how you chose the sample and what each main table says. In some universities the defence carries more marks than the report. In KTU’s M.Tech Phase II evaluation, the 2024 circular gives 45 out of 100 marks for presentation and defence, and 25 marks for project documentation.

What to cut when the weeks run out

When something gets delayed, and it mostly does, reduce the scope and keep the quality as it is. We usually suggest cutting in this order.

• Cut objectives first. If you have five, keep the three you can answer well with your data and remove the other two.
• The complex methods can go after that. If you planned structural equation modelling, a regression or some t-tests and ANOVAs can answer most MBA objectives, and you can explain them in the viva.
• After that, the second data source can go. If you planned interviews along with the survey, eight weeks is too short for both of them, and the survey alone will do.
• Last, shorten the review. For most Master’s reports, around twenty well-chosen studies are enough.

Please don’t skip the pilot or the data cleaning, and never skip the similarity check. Each one takes only a day or two. Skipping one of these is a common reason for a rejected report.

When eight weeks really won’t work

Sometimes the plan simply will not fit. Watch for three signs. You still don’t have access to data by week three. Your guide has not approved the topic by week two. Or the company has stopped replying. Any one of these can push the data past week four.

When you see any of these, tell your guide the same day, and send it by mail or message also so there is a record. Ask what the university permits. It may allow a later submission, a change to a topic where you can get data, or a secondary-data study with published figures. When a scholar raises it in week three, mostly some workable answer comes. By week seven, very few options are left.

Some students think of filling the missing responses on their own. Please never do that. Examiners can ask to see your filled questionnaires, this is written in the BCU guidelines itself. A fake data set will put you in far more trouble than a late report.