Well, by the time I finished my BA senior thesis mine was 80 pages long. But, the professors were also taking into consideration that I was doing one for English AND Education. Each of mine were around 80 pages, but that was for undergrad. A friend of mine had an undergrad senior thesis that was over 100. Just depends on your school and your area, etc. My sister’s research doctoral thesis in psychology at Purdue was around 150 pages, but it was all research-based. I would imagine that if it were anything having to do with English, it’d be a lot longer than that. It’s not the length that’s scary, but defending it that is. Every potential question/problem with it will be brought up in front of your peers, colleagues, and professors. It’s terrifying. I had to defend my education thesis and I had profs from education, English, AND teachers from the local communities come and ask questions and challenge my ideas. VERY nerve wracking.

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I did my proposal during the spring semester of my first year. In my program you had to have your proposal approved (by committee) at least provisionally in order to take your thesis hours. I took the hours that summer. However, I didn’t finish my research until the spring semester of my second year and had a full draft by June. I moved back home and finished via email and snail mail, which meant that it took a while (especially since one of my readers spent much of the summer in Poland and couldn’t read my draft until he got back), so I just finished in October and officially graduate this month. Each program determines the required length of the thesis. Mine was 70-125 pages. My first draft was 70 pages long. By the time it was complete, it was just over 80. I know people who had a hard time keeping it under 125. Some of it is how you write, but a lot of it is the topic. You need something big enough but not too big… My degree is in history. I think that all of my classmates who wrote a thesis found that you couldn’t do it one semester because you found things in your research that changed your path. At least in our field, if your end product matches your conclusion, you probably didn’t do very good research. So, its better to assume that you will do this around your other classes and activities over the course of at least a year. Writing is the easy part – figuring out what your conclusions are so that you can write them up can be tough. I didn’t have to do a thesis to graduate. I did it because I fell into a topic that nobody else could do. It was a lot of work, but I’m glad I did it. Good Luck!

Thesis Length

I don’t know about lit, but in physics, it’s somewhere between 40 and 300 pages.

It’s the content that matters, not the length. My undergrad thesis was twice as long as my masters thesis.

Generally, an MA could take about 1-3 years, depending (as you stated, on a lot of variables).

Be aware that some schools/majors have thesis and non-thesis options for some MAs….so shop around.

Scary is subjective and relative…often based more on fear of the unknown than anything else. For me, the thesis was more of a MAJOR term paper, and not much more. I completed my MA in about 1 1/2 yrs (average for my major was about 2 yrs).

So, perhaps a visit to a nearby college/university is in order. (or go online to see the MA degree requirements for your major) and find out if a thesis is required.

If so, most schools have a policy requiring MA theses to be bound and archived in the college library. So visit the library and see some of the theses to get an idea of what others had done to earn their MA. That should give you a good idea of what is expected and you can get a feel for if you are up to it.

OK, hope this helps. Best wishes on your endeavors.

Ball-park figure is 100-150 pages.

my professor said that if you can slip it under his door, it isn’t good enough.