Question about your Master's thesis and your PhD dissertation?

Question

Are they supposed to be related? In other words, if I were to do a Master's thesis on a certain topic within a field, could I go ahead and do my dissertation for my PhD on a completely different topic within the same field? I have so many research interests and I just wanted to know if usually a MA thesis is supposed to be thought of as a pre-dissertation? I hope that makes sense.

Answer 1

A student's Masters thesis need not be related to his or her doctoral dissertation in any way. As a matter of fact, I strongly discourage my department's students from thinking about the Masters thesis in that way.

A Masters thesis is about familiarization with the literature in a field, and about synthesis and analysis of that literature. It does not necessarily contain original scholarship, although it sometimes may.

The Masters thesis topic may not sustain a student's interest by the time that student reaches the doctoral dissertation proposal stage. .

Sometimes, however, a student's Masters thesis serves as the point of discovery of a particular scholarly niche. If that area of study is fruitful (ripe for original scholarship), and the student continues to have an intense interest in that area, the Masters thesis can indeed serve as an introductory exploration of literature related to the topic of the dissertation. But the dissertation itself would necessarily be a very different, MUCH more focused, and more theoretically sophisticated treatment of a topic in that area.

Answer 2

Depends on the nature of your program. Are you in a multi-disciplinary field? Are you changing your focus? It isn't uncommon for people to get a MA in History and then get a PhD in Mathematics... they may not have material compatible with, nor choose to apply their MA thesis towards their doctoral dissertation.

It is your life. If you are studying molecular biology and your Masters thesis is about RNA transcription in the heart cells of the western monkey rat, then this wouldn't be OT from a dissertation about proteomic analysis of the northern dingbat.

Best to talk to your faculty advisers.

Good luck!

Answer 3

My experience is that they are in different topics. But sometimes you can just expand the topic into a dissertation. Depends on your committee and what they want.

Answer 4

A thesis is basically a paper you write that summarizes the results of your research. The research is done under the supervision of a faculty or staff member. For physics, you can write about a whole bunch of topics. It really depends on what you are actually researching.