Thesis for master students

On this page:

- Thesis outline
- Practical requirements
- Submitting the thesis

Covid-19 related information

Due to possible COVID-19 restrictions on conducting research, you should agree on a backup plan with your internship supervisor for in case your planned data collection turns out not to be possible.

The Master thesis is a report on your research during the research internship. All Master students will have to write a thesis.

Master thesis outline

1. Title page: apart from the title, state your name, ID number, master specialisation, date, location of internship, and the name and affiliation of each supervisor/assessor. Furthermore, provide a total word count (excluding title page, table of contents, reference list, notes and appendices).
2. Table of contents (note that this is unusual for a research article, but given that the master thesis comprises a larger writing assignment, much larger than a typical article, this table of contents is considered useful)
3. Summary/Abstract
4. Introduction
5. Methods
6. Results
7. Discussion and/or Conclusions
8. References
9. Notes (if any) and/or appendices (if any)

Handbook Writing Skills v001 of 27 Aug. 2019
APA cookbook v001 of 10 Dec. 2020

Practical thesis requirements

Minimum length of the thesis: If you do only one internship (= the research internship) If you only do the research internship and not the clinical internship, the minimum length of the thesis should be 6000 words. Check that your supervisors agree. If you do both internships If you do both internships (= research internship and clinical internship), the minimum length should be 3000 words. Check that your supervisors agree. If you write a minor thesis (Research Master only) If you write a minor thesis for your research master, the minimum length should be 3000 words. Check that your supervisors agree.
There is no official maximum word limit. Given that the thesis is supposed to be in the form of a submittable paper, lengthy theses with many appendices etc. are discouraged. Eventually, content and completeness are important. The word count includes abstract, tables and in-text references but excludes the list of references. You may use large parts of the research proposal for the introduction and method section of your thesis.
MSWord formatting: 1.5 line spacing, font size 12 Times New Roman or 11 pts for Arial, margins of about 2.5 cm all round.
The thesis must be written in English, either in British English or in American English.
Use APA guidelines for referencing.
The thesis must be written individually.
File name according to file naming convention >>
File size for upload: max. 5 MB. It is a good practice to store your sourced materials in the highest possible (image) quality, such as any images or graphics you might want to use. Decide on a case by case basis if a certain graphic has to be inserted in high resolution into your thesis . Because when it comes to submitting your thesis, there is a 5 MB (megabytes) upload limit. It should be possible to stay within the 5MB upload limit if you use high resolution images in those cases where it matters (readability of charts for example) and use a tool to compress (reduce) the size your PDF. Our favorite PDF compression tools: Mac: Lightweight PDF , Preview Windows: Cute PDF Online: Adobe

Assessment of your thesis

See Assessment & Supervision for practical information.
See Assessment Criteria Thesis and Assessment Internship for the assessment criteria.

Submitting the thesis

The final version of the master thesis must be uploaded in an electronic copy (PDF) via l.
Go to "Collent" > My internship(s) and use the Cloud icon with the up arrow in the column "Document(s)" to upload your final version of your thesis. This final version will be graded by your supervisors who will automatically receive an e-mail including a link to the final version of your thesis.

This digital copy:
- is required to award credits to your work,
- will be used to check for plagiarism, and
- is archived for future reference.

Please note that the final version of your thesis must be uploaded in a correct way before the final credits will be awarded.
- There is a 5MB size upload limit. See the tips above.
- In case the name of your electronically submitted thesis is not correct (i.e., not according to the all important formatting rules), it will be removed and you’ll have to hand in your thesis again.

Insufficient grade?

What to do in case your master thesis is graded insufficient and you need to take a resit:
·         Decide together with your supervisors within what timeframe you will submit your resit thesis
·         Reregister as a student in ‘Studielink’ and pay intuition fee
·         The final resit version of your thesis needs to be uploaded in https://collent-fpn.maastrichtuniversity.nl/. Don’t forget to add ‘resit’ to the title
· Both assessors will grade the resit version.

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