You will have to document your work in 16 pages or less to be ready to submit your thesis. This is a very important document since external reviewers are requested to see this before they agree to read your thesis. Furthermore, even internal observers (sectional observers) base their decision as to whether a work is ready to be presented, on the quality of the synopsis. Please follow the instructions carefully before you come to me with a draft of your synopsis.

1. Write your document only in Latex and maintain page limit. IITM template is here [synopsis_template] and read through a FEW synopsis documents which were approved. This itself will provide you with a good idea as to how a synopsis must be drafted
2. In the synopsis you must follow these ideas:
   1. What motivated you to pursue this topic? This has to be written as if you chose this topic and not because I suggested this to you. This feeling is important for the writing to come out well. Basically you must take ownership of your work
   2. What are the Research Gaps and how these gaps helped you frame the Objectives? This is where you discuss important literature, highlighting the aspects not yet addressed, some of which you will address in your work.
   3. Now, clearly LIST the Research Gaps ( 2-3 atmost) and then LIST the Objectives (2 – 3 atmost).
   4. Have a section on Methods and other Analysis tools you need to use. Since an elaboration is not possible, you may be brief, but the key techniques must be highlighted
   5. Have a section titled Results and Key Contributions. Here you will discuss the most important results and then explain why this was an important contribution to this area and what were the challenges.
   6. Conclusions. This will section summarizes the objectives, methods and the outcomes and will end with a sentence or two on future directions.
3. Figures have to be of EXCELLENT quality. Use PGFPlots and ponder over the following:
   1. If your figure is just showing a straight line, you should not have the figure. Instead put the observation in the text as sentences.
   2. All figures should have a clear caption.
   3. You must write about all the Figures.
   4. Spend time in placing the Figures properly so that no white space wasted. Each area of the document is precious real estate and needs to be judiciously used.
   5. Have only key figures and try wrapping text around the figure. Default placing of figures using \begin{figure} environment alone may not be sufficient to make your synopsis look good.
4. Understand the citation styles used. Cite using \citep to put the HARVARD style citations within parentheses. This will put the citation as (Author, year) and will not put parentheses around the year. If you use \cite, you will get it as “First author name et. al. (year)”. That is, it will put a parentheses around the year. Where you want to use \cite or \citep depends on the context and should be obvious. Take some time to understand this.