Your thesis is likely to be read by the following people

  1. Yourself
  2. Your guide
  3. Thesis examining committee (external or internal to IITM)
  4. Rarely by other graduate students
  5. The probability of your thesis being cited by others is almost nil. So, publish everything you plan to put in your thesis.

Some points to remember while writing thesis. If you have doubts, talk to others who have written a thesis. Your first efforts, without a proper reference is most likely to result in substandard writing. If you wrote enough papers and learnt to write using your guide’s inputs, you will do well. If you never took writing seriously, you are unlikely to produce a good thesis.

Here is iitm thesis template thesis_template

  1. Have a thorough introduction, so that anyone who reads it can follow most of it without having to refer to any other work (even your own work (papers)).
  2. If you did spectacular work, your thesis may be around 50 pages. If you are ending up only with 50-60 pages, and you know you did not do spectacular work, then you most likely hurried to wrap it up. This will surely result in a very difficult to repair, zeroth draft.
  3. Never copy verbatim from your papers. Please re-frame your sentences and give it a new feel.
  4. If you are putting figures from other work which are copyrighted, first write to the concerned publisher, the author and seek their permission. This could also be applicable to your own work. So check!!
  5. Write carefully and avoid spelling/grammatical errors and spend time in organizing the content well. Remember, you are telling a story of which you are a very important part. So, show your passion, interest and ownership of the work, while you write your thesis.
  6. Make remarkable looking figures.
  7. Do not waste white space feeling lazy to rephrase your sentences or rework on the figures or arrange them well.
  8. All tables/figures should be captioned well and must be referred to in the text. No figure/table can be without a corresponding explanation.
  9. Equations should be numbered and you should say what various symbols in the equation mean. This can be done in the nomenclature section before the beginning of the document. These should be given with proper, consistent units.
  10. A good zeroth draft can be corrected to make it excellent. A poor zeroth draft can only be made fair or average. So, your effort is what finally shows up, not my editing/correcting capabilities.
  11. You can put a lot of the details, diagrams references and explanation in your thesis. So make use of this to explain everything clearly.