How long is a Thesis Paper: for Bachelor’s, Master’s or PhD

A thesis statement is a sentence that declares your stand on a particular issue that you are handling in your research paper. Typically, such a statement can be both arguable and specific.

As a rule of thumb, we place the thesis statement at the end of the first paragraph.  The remaining part of your paper will be carrying facts to back up your thesis statement.

How long is a Thesis Paper?

A thesis paper should be at least 20 pages long and can go up to 100 pages depending on the research task and the institutional guidelines. Typically, a Ph.D. thesis can be longer than a master’s thesis. Also, there is no particular limit since it is about the quality. The author should make it as efficient and concise as possible.

The best approach is to avoid filler materials to help you attain a certain number of pages.

You can check with your supervisor for official requirements, including the higher and the lower bounds.

Some institutions give the word limit to indicate how far you can go.

Generally, you can choose to exceed by a few words as shown in the instructions without exaggerating your ability. Meeting the page limit would be better here.

Factors determining the Length of a Thesis Paper

Your thesis paper could either be long or standard according to several factors we want to discuss in this section. You should strive to be on the safe side when writing your thesis paper to ensure you stay within the word limit. The following variables will determine the overall length of your research paper.

1. Professional Instructions

As stated above, you should liaise with your advisor before you begin to write your thesis paper. You must be keen to adhere to the professional instructions that your institution gives you.

Some instructions can prompt you to write more pages than others. For example, if you are handling a Ph.D. thesis, it is obvious that you can write more papers than at any other level. Such papers tend to be longer than others.

For the other academic levels below the Ph.D., you can write a thesis with a few pages. Unless instructed well, you should write within the given limit. If you are struggling to attain the word count, you should add more examples and evidence to the paragraphs.

Let every paragraph focus on each argument without meandering. Every sentence should relate to the paragraph’s point by being concise and clear. You can also exceed the suggested length if your instructor allows that.

2. The Topic you are writing about

The type of topic you select will determine the length of your thesis paper. You can choose to broaden the topic and provide more details.

We have a complex research topic which one should expand by breaking into smaller subtopics to assist the reader in understanding it well.

When you begin to broaden the topic, it becomes apparent that your thesis paper will be longer. You will be covering more details within your thesis paper hence causing your thesis paper to be a tad longer.

On the contrary, if there is an easy topic that you can handle in your thesis paper opt to go straight to the point without elaborating with many details for the audience to understand. Such an easy topic can make your document shorter.

3. Depth of the Research

You can choose to go deeper in your research and dig additional details to support your arguments. If you want to widen the topic, you will employ different research methods to help you focus on what you want to explore.

When researching a new topic, you are likely to discover more issues concerning the same topic.

As such, you would want to capture such issues and make your topic exciting.

The more you incorporate new items in your research topic, means that the paper will belong.

It can be inadequate if you fail to put the right things in your thesis paper to support your argument.

You should document your research well. When the panel challenges you with a question; you should give a detailed answer based on what you captured.

Again, when you perform shallow research, it is apparent that you will have tiny details to capture about the topic. The length of the study is bound to the number of details that you carry after research.

For this case, it will be a short thesis paper because you have a few facts to back your arguments.

4. The Technicality of the Research

A certain topic can dictate the type of research you have to do to discover certain details. The author can only convince the audience by widening the research to impress the audience. Here, you have to develop more evidence and back up what you want to put across.

As captured above, it is evident that when you find more facts to prove your points, you will have to write more, causing the thesis paper to be longer. The topic outline will be expansive hence prompting you to put more information to make it sensible.

On the other hand, the length of the thesis paper will be reduced if you did shallow research before you could capture the most important items to use in your arguments.

5. Your Writing Skills

Some authors who have impeccable writing skills have fun expressing their points creatively and articulately. They can develop convenient and vital phrases to create situations with the right emotions to enable the reader to follow them keenly.

While writing could be your hobby, you may put more details in sentences than the standard ones, prompting the length of the research paper to be extensive.

Since the author has a wide experience in writing, most of the phrases will flow naturally, thereby making the paper longer.

Another scenario could be the author could be inexperienced in writing. For that matter, this writer can be struggling to express his points well hence failing to go further into explaining more issues articulately. Automatically, the thesis paper, in this case, will be shorter than the former.

6. Costs

Some people prefer to hire a reputable essay writing firm to craft decent essays.

These firm have their pricing according to the number of pages that your essay could have.

Due to budgetary constraints, the client may instruct the writer to minimize the number of pages while summarizing some paragraphs to fit into a certain length.

For this case, the thesis paper will be shorter. Not all students will be working on limited funds.

One can be willing to pay for more so that the hired writer could capture more details after research and make the paper as long as possible. These students will later edit and retain the ones that could be relevant to the topic only.

7. Academic Level

Lastly, the academic level will also determine the length of the paper. You cannot expect a Ph.D. student to have fewer pages than the one below it.

It is the highest level; hence one expects you to go in-depth in your research and come up with convincing facts to showcase your skills about your topic mastery.

It is automatic that the higher the level, the more the details you will need to provide to more your points; hence your thesis paper will increase.

What a bachelor’s student can handle is less than what a Ph.D. student will be handled based on the related topics. For our case, the information that a bachelor student will capture can make the thesis paper shorter than the one on a higher level.

Check the optimal length of a dissertation to understand the factors that determine the length of each of the different academic levels.