Choosing a Dissertation Topic
Figuring how to write a dissertation proposal can be quite difficult and every student would agree on that. But, first you need to choose and submit the topic for your academic research and it’s one of the most important decisions students have to make in their professional career. With our tips on picking a dissertation topic, we will try to help you with that.
Writing a dissertation proposal requires a lot of time, so make sure you choose a topic that you really like and understand. Your topic should reflect your research interest, but you also need to figure out how you would like to leverage this research after the graduation. Instead of “finding”, try to create your topic. For example, think about your graduate course works and other projects you’ve been involved with and do something related.
You should be passionate about your topic and really interested in finding out and learning more about it. Being well-grounded in the scholarly literature is important, too. Sometimes student come with the most interesting topics, yet they don’t have enough time, data and resources to complete it; don’t let it happen to you. The topic should be within the student’s range of competence, but it also has to be meaningful and significant in either theoretical or practical terms. Finally, your topic has to be original (even slightly different from someone else’s work is good enough, but make sure it’s not completely the same).
To be on the safe side, you could ask your mentor to suggest you a topic. By doing this, you’ll have more time to actually write a dissertation proposal and mentors have more experience with choosing something doable within given time frame, literature and students’ own abilities.
Finally, it’s completely normal (and common) to consider several potential topics before making a final decision. In fact, most students scrap a topic and start over at least once when writing a dissertation proposal.
