Re: general questions about MS thesis

A bit of a late reply (I've been to busy for newsgroups!) but maybe
someone will see it.

For MS students (I am a professor in ChE), I sit down with them on day
one and formulate a specific plan of what they are going to do, what the
milestones are, etc. My goal for any MS student is to publish one paper
in a refereed journal. I also formulate project that I know will have a
high probability of success. I also like to give MS students projects
where they can publish even if the results are not what we expected.

I think it's only fair to an MS student to have a well defined project.
Although sometimes it's a bit cookbook, at least they know what is
expected and when they will be done. Not everyone agrees with me, or
cares. For a MS student, I would be very concerned if they did not get
a well defined project with targets right from the start.

You sound like a good advisor. Things are a little weird for me though
- at my previous job (and they were the ones that urged me to go back
for the degree, it wasn't something I had great interest in
previously), the idea was that I could complete my thesis by applying
for funding through a specific program we had for basic research, and
the resulting up-to-3-year project would more than cover my thesis.
The caveat was that it had to be related to both the mission of my
employer (a Navy lab) and the sort of work that my immediate group did,
and had to be something that had a shot in hell of being funded. I was
led to believe that it would be easier than normal to get this funding
(normally something like 1/3 of proposals were funded) because they
favored projects that led to higher degrees. I did my advisor
interviews basically telling them I needed a Navy application in a few
narrow areas, and selected this one topic with this advisor, which was
really the only one that made any sense for my work. The basic plan
was all laid out in the proposal and briefing, and obviously my advisor
was fine with it since all this was free for him. But then the funding
mysteriously didn't happen, despite high rankings of my proposal and a
briefing that I thought went well (undoubtedly had something to do with
the tension, to put it lightly, between me and my immediate
supervisor), I left that job because there was no other reason that I
was staying there, and now I'm stuck with this topic (which was planned
to be 3 years of 60% of full-time work) but haven't really whittled it
down with my advisor to come up with something more acceptable for a
part-time thesis only. Well, the experiments I'm doing now are
whittled down, but I think too much for a thesis.

Most ChE research has very little to do with actual engineering these
days. If you advisor is in a ChE department and has funding for your
work, consider it ChE related.

Ok, that's good to hear!

They are about the same thing, but the MS defense is less in depth and
faculty are more likely to rubber stamp it unless it was total crap.

Rubber stamp for non-crap...that's also good to hear! I guess it'll
still be stressful though.

You sound like a decent student, you should be able to get something
together for a MS thesis.

I have a marvelous way of getting experiments to fail completely and
inexplicably, so my optimism isn't high. The latest round of
experiments I've completed, which I didn't think would be a big deal,
don't make any sense whatsoever and are the *complete* opposite of the
results found in other papers by my group and others. I'm confused,
and this should have been a no-brainer (the experiments were more like
just verifying the technique is ok before I use precious non-commercial
synthesized chemicals with it...apparently not, and I'm even following
step-by-step instructions from a collaborating group for this protocol!
Aaaah!)

That is a problem. Can't you arrange some kind of weekly meeting?

I'm not sure how, if he only randomly responds to email. The group is
supposed to have biweekly meetings, that are scheduled during my work
hours. I took 3 hours off work to go to one of them, and was told when
I got there that advisor wasn't going to show up at it. 2 weeks later,
another group meeting, he wasn't there again. Then the last one was on
an off-week, and my email account delivered the message from the
previous night to me too late the following day...I actually saw him
walking back to his office in a different building from my car, but
when I went over to his office with my data later, he was gone. Talk
about stealth advisor...

If you were full-time, I bet you could.

Probably...but he knows I'm not.

You are doing something very difficult. Grad school is not a part time
endevor. There are too many young people out there willing to work
12-16 hours a day for you to compete with that. Advisors expect 100%
effort. You job is probably viewed by your advisor as "extra-curricular".

My impression is that most students in my group aren't spending 12-16
hours/day, unless they're doing data analysis at home or something, but
probably more than 40 hours/week. I'm often the only person there on
weekends, although usually a couple people will stop by for an hour or
less. When I come in to do something after work, I'm usually either
the last or one of the last people to leave at 8pm, and I don't think
these people are getting to the lab before 9-10am either. The oldest
grad student there is 6th year and I think is finishing this semester,
everyone seems to be graduating. I don't expect to have 40 hour weeks
when I go back, but hopefully if I can be efficient, it won't require
12-16 hour days. I get the impression that my advisor respects my job
quite well, and so did most of the professors (it was never a problem
to miss class a couple times for travel or reschedule the occasional
exam), even though there were only a handful of part-time students in
the program.

My neighbor, who is married with 3 kids, attempted to go back to school
to earn a PhD while employed full time. It didn't work out. He was/is
a hard working, smart guy, but the expectation that he could do grad
school, work and have a family was unrealistic. He did quit grad school
after a while and is better off for it.

PhD while employed full time is nuts, I would never consider it.
Although some people are able to do this through an arrangement with
work (if your work is basic enough research, you can just apply what
you do at work towards a PhD). MS shouldn't be as bad, but I guess
most full-time workers don't go for a thesis. There were a couple
other people in my situation, both that I knew seemed pretty
exasperated about everything.

How bad would it look if you *anticipate* finishing the MS by
say..Spring 2007, apply for PhD programs in winter 2006-07, which is
when most applications are due for the following Fall, and then fall
through and don't get the MS? Would this affect your admission? Not
saying I'd want it to go this way, but just wondering what happens.

.

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