what if your advisor is never happy with your thesis progress?

[nehs]

I just spoke to one of my professors to advise me for my master's thesis. The thesis in my dept. is basically one semester (3 cr.) worth of work with the background research/proposal being done the prior semester. I am already working on the background work/proposal.

Suddenly, one student tells me that this professor delayed graduation for a student by 4 semester(2 years) while working on the master's thesis.

I don't get it. Does this mean the professor was constantly making excuses about the student's work or possibly not giving him a weekly meeting time?

What would the student do in such a case? This is not a PhD dissertation , so I don't expect it to go over two semester(if anything).

[fuzzylogician]

It means that that student's progress was not satisfactory. That could be the student's fault, the professor's fault of a combination thereof. I'd suggest talking to other people and figuring out if this was a one-time thing or a common occurrence. If there are multiple such stories, do yourself a favor and stay away from this professor. Find someone with a reputation for getting people out in time. This could also be a question to bring up with any potential advisor you're considering working with - how often do they meet with students, do they give regular progress feedback, will they let you know if you're not on track to graduating on time and what will happen then, how often does that happen to this professor's students in general.

Once you've gotten yourself into a situation where a reluctant prof. is your advisor and he/she will not sign off on your thesis, it'll be much harder to get out of the situation. You'll need to find out your department's policies regarding theses defenses and how they are set up and you will have to fight against your advisor and whoever supports him/her in order to defend. So do yourself a favor and don't get yourself into that situation to begin with.

[Eigen]

What I've seen in our program is that while a MS should take 2 years on paper, it almost always takes 3. It's not a PhD dissertation, but it does need to be complete, have enough data, and make a small contribution to the field. You don't mention what discipline you're in, however, and I gather there's a large difference between MS and MA here, in that for an MS, you just might need to have a longer time to collect data, through no fault of anyone.

As one professor in our program said, you can get out with a MS in two years if you work nights and weekends. If you don't want to work nights and weekends, it will take you longer.

[nehs]

fuzzylogician - that makes sense. My first thought too when I heard this was "probably the student did not put in enough time interms of meetings/readings etc".

I have spoken to other students, some who have done the thesis with him and some others like me, and most have completed the research+thesis in one semester. Ofcourse, they were not working full-time. so I imagine that the student's timelines also count here. I also know that a handful of students who worked with this professor never graduated. This was told to me by the professor himself and he added that the students never came back to complete the degree. I think this is a "black mark" for the professor yet he still admitted it. That I feel was frank.

Eigen - My program too is 2 years and then as a part of graduation requirements we need to sit for a comp exam or do a master's thesis(worth 3 cr.). Most students in my program do the comps and that's primarily because the thesis track needs a GPA of 3.5 which many don't have. I initially thought the thesis will be a nice addition to my career but now I'm feeling that the comp exam might be "easier" primarily because we don't deal with professors. I am in the Computer Science MS program.

I agree with what you say about working longer and harder to finish faster. This is eaxctly what I am doing/have been doing and I do not want to postpone graduation beyond the spring semester. So I am in a dilemma here!

[Eigen]

My understanding from friends in CS (some of the regular posters in that area may be able to correct me) was that comps and a non-thesis option was OK if you were primarily doing it for industry advancement.

And those friends of mine who stayed for a thesis, by and large, had at least another semester past 2 years to work on it.

[nehs]

Eigen - That is correct. Comps/non-thesis option is totally ok in my case too. I was just excited about the thesis and now don't feel like going back to the comps(but I will if I need to). I am at the end of my second year now , so I plan to do the thesis in the next semester(spring) and then graduate at the end of the spring semester.

[Eigen]

Have you talked to your (prospective) thesis advisor specifically about time to completion?

It really all comes down to how fast you can collect the data you need. The actual writing of the thesis isn't usually the holdup.

[nehs]

I have spoken to our graduate advisor. she said it is a two semester process. First, we work on the idea/thesis question and in the second semester we consolidate our ideas/data and write the thesis. Well, we are not collecting any new data for this thesis. I am just using existing data and performing an analysis. I agree with you - writing the thesis isn't really a hold-up. I think when I have the next meeting with my prospective advisor, I am going to bluntly and directly ask him this question. I did ask him once earlier and he said its fine.