Weight of your Master's Thesis in PhD Program Application

[yash13177]

Hello everyone!

I am about 8 months in to my MPhil program and I am applying for Fall 2018 admission into U.S. Neuroscience Ph.D. programs. I completed my B.S. in the U.S., and I have quite a bit of research experience (~3.5 years), a poster presentation at a international conference and other conferences at my institution, a 2nd author paper and some grants/awards that I was fortunate enough to receive. 

As for now, I feel like I took on a fairly "big" Master's research project: in terms of work to do and unfamiliarity (for both my PI and myself). It's a little out there, and maybe not considered a "standard" research direction in my field (if that is even a thing). My worry is this: what if I don't have any success from my Master's thesis? My thesis has to be approved etc etc in order for me to graduate, but I was hoping to work towards (at least) a poster presentation. Since I am applying this cycle, I have to talk about my project - which I feel hasn't made much progress! Agh! How much is this a factor in applying to programs? Am I expecting too much from a 2-year research project? Is getting an approved thesis fine or will they expect more (especially considering my undergraduate experience)??

Any comments would be appreciated! Thank you all! 

Edited April 17, 2017 by yash13177

[rising_star]

If it's a two year program, people will expecting you to be making progress toward completing the thesis but not to have completed it when you apply. Your rec letter writers should be talking about both the merits of your project, the work you've done, and your timeline for completion in their letters. In your own materials, you can focus on the techniques and skills you're learning and how you'll apply these to the work you do as a PhD student if you aren't sure you can report on specific results/findings yet.