Hi Gwendolyn. Practice will vary enormously in this space - by qualification, institution and country.

I was surprised recently that as candidates for doctoral scholarships in my institution, candidates had to get ther proposal 'pitch' on to only two sides of A4. There is some advantage in this brevity (rather like the strengths of 3 minute thesis competitions). You have to boil everything down in terms of project importance, distinctiveness, contribution to new knowledge, key research questions, proposed methodology - and also why you (selling yourself as well as the project). So sometimes a thesis proposal may be very short, sharp and be as much a marketing exercise as an academic exercise.

A more extended thesis justification is that offered at 'Confirmation of Candidature' events. Doctoral students submit 10,000 words which distils project introduction, lit review and methodology and then has HDR students present to a wider disciplinary audience and identified topic experts for feedback.

I understand your desire for an exemplar. Seeing really is believing and it can be helpful to have examples modelled to have a better understanding of expectations. But I suspect that there is a great deal of variety (in terms of both length and format).

One thing to remember is that an audience assessing thesis proposals - at any level and in any discipline - are likely to usually be generalists rather than specialists. So you are looking to communicate a sense of excitement and passion for your proposal that - yes - is academically reputable, justifiable and underpinned, but which importance is also explainable and can be seen as significant and innovative to a broader audience. Think about theb 'impact' that your research may have.

Hope this helps!

Brett I do thank-you for your informative response. You would have presented a Thesis Proposal and can I ask what length was your presentation. I did like the 2 A4 pages both sides-short and targeted. Is your Thesis Proposal available to access on the Net? Gwen

Make a thesis proposal as brief and vague as allowed so that you can be flexible to change the research questions if needed as you go along :)

Thankyou for your response Andrew. So even as s Proposal does include a Literature Review I am stumped ad to the length required? I would love to be able to view a proposal to see the brevity.. Gwen

Hi

i think there is no definite length for thesis proposal...but depends upon the proposal or perspective on which we are working...i would like to share my personal view...my MSc thesis were having 130 pages and for my PhD proposal it was just 165-170 pages...so here objective or perspective of topic matters ..how much literature we can browse or get from internet...and so on

Thankyou for your advice. It is helpful.

Did you bind yours into a hard bound Book?

Thanks

G

Thankyou to everyone for taking the time to reflect on my question and I have found each of the responses helpful. I don’t feel so alone! My Supervisor has just advised my M.Phil (ED) proposal is 10 000 words. I was excited with one suggesstion of brevity and the other for not narrowing it in so as I progress I may change or broaden my focus. So grateful to everyone for your support! Gwendolyn