last minute thesis

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• CAREER FEATURE
• 08 October 2019

Don’t miss your PhD deadline

• Nic Fleming 0

Nic Fleming is a freelance writer based in Bristol, UK.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Horror stories about the final weeks, days and hours before a thesis submission deadline are common among people with PhDs in both the sciences and humanities.

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Nature 574 , 283-285 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03020-6

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Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

University Thesis and Dissertation Templates

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

Theses and dissertations are already intensive, long-term projects that require a lot of effort and time from their authors. Formatting for submission to the university is often the last thing that graduate students do, and may delay earning the relevant degree if done incorrectly.

Below are some strategies graduate students can use to deal with institutional formatting requirements to earn their degrees on time.

Disciplinary conventions are still paramount.

Scholars in your own discipline are the most common readers of your dissertation; your committee, too, will expect your work to match with their expectations as members of your field. The style guide your field uses most commonly is always the one you should follow, and if your field uses conventions such as including all figures and illustrations at the end of the document, you should do so. After these considerations are met, move on to university formatting. Almost always, university formatting only deals with things like margins, font, numbering of chapters and sections, and illustrations; disciplinary style conventions in content such as APA's directive to use only last names of authors in-text are not interfered with by university formatting at all.

Use your university's formatting guidelines and templates to your advantage.

If your institution has a template for formatting your thesis or dissertation that you can use, do so. Don't look at another student's document and try to replicate it yourself. These templates typically have the necessary section breaks and styles already in the document, and you can copy in your work from your existing draft using the style pane in MS Word to ensure you're using the correct formatting (similarly with software such as Overleaf when writing in LaTeX, templates do a lot of the work for you). It's also often easier for workers in the offices that deal with theses and dissertations to help you with your work if you're using their template — they are familiar with these templates and can often navigate them more proficiently.

These templates also include placeholders for all front matter you will need to include in your thesis or dissertation, and may include guidelines for how to write these. Front matter includes your table of contents, acknowledgements, abstract, abbreviation list, figure list, committee page, and (sometimes) academic history or CV; everything before your introduction is front matter. Since front matter pages such as the author's academic history and dissertation committee are usually for the graduate school and not for your department, your advisor might not remember to have you include them. Knowing about them well before your deposit date means you won't be scrambling to fill in placeholders at the last minute or getting your work returned for revision from the graduate school.

Consider institutional formatting early and often.

Many graduate students leave this aspect of submitting their projects until it's almost too late to work on it, causing delays in obtaining their degree. Simply being aware that this is a task you'll have to complete and making sure you know where templates are, who you can ask for help in your graduate office or your department, and what your institution's guidelines are can help alleviate this issue. Once you know what you'll be expected to do to convert to university formatting, you can set regular check-in times for yourself to do this work in pieces rather than all at once (for instance, when you've completed a chapter and had it approved by your chair). 

Consider fair use for images and other third-party content.

Most theses and dissertations are published through ProQuest or another publisher (Harvard, for instance, uses their own open publishing service). For this reason, it may be the case that your institution requires all images or other content obtained from other sources to fall under fair use rules or, if an image is not considered under fair use, you'll have to obtain permission to print it in your dissertation. Your institution should have more guidance on their specific expectations for fair use content; knowing what these guidelines are well in advance of your deposit date means you won't have to make last-minute changes or removals to deposit your work.

Tips for Online Students , Tips for Students

How to Write a Research Paper Fast

Updated: December 8, 2023

Published: January 27, 2020

As a student, you knew it was inevitable. The day has come where you have to write a research paper, but you’ve put it off until the last minute. Now the pressure is sinking in to get it done quickly and you want to know how to write a research paper fast.

The good news is that it’s doable. The better news is that there are ways to avoid waiting until the last minute. We will tackle those after we give you everything you need to know to get it done.

Photo by Russ Ward

The process.

A research paper is what it sounds like — a paper that requires a thesis (or argument) along with the research to back it up. Research papers involve citing a variety of sources, analyzing arguments, and pulling different academic pieces together to prove a point.

1. Understand the Assignment:

The first thing you have to make sure you do before you get to outlining and writing is to understand the assignment. You will need to organize different pieces of information, from books, essays, interviews, articles and more.

2. Choose a Topic:

Depending on the assignment provided, you will either have a topic in front of you or you will have to decide on one yourself. If your professor did not provide you with a topic, here are some helpful ways to choose one that will work for your needs:

• Choose something you understand enough so that you will be able to interpret the research about it
• Before you get started, check that there is a lot of content about that topic by performing a simple online search to see what turns up
• Write out your topic as a research question that you plan to answer
• Research more about your topic and find evidence to back up what you want to answer
• Make a list of keywords that you continue to see pop up about the topic
• Create your thesis

3. Perform Research:

While performing research is as easy as conducting an online search for sources, the more important element is evaluating the validity of a source. Don’t use Wikipedia as a source, because it is crowdsourced and can be edited by anyone. Instead, rely on digital encyclopedias, scholarly databases, trustworthy publications like TIME magazine and the New York Times, and the like. Since you’re writing this research paper at the last minute, the library may not be a possible option. However, for the next time you write a research paper and plan in advance, definitely utilize books from the library.

4. Write Your Thesis:

A thesis statement is the gist of your entire paper. It is what you will spend your writing proving; therefore, it has to be strong and to the point. A thesis statement appears in the introduction of your research paper, following the strong hook statement that draws your readers in. There is a formulaic way to write a strong thesis statement, and it looks something like this:

“By examining (argument 1), (argument 2), and (argument 3), it is clear that (statement you will prove).”

A thesis statement is typically one sentence and it is clearly written so that the reader knows exactly what they will read about in your paper.

To check that you’ve written a strong thesis statement, ask yourself if it achieves the following:

• Is it in the introduction?
• Does it answer the question from the prompt?
• Can others argue against my thesis?
• Is it going to prove a single claim?
• Does it answer something meaningful?

5. Outline Your Paper:

Now that you have the main ingredients for your research paper, namely your thesis and supporting research, you can start outlining. Everyone has their own way they like to create an outline for papers. Here’s one good example of how it can be done — this is called a flat outline:

• List the topics you will discuss
• Under each topic, write your sources
• If you are lacking sources, revisit and research more to give more meat to your paper
• Move your topics and their information onto your paper in an organized flow
• Write your thesis at the top so you can ensure that you are answering/proving your thesis throughout the paper’s argument

6. The Body/Intro and Conclusion:

So, do you start with your introduction and conclusion and then fill in the body? Or, do you do it the other way around? Really, there is no right or wrong way. It ultimately depends on your preference. Some people like to write their introduction and use it to serve as an outline of their paper and then flow from there. Others like to write their points in the body of their paper and then extrapolate the introduction and conclusion from what they wrote.

Regardless of how you perform your work, there is a structure that the paper must follow, which looks like this:

• Introduction – includes a hook sentence (grabs the reader), your thesis and a menu sentence (a list of what you will discuss).
• Body paragraphs – each body paragraph comes from what you mentioned in your introduction’s menu sentence. Each body paragraph has a topic sentence, or a first sentence that clearly states what it will be about. Each body paragraph includes support and sources that prove the topic sentence or argument.
• Conclusion – here, you restate your introduction and thesis in different words. You want to end with a strong and memorable sentence. Just like your introduction began with a hook statement, your conclusion should end with something that will be remembered.

7. Cite Sources:

One of the major differences between a research paper and any other academic paper is that you must cite your sources. The end of your paper will have a list of sources, or a bibliography. Depending on your professor’s preferences, they will either be listed in APA format , MLA , Chicago , etc. This is an imperative step because your entire research paper’s evidence is based on and backed up by these sources, so you must give them credit where credit is due.

While this is not in the cards for all paper writing, it is very important for a last minute research paper. You’ve likely spent hours crunching the information and regurgitating it in your own words to fill up the once blank pages. As such, it’s a good idea to step away from your paper, get some sleep, and then revisit it with fresh eyes in the morning.

9. Proofread Revise and Editing:

As with any paper, you want to make sure you read it over to catch any mistakes. Not only should you use the Word processing tool that checks spelling and grammar for you, but you must also read it out loud to find any mistakes.

10. Find and Remove Plagiarism:

Once you are done with the entire proofreading and checking phase, the last thing that you have to do is find and remove plagiarism in your research paper. Plagiarism has a lot of consequences, and you have to make sure that your research paper is completely free of it. To do this, you first have to use a plagiarism checker to find all the plagiarized parts. Once found, you can either remove them or give the required accreditations.

If there is time to ask a friend or peer to read over your paper one time, that will be a good idea, too.

Photo by  Dan Dimmock  on  Unsplash

How to write a research paper in a day.

Granted, all the steps above can help you write a research paper fast. Here’s a brief look at how you can do this in a day:

1. Brainstorm Quickly

• Use the prompt
• Outline possible options
• Perform a simple Google search and find what has the most information
• Choose your topic
• Create an outline

2. Research

• Find research to support each point in your outline

3. Write Quickly

• Put it all on paper as you think of it
• Take time to edit, condense, and rewrite

Photo by  Nick Morrison  on  Unsplash

Find a good writing environment.

Before sitting down to get started on your last-minute task, make sure you set up an environment that is conducive to getting your work done. Things you want to consider:

1. Distraction-free:

Choose somewhere quiet and distraction-free. You will have to stay focused for a few hours, so you’ll want to choose a comfortable setting.

2. Good lighting:

Along with comfort, make sure you have adequate lighting to read and write.

3. Go somewhere studious:

Perhaps, if time permits, you can choose to work in somewhere like a library or a study lounge.

4. Bring just your supplies needed:

Even if you work at home, make sure you set up a table with only the supplies you need, as to limit distractions. This could include: a computer, tablet, pen, paper, highlighter, books, and sticky notes. Plus, don’t forget water!

Tips to Avoid Procrastination

Writing a last-minute paper, especially that involves research, is stressful and less than optimal . Instead of finding yourself in this position, you can follow this advice to avoid such a situation.

1. Start early:

Once you’re given the prompt, start thinking about what you want to write about. You can write down ideas on paper and look into the research that supports each point.

2. Outline first and take breaks:

Begin outlining your paper so that when you sit to write, you already have the bulk of it prepared. If you start early, you will have the advantage and ability to take breaks. This helps to revisit your argument with a clear head and potentially see things that you may have otherwise missed.

3. Ask for help if you need it:

Starting early means that you are not crunched for time. So, you have the added benefit of asking for help. You can solicit advice from friends, peers, family, your professors, teacher assistants, the online community, and more. Plus, when you finish writing your paper, you have time to ask for help from someone other than you to read it over and edit it.

The Bottom Line

While knowing how to write a paper fast is useful and at times necessary, it is not the optimal way to approach assignments. However, sometimes being in a bind is out of your control. Therefore, the best way to write a research paper fast is to follow the aforementioned steps and remember to stay calm.

While a research paper involves a lot of work, from creating a strong thesis to finding supporting research, it can be made into an enjoyable activity when you choose to write about something you are interested in. It gives you a chance to digest other people’s findings and make your own inferences about what they mean.

By following the typical structure of a research paper, creating an outline and finding good sources, you can get your research paper done in a night. Good luck!

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The Last Minute Dissertation Checklist

Dissertations are long academic pieces that answer particular research questions. A dissertation is an important part of the grading system for a university course. So, you must structure your dissertation well and format it in a specified way.

To help you with your dissertation, we are providing you with a few essentials of the dissertation checklist. Go over them before you submit your final dissertation to avoid any silly mistakes. These are certain simple ways in which you can avoid losing marks and get more readers to read your dissertation.

1. Adhere to a format specified by your professor, advisor, or institution

The first impression you give your professor should be good. Do not lose marks because of formatting errors on your part. Follow the format given by your professor to make your dissertation appealing to them. This includes using the specified font type, size, and color. Use the right paragraph length and line spacing. Number your pages and points. Also, write your points distinctly. Make your dissertation presentationable.

2. Check whether all the sections and information have been covered

While writing different parts of your dissertation, like the introduction, body, and conclusion, it is possible that you might have missed a few important points that are part of the answer to your main dissertation question. Go over your data to find out whether you have missed out on important points. At the same time, make sure that you have covered all the sections that have been stressed in your university guidelines.

3. Add a table of contents and an abstract at the beginning

A table of contents is important for a dissertation . It should be a list of the sections, subsections, and headings that you have covered in your dissertation. Specify the page numbers as well. This should be done serially, in a point-wise format.

As you write your abstract, be aware of all that can be included in it- the context and background of your research, the main point and question addressed, and your analysis and findings. The important points need to be summed up in the abstract. Do not make it too long. Summarize your research and edit the summary to prepare an abstract.

4. Correct any spelling mistakes or grammatical errors

The next step is to check your dissertation for any grammatical mistakes you might have ignored while writing it. At the same time, go over the spelling mistakes that you come across. They would be underlined by a red or blue-colored curvy line. Try to correct them as soon as possible and make your dissertation error-free.

5. Read through your dissertation again and check your research

This is an important part of the dissertation’s final checklist. It is human nature to make mistakes while working on a project. However, unlike spelling or grammatical mistakes, these mistakes directly impact your research. They become visible as the reader goes through your essay step-by-step. As you read through your dissertation you might come across some miscalculations or improper words. Correct these small mistakes. Reread your analysis and conclusion. Are you missing a point? Have you explained your answer in your conclusion?

6. Add an appropriate title page

Do not forget to add a title to your dissertation. It should be concise, but not too short and vague. It should give the reader an idea of what you are working on. It should also make the course for which you are writing a dissertation clear. If you are preparing a title page, add your name to it along with the name of your professor or dissertation advisor.

7. Have enough space between different parts of your dissertation

As you structure your dissertation , make sure that you put enough space between different individual points as well as between distinct parts of your dissertation like the introduction, observation, table 1, table 2, analysis, conclusion, etc. It will make your dissertation neat and tidy. Do not try to fit the parts in a limited space. Use ample space. Try to start each part on a new page. Grading will become more convenient for your professor.

8. Cite sources

Avoid coming under the plagiarism radar by citing sources of information that you have used in your dissertation. Any quotation or paraphrasing needs to be cited. This includes the people you have talked to, papers referred to (along with the author’s name), universities and other institutions you visited for your research, and all other points of data collection that you used for your dissertation. In-text citations are also useful when it comes to referencing particular scientific papers.

9. The dissertation should have a logical flow

Go over the main points of your dissertation and check whether they are in a logical order. Make sure that you explain each point well and do not throw information at the reader out of the blue. The reader should make sense of your analysis and conclusion from your observations and explanations following the tables and graphs. Do not give the impression that your explanations are all over the place. The reader should be able to follow your argument.

10. Highlight important points

As you get closer to submitting your dissertation do not forget to highlight important points that you want the readers to pay attention to. Highlight your thesis statement, main question, title, sub-headings, labels, and keywords. They will help the reader come back to your research paper or dissertation and refer to the important phrases. Your objectives will stand out, making your analysis and answers clear to the reader.

11. Do not assume a reader’s knowledge

Explain points wherever needed. State the full form before you start using abbreviations. Do not assume that a reader knows all the abbreviations. A reader might not be in the same field that you are working in. So, specify whatever seems vague and explain wherever needed (especially terms that are specific to your field of study). Try to mention the full form in a bracket if you use the abbreviation rarely in your dissertation. If a word does not appear clear, either state the meaning in the appendix or change the word.

Summing up the above points, here is the dissertation checklist you should follow:

• Check the contents of your dissertation for any spelling or grammatical mistakes.
• Correct any other mistakes or miscalculations in the body of your dissertation.
• Explain any points or words that seem unclear, and prepare an appendix if need be.
• Add an abstract and a table of contents at the beginning.
• Highlight the main points and keywords.
• Give appropriate titles and labels wherever needed.
• Cite the sources you have referred to in your dissertation .
• Include all the sections specified in the guidelines in the right order.
• Space your sections and points appropriately, starting with the introduction and going right up to the conclusion.
• Start each section on a new page.
• Format your dissertation according to the mentioned guidelines (font type, size, color, line, and paragraph spacing, indentation, text alignment, etc)
• Add your name, the name of your professor (or dissertation advisor), the course name, and the name of your institution on the title page.
• Check whether your dissertation is logically ordered (points, elements, etc).

I hope this last-minute dissertation checklist specifying the essentials of a dissertation helped you! Just check your dissertation before you submit it and make any necessary changes to the format and structure. Read through the dissertation submission checklist of your institute as well. You are good to go!

-Masha Evans

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Prize-Winning Thesis and Dissertation Examples

Published on September 9, 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on July 18, 2023.

It can be difficult to know where to start when writing your thesis or dissertation . One way to come up with some ideas or maybe even combat writer’s block is to check out previous work done by other students on a similar thesis or dissertation topic to yours.

This article collects a list of undergraduate, master’s, and PhD theses and dissertations that have won prizes for their high-quality research.

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Table of contents

Award-winning undergraduate theses, award-winning master’s theses, award-winning ph.d. dissertations, other interesting articles.

University : University of Pennsylvania Faculty : History Author : Suchait Kahlon Award : 2021 Hilary Conroy Prize for Best Honors Thesis in World History Title : “Abolition, Africans, and Abstraction: the Influence of the “Noble Savage” on British and French Antislavery Thought, 1787-1807”

University : Columbia University Faculty : History Author : Julien Saint Reiman Award : 2018 Charles A. Beard Senior Thesis Prize Title : “A Starving Man Helping Another Starving Man”: UNRRA, India, and the Genesis of Global Relief, 1943-1947

University: University College London Faculty: Geography Author: Anna Knowles-Smith Award:  2017 Royal Geographical Society Undergraduate Dissertation Prize Title:  Refugees and theatre: an exploration of the basis of self-representation

University: University of Washington Faculty:  Computer Science & Engineering Author: Nick J. Martindell Award: 2014 Best Senior Thesis Award Title:  DCDN: Distributed content delivery for the modern web

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University:  University of Edinburgh Faculty:  Informatics Author:  Christopher Sipola Award:  2018 Social Responsibility & Sustainability Dissertation Prize Title:  Summarizing electricity usage with a neural network

University:  University of Ottawa Faculty:  Education Author:  Matthew Brillinger Award:  2017 Commission on Graduate Studies in the Humanities Prize Title:  Educational Park Planning in Berkeley, California, 1965-1968

University:  University of Ottawa Faculty: Social Sciences Author:  Heather Martin Award:  2015 Joseph De Koninck Prize Title:  An Analysis of Sexual Assault Support Services for Women who have a Developmental Disability

University : University of Ottawa Faculty : Physics Author : Guillaume Thekkadath Award : 2017 Commission on Graduate Studies in the Sciences Prize Title : Joint measurements of complementary properties of quantum systems

University:  London School of Economics Faculty: International Development Author: Lajos Kossuth Award:  2016 Winner of the Prize for Best Overall Performance Title:  Shiny Happy People: A study of the effects income relative to a reference group exerts on life satisfaction

University : Stanford University Faculty : English Author : Nathan Wainstein Award : 2021 Alden Prize Title : “Unformed Art: Bad Writing in the Modernist Novel”

University : University of Massachusetts at Amherst Faculty : Molecular and Cellular Biology Author : Nils Pilotte Award : 2021 Byron Prize for Best Ph.D. Dissertation Title : “Improved Molecular Diagnostics for Soil-Transmitted Molecular Diagnostics for Soil-Transmitted Helminths”

University:  Utrecht University Faculty:  Linguistics Author:  Hans Rutger Bosker Award: 2014 AVT/Anéla Dissertation Prize Title:  The processing and evaluation of fluency in native and non-native speech

University: California Institute of Technology Faculty: Physics Author: Michael P. Mendenhall Award: 2015 Dissertation Award in Nuclear Physics Title: Measurement of the neutron beta decay asymmetry using ultracold neutrons

University:  Stanford University Faculty: Management Science and Engineering Author:  Shayan O. Gharan Award:  Doctoral Dissertation Award 2013 Title:   New Rounding Techniques for the Design and Analysis of Approximation Algorithms

University: University of Minnesota Faculty: Chemical Engineering Author: Eric A. Vandre Award:  2014 Andreas Acrivos Dissertation Award in Fluid Dynamics Title: Onset of Dynamics Wetting Failure: The Mechanics of High-speed Fluid Displacement

University: Erasmus University Rotterdam Faculty: Marketing Author: Ezgi Akpinar Award: McKinsey Marketing Dissertation Award 2014 Title: Consumer Information Sharing: Understanding Psychological Drivers of Social Transmission

University: University of Washington Faculty: Computer Science & Engineering Author: Keith N. Snavely Award:  2009 Doctoral Dissertation Award Title: Scene Reconstruction and Visualization from Internet Photo Collections

University:  University of Ottawa Faculty:  Social Work Author:  Susannah Taylor Award: 2018 Joseph De Koninck Prize Title:  Effacing and Obscuring Autonomy: the Effects of Structural Violence on the Transition to Adulthood of Street Involved Youth

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How to Write a Last Minute Essay

←What If I Don’t Have Anything Interesting to Write About in My College Essay?

8 Tips for Overcoming Writer’s Block→

Ooops! You waited until the very last minute to begin the college application process, and it’s probably stressing you out. But never fear – CollegeVine is here to make sure that your procrastination impacts your essay as minimally as possible.

We’ve included a guide for the 30-day essay, the 15-day essay, and the 3-day essay. If you have multiple essays to write in a short time, you can follow the appropriate guide for multiple prompts simultaneously, or offset it by a few days.

The 30-Day Essay

At this point, you want to focus on ideas. You have the freedom to spend a few days figuring out which direction your essay is going to take, so take your time to think about what you want to convey in your essay. Find four to five topics to begin with—you can ask your parents, friends, and teachers about what they find interesting about you in order to speed this process up. Try to choose anecdotes from your life that, in retrospect, you learned from, and these stories will inform your topic. Even the shortest, most insignificant moment can make a great essay if it shaped you in some way. If you are writing a “why this school” essay, make a list of reasons why you are applying. Do appropriate research to find strong reasons that show your genuine interest in the school. 

Now that you have a few potential topics, think about how each one would respond to the prompt. Spend 15 minutes outlining each one, using your prompt to guide the outline. In essays that ask you to tell a story, a good topic should write itself and finding a strong essay idea will nearly always be more productive than forcing a story to respond to the prompt. For “why this school” essays, focus on the structure and connection between your reasons. Giving this step the necessary hours now will pay off later. Narrow your list of potential topics to your top one to three choices.

Now it’s time to put pen to paper. If you’re having a hard time, try writing in different environments—coffee shops, your room, or a library, for example—and alternate between topics, and remember that at least at this stage, more words is better than fewer; there will be a step to polish your writing later. 

By day 14, you should have written one rough essay for every “top choice” topic you decided on during day 5. This means that you should now have anywhere between one to three potential essays for a single prompt.

If you do have more than one essay written, it is now time to choose a single essay. Out of the two or three essays you have written in the past couple days, there is probably one that speaks to you more than the rest. If you’re having a hard time, think about which of the topics you’d like to spend another two weeks with, and try to figure out which one says the most about you. Essays with twice the number of words allowed or more should be ruled out; the anecdote is probably too long, or the topic requires too much detail to be effective.

Break days! Distance is important when writing. Take a break from your essays so that you can continue to edit with a fresh mind. These are great days to give your essay to other people to edit—school faculty members who know you well, a coach/music teacher, your parents, and one or two friends. If you are over the word limit, ask specifically for these editors to help you cut down the essay.

Reading your essay with a fresh mind should help you catch big, structural edits. Your first round of edits should involve content edits; you’re looking for what the essay really says about you as a person, and whether that was what you were trying to get across. How does the sentence flow? Does the essay move itself?

Break day! Get some more distance from your writing.

At this point, you might have received some edits back from the people you handed your essay to. Go through each of the edits and decide which suggestions you plan to take, and which seem to alter your personal voice or which don’t match the essay stylistically. Try to stay objective as you review these edits—some of them will be detrimental. If you can’t see why the change was made, it’s probably best to ignore it. If multiple people give you the same feedback, however, you may want to give it some thought.

Implement the edits that you liked. Then read through the essay again and make sure that there are no structural edits or content edits that still need to happen.

These days are the middle stage of your editing process. You’re looking for words that don’t fit the style of the essay, or which could be improved, as well as sentence flow problems. Are all your sentences the same length? Is one paragraph not as well written as the rest of the essay? This should also be the time that you cut words. If you are still more than 70 words over, try to cut full sentences. Otherwise, start by cutting unnecessary phrases and words.

Start doing smaller grammatical edits. A great way to catch edits is to record yourself reading your essay aloud and then listening to the recording. As you go through this process, highlight, mark, and comment on your essay. Afterwards, go through and use your notes to fix word flow, word choice, and grammatical mistakes.

Break day! It’s close to the deadline, we know. Take a break anyway – you need and deserve it.

Last minute edits! Spend some quality time with your essay by just reading it every few hours. Try to catch any small mistakes or random sentence flow problems. (If you suddenly realize that you hate your essay, reference the 3-Day Essay below. Be sure that you aren’t being hyper-critical, though—you may just hate the essay because you’ve spent so much time on it).

Congratulations! Your essay is done! It’s time for you to catch a break. 

The 15-Day Essay

Spend a few hours working on a list of ideas that could become potential essays. Choose one and make an outline.

Write your essay!

Ask a few people who you think would give constructive comments to read your essay— teachers, parents, and  friends. Spend some time doing content and structure edits. Figure out what you want the essay to convey about your personality, and determine whether your essay actually gets this across.

Do some structural editing. Pay attention to sentence flow, the length of paragraphs, overall organization. If your essay is too long, try to cut down on unnecessary information. Pay close attention to the way that you have structured paragraphs and make sure each one makes sense.

Take a break!

Synthesize the comments you received on your essay. Decide which suggestions you want to use and which ones you don’t. If you can’t figure out why a particular suggestion was made, ask the person who gave it. After you’ve gone through all the feedback, edit your essay accordingly.

Cut your essay down to the word limit – ask yourself which anecdotes, details, and adjectives are truly necessary. If you’re having trouble, reference the editors that you spoke to previously.

Work on grammatical and other small edits. Look for minor things that need to be corrected, such as punctuation and word choice. This process requires a few dedicated hours. Aim to really spend some time polishing your language. Reading your essay aloud can be a productive way to accomplish this.

Take a break from your essay!

Spend the whole day with your essay. Every few hours, do a reread and see if you can catch any small last minute edits. Don’t try to change anything major—you don’t have time!

Submit the essay and take a good nap. You’ve finished! 

The 3-Day Essay

Don’t panic. This is doable, but it’ll be a busy few days. Spend the morning coming up with ideas for your essay. Choose one, and use the afternoon to write it. Email this draft to teachers, and show it to your parents. Then, take a few hours off, and later at night, read it through to edit for content. Does the essay say what you intended it to?

Check your email throughout the day. When you get edits back, start incorporating those into the essay. Be picky about which ones you choose to include because you don’t want to take your own voice out of the essay. Spend the day doing structural edits. Every hour, take a thirty minute break from editing. By the end of the day, you should have an essay that fits within the word limit and also has a strong flow. The organization should be good, and you should be able to see how the essay builds upon itself.

DO NOT OPEN EDITS. If any of your readers have replied to your email, don’t open them at all. At this point, the extra edits will just freak you out, and you don’t have time to do major fixes. The name of the game today is small edits; look for grammar, word changes, and minor sentence structure changes. When you’re finally done, take a breath; you can finally relax. 

The 1-Day Essay 

Of course, writing a college essay the day before it’s due is far from ideal, but we know there are probably some of you out there who will find yourself in this situation. Don’t worry, it is not hopeless. Instead of trying to fit a step-by-step plan into a tight timespan, we’ve compiled some general tips to help you churn out that essay in one day. 

Choose your prompts strategically.

If you already know what you’re going to write about, great! Move on to the next tip. If not, see if you might have already written an essay to any of the available prompts. Especially if the prompts are open-ended, you may have already addressed a potential topic in previous school papers. Look through your files to see if you have any essays that you might be able to recycle. The key here is recycle : it goes without saying that you shouldn’t use a previously-written essay word for word for your college submission. You should still take time to tailor it to the prompt and make sure that it conveys your message clearly, whether it’s illustrating your strengths or expressing why you wish to attend that particular college. 

Make an outline. 

Yes, you may feel that you don’t have time for extensive planning, and that you should just jump in and get everything on paper. Try to rein in this urge and take one hour to make a brief outline, spelling out your “thesis” and all the points you want to address. This will help keep your thoughts in order as you write, especially in such a time-constricted context. 

Get that distance, re-read, and edit. 

It’s always tempting to just click submit once you’re done with a project you worked long and hard on, to feel that relief when you know it’s done. However, especially given the rushed nature of a last-minute essay like this, the revision and editing process is crucial, even if it’ll be minimal. Blatant errors will reflect poorly in your application! 

So when you’re done writing, set it aside for a few hours. Then, reread it, and make any necessary corrections—grammar mistakes, typos, sentence flow. When you’re sure it sounds they way you want it to, then you can submit. 

Wrapping it Up

Procrastinating on your college essays isn’t the best way to go, but it can be saved. If you haven’t started applying yet, start your college essays as early as possible! Longer breaks between editing sessions will allow you to get the distance necessary to be objective, and to produce the best quality essay you can.

Want help with your college essays to improve your admissions chances? Sign up for your free CollegeVine account and get access to our essay guides and courses. You can also get your essay peer-reviewed and improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays.

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

Six Tips for Last-Minute Dissertation Writers

As the months go on, the looming dissertation deadline that we like to pretend will never arrive starts to become dangerously real.

All you have to do is google anything dissertation-related for reassurance that if you’ve fallen behind, you’re not alone.

The good news is that you still have time. Better yet, Tutorful is armed with a bunch of tips from my time as a student to help you make the most of the next few months.

Choosing the right topic

Your dissertation is a huge task. Possibly the biggest and most important piece of work you will ever undertake. When you get the stroke of genius that leads you to the topic you plan to devote hundreds of hours of your life to, it can feel like a huge weight off your shoulders.

However, it’s important to make sure you don't get carried away. Before you jump into writing it, ensure you make a thorough plan of the topics you will have to research and get a rough idea of how much you currently know vs how much you need to know. It could be that although you feel like you’ve found the perfect topic, the research involved would be too time-consuming at this stage, and it could be better to “stick to what you know”, as they say.

Don’t be afraid to start again

If you hit a roadblock and realise that the topic you’ve chosen is far more complicated than you first thought, or that the results of your study really don’t give you that much to talk about, sometimes it’s better to scrap it and start again than to submit something that your heart isn’t in.

It’s so much easier to write when you’re passionate about the subject, and when you feel like you actually understand it.

As Albert Einstein once said, “Any fool can know. The point is to understand”.

If you don’t have a true grasp on the topic you’re writing about, unfortunately the person marking it will probably pick up on this. A few hours research on a topic isn’t enough to be able to write an insightful, convincing essay about it, and instead you’ll find yourself using vague terms and going off on tangents.

Of course only you can decide what is within your abilities, so weigh up the pros and cons of switching topics, and decide what’s best for you. Perhaps even check out some of the tutors on our website and run some questions by them if you want reassurance that you’re on the right track. We offer tuition in more than 300 subjects, so you should be able to easily find someone that’s a specialist in yours.

You need breaks

If you’ve completed three years of university, and haven’t spent at least one morning watching the sunrise whilst crying into a pot noodle because you’ve been working on an essay for 18 hours straight, I commend you.

Nearly every graduate has been there, and the memory of it is enough to make you shudder.

Yes, your cat is almost definitely fed up of hearing you say you wish you’d started this back in December.

It might not even be that you’re trying to hit a deadline. If you’re on a roll, it can be hard to stop as we all know it can be difficult to pick up where you left off. However, I promise you that taking a break from it until the next day will result in a much better finished product than anything your caffeine-riddled brain can produce at 3am on a Wednesday morning.

Also - I work better “under pressure” is not justification for leaving your work until last minute, trust me!

Respect your references

Picture this. You’ve done the hard part. You’ve written 10,000 words on a complicated subject matter and you’re ready for a well deserved pat on the back. However you kept telling yourself that you’ll worry about references at the end. So instead of keeping a neat record of references on the end of your document, ready for a quick once-over before you print, you have to wade through your entire document, pull out your references one by one and try and arrange them into some semblance of order before you retire to your bed for the next week.

I’ve been there. I’ve watched other people be there and thrown them one of those awkward, reassuring smiles from across the library. There is no real way to put into words how exasperating this situation is, so my advice is do not put yourself in it.

Also, if you need someone to help you with tidying up the finished product, we have a whole host of expert tutors with tons of experience with dissertations who will be able to help you format it correctly, ensure your references are structured properly, and even proofread it for you.

Don’t leave printing until last minute

Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”.

This phrase wasn’t coined to describe the frustration of dealing with printers, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was.

There is nothing worse than spending hours of your life crafting a masterpiece, only to have your limits tested by a printer that won’t connect or will only print in an awful shade of dark green.

I promise you that if you leave printing until the last minute, you simply won’t have the strength to deal with an uncooperative printer without stamping your feet and cursing in frustration - and you don’t want to be that person in the uni library on deadline day.

Let’s face it - you have no idea what you’re doing and the likelihood of finding anyone who does is slim.

Set yourself a hard and fast deadline a few days before it’s actually due and make sure you stick to it. Don’t keep tinkering with your final piece after you’ve finished - get it printed out and ready to submit and enjoy the huge sigh of relief you can breathe.

Binding is hard

Not only do universities have the audacity to force you to use tons of paper in order to print out your dissertation, chances are that they expect it delivered expertly bound and with front and back plastic covers.

Some universities have a binding machine you can pay a small fee to use, however with deadline day looming, expect a queue.

If you’ve never used a binding machine before, chances are you have no clue what you’re doing, so make sure that you take some test paper with you and do a practice run before unleashing this cumbersome machine upon your one hundred page long masterpiece.

Cities with a high student population will often have printing companies that are yearning for your business, so sometimes it’s easier to just bite the bullet and pay a few quid to have someone do it for you. It will probably save you a lot of time and stress, and it will undoubtedly look better than anything you could cobble together with the equipment in the uni library.

You Still Have Time

Can you write a first-class dissertation in a month? Possibly. But the sensible thing to do is get cracking now whilst you still have a bit of time to work with.

If you wait until the last minute, you will kick yourself for prioritising 19 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy over your education, and you’ll end up having to sentence yourself to weeks on end with little sleep and zero Netflix time whilst you knock together something that might only just scrape a pass.

If you find yourself genuinely struggling, I’d absolutely recommend taking a look at our website. We have tutors that specialise in a wide variety of subjects , who have taught hundreds or even thousands of hours to people in exactly your situation.

1st Feb 2023

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How to Write a Last Minute Research Paper

Introduction: How to Write a Last Minute Research Paper

If you're anything like me, you always have good intentions at the beginning of the semester for giving yourself ample time to complete your research paper...but then the weekend (or night) before the paper's due date sneaks up on you and you haven't even started. This situation has happened to me countless times - in fact, I can't remember ever starting a paper earlier than 2 days before the due date. I have had many years to perfect my procrastination methodology and I think I've got it down to a science. This guide is for quick and dirty paper writing - it probably contradicts everything your teachers have told you...but it works.

Step 1: Pick Your Topic

The best scenario for writing a quick paper is when your professor allows you to pick your topic / thesis statement. Note: This is not the time to develop your thesis...that comes later. The key is to pick as broad a topic as possible. If your professor wants a 10 page paper it will be much easier to fill 10 pages about the life of Aristotle than having to create a bunch of fluff around his views on posterior analytics. Also, pick a topic that a lot of previous research has already been done on it. If you're writing the paper the day before it's due, you aren't trying to reinvent the wheel...you're basically just collaging other people's research and putting it in your own words. 

Step 2: Research

I've found that the fastest way to get going on your paper is to do the research first, then develop your thesis later. If you develop your thesis too early, you may find that there's not enough to research to support it, it's too specific, it's super lame, etc. So where's the best place to start? Wikipedia. Despite all the Wikipedia trash talk you've heard from teachers, Wikipedia is the best place to get an outline going. It usually gives a broad overview of the topic, then has an outline with a bunch of different topics that I usually steal for my own body outline. Just make sure that you never plagiarize from Wikipedia. I mean don't ever plagiarize anything, but that is the first place your professor will go to check for plagiarization. Once you have a rough outline, copy and paste specific quotes, passages, terms etc. from Wikipedia into Google and look at other sources that come up. Professors prefer book/print sources over online sources any day...so if your search comes up with a book or print article that has been made available online, definitely go for that. Even if it's just a sample of the book, try to find the page number, or worst-case scenario - make an educated guess. Your professor probably won't go buy the book and scan every page to check up on your citation. If you find a cheap Kindle book on your topic, you might want to buy it. Just remember to only scan through the relevant sections because you don't have time to read an entire book at this point. If your Google search leads to a sketchy looking website with no author, don't use it. It might have awesome info but your professor will not like it if the website isn't valid. That being said, if you know your professor has 200 papers to read and they aren't going to check all sources...and you're feeling lucky...then go for it. Copy/Paste all the sentences or paragraphs you wish to paraphrase into a word document and put each section into your own words. This is to make sure you don't accidentally plagiarize...because later on you could think you have an awesome original idea but it actually came from an old source you forgot about. The sections don't need to flow together or have any kind of order, it's just about putting things into your own words. Make sure to cite your source after each section...that will save you some time when you're writing your final draft. After you're finished rewriting, delete the original texts.

Step 3: Develop Your Thesis

Now that you've done the research, you should have an idea as to what your thesis statement should be. Professors always hate broad thesis statements so try to make it seem as specific as you can without limiting the amount of things you can talk about. Since this is a research paper it doesn't have to be controversial, revolutionary, super innovative, etc. It just needs to provide direction on where your paper is going. So if you are writing about a person you can talk about how they were influential, made an impact on issues of that time period, thrived through difficult circumstances, something like that. A general rule I learned in high school is that thesis statements should be the last sentence of the introductory paragraph. I've always put it there and haven't had a teacher correct me so I would go with that. 

Step 4: The Body

Once you have your thesis statement established, read through the stuff you have written and try to organize and take out stuff that doesn't fit. Come up with the number of paragraphs you want, what each paragraph is specifically talking about, and put things in their respective paragraphs. Don't start on the introduction and conclusion paragraphs yet, just dive right into the facts. Try to blend the stuff from different sources so that it all flows together. Different sources can have different tones and writing styles and even though you put everything in your own words, each section can sound different. This puts up a red flag for a professor to think that you are plagiarizing so keep that in mind. If you need to, google some more stuff and get more research. Don't forget to put in all your citations. 

Step 5: Introduction and Conclusion

Now you're ready for your introduction and conclusion paragraphs. I typically devote my introduction paragraph to putting my topic in some sort of context. If the paper is about a person I'll give a super short bio. If it's about a thing or concept I'll briefly explain what it is, how it's used, why it's important, etc. I try to go for 5-6 sentences in the paragraph. The first sentence starts introducing the topic, then each sentence leads more and more to the final sentence, which is the thesis statement. I find the conclusion paragraph to be the most difficult section to write. I mean you've already said everything that needs to be said, so now you're just filling space until you can stop writing. It's like when you're stuck in a boring conversation and you're trying to find an excuse to leave. But it has to be done so here we go. When writing about a person I usually use this space for their legacy. Like how they impacted their children, the next generation, the ideas of today, etc. I kind of use that strategy with a concept as well, like how did that invention/idea/concept change society or culture. 

Step 6: Works Cited

for the Works Cited page I always go to citationmachine.net, enter the info from the sources, then copy/paste into Word. The website is good for most writing styles. 

Step 7: Sleep on It

I am often too lazy to do this, but the best way for proofreading is to read over it the next morning. That way your mind has some time to get off the subject for a while and get a fresh perspective. But I'm telling you this from experience...don't wait until a few minutes before class to print it (if you have to submit a hard copy). You never know if your printer will decide it doesn't feel like printing, you forgot you ran out of ink/paper last week, or some other random factor that only happens when you have to print at that exact moment. Now you have your paper in hand...congratulations and best of luck to you on your grade.

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How to win the last minute thesis writing league?

This entry was posted in Academic Writing , on March 14 , 2022 .

Thesis plays a vital role in every research student’s life. However, without the blend of hard work and dedication, one cannot achieve better grades in his/her research journey. Writing a thesis is a long and never ending process. While some take months together to craft a thesis, others take a few weeks to complete their thesis. 

Writing a thesis is an arduous and tedious task; that is why most of the research scholars tend to put it off until the last moment. While it takes months to write a thesis proposal, in such a scenario how to write and complete a thesis just before the due date? Fret not if you are one among them who are struggling with the thesis writing process. To help you out with the last minute writing process, we have spilled the beans that can help you with the same.

• Plan a schedule – The most critical thing to do before starting with the thesis writing process is to make a foolproof schedule. This will not just help give you a clear-cut idea as to how to start/continue with the writing task but will also keep you away from the unnecessary time-pass activities. Although creating a schedule is not a difficult task, we know that it is definitely a tough job to stick on to the schedule.
• Divide the lengthy thesis into smaller bits -Divide your lengthy (humdrum) thesis into several smaller segments. This is because it is easy to work chunks rather than a prolonged thesis. Also, develop an outline as it will help you remain focused throughout on the most crucial aspects of your thesis.
• Follow an organised approach – Since there are only a few days left for you to work on your thesis, allot a task for each day. I.e. one day can be devoted to collecting required materials and organising the structure of  the study, two days can be assigned to the writing process and a day can be kept aside for editing and proofreading your thesis.
• Craft the introduction and conclusion section at last – Writing these two sections consumes a lot of time. Hence it is advisable to include them once the main body of the thesis is incorporated. ( However, if necessary, you can include a rough draft for these sections and polish them after the completion of other chapters)
• Take help from the professionals – If you are not confident with completing your thesis at the nick of time, then do not give a try and ruin your study. Consider taking help from the professional writers. If you are wondering if it’s legal to take their help, the answer is a big ‘yes.’

Although it is nearly impossible to complete your thesis in the eleventh hour, if you have the fortitude to do it, then fold your sleeves and go for it.

–474 words

2. Tried and tested tips to convert your thesis into a book that sells

Completing a thesis is a crucial moment in every research scholars life. It’s a significant contribution to the existing knowledge in their field and is supposed to be their magnum opus. After putting in all your hard work into your thesis, isn’t it obviously hard for research scholars to imagine their perfectly crafted thesis not contributing to the society and plausibly is gathering dust on a shelf? But publishing a thesis is not an effortless task as a thesis in its purest form is never publishable.

Are you looking forward to rework your thesis into a book and get it published? However, reworking your thesis isn’t just about making a few changes in your thesis, but requires a lot more than mere revision. To help you out, we have enlisted fa ew proven hacks to transform your thesis into a publishable form document. 

• Rewrite the sections – First of all, prepare a new outline and start with the writing process all again. While rewriting, pay attention to complex and long sentences and ensure that they do not contain ideas which are repeated more than twice. Segment your paragraphs into bits ( length varying between 3 to 15 lines) and vary them between, say, three and twenty lines) and use passive & abstract nouns wherever necessary. 
• Focus on the center aspect of your thesis – Cull the important theme in your thesis and pen-down contents that are relevant to the crucial theme and eliminate too many technical jargons. Remember, if you want to publish your thesis as a book, then it shouldn’t target only subject specialists, but also non-specialists audience. 
• Aspects to be added – Most often the contribution that your thesis makes is found in its middle sections. In such a scenario, pare away the rest and include,
• Coherence : Your book need to have an organic unity and must be bound together by a narrative thread. The added advantage of doing this is, by tracking down the trajectory of your argument, you can find out what materials are missing your book and add them if necessary.
• Index – Although an index is not very important until the book is in production, adding it can be proved beneficial as your index can act as a ‘mind map’ of your study and help you find out entities & subentities that are missing in your book.

4. Aspects to be eliminated – There are many aspects in your thesis that need to be eliminated as it does not belong to a book. Such aspects to be reworked and chopped off. These include,

• Quotations – Supporting your theory with the words of authority does not look elegant and sensible in a book. Hence it is better to paraphrase rather than including quotations. 
• Tables – Tables can be proved troublesome as it can distract the reader’s attention. So try to summarise and rewrite the tables in a text form instead. 

Are you anticipating to build your career in the academic field? Then it is crunch time to convert your thesis into book and achieve your dreams.

3. A comprehensive guide to Mann-Whitney test

Statistical test comprising a set of procedures including, data collection, organisation, analysis, and interpretation is an ordeal in every scholar life. Statistical tests are considered to be vital in research process as it refutes or supports the study hypothesis and a flawlessly conducted statistical test can help a research scholar acquire better grade in his/her research journey however, lack of knowledge about statistical tests is proved to be a stumbling block in a research journey. While there are many tests such as parametric, T-test, ANOVA etc which are quite popular, there are few tests which are crucial but are least considered. One such test is Mann-Whitney test.

Mann-Whitney test, a non-parametric test, also known as the Wilcoxon rank sum test, is a test that determines whether the two independent groups are alike from each other. This test is normally used either if the data  collected is ordinal or if the assumptions of the t-test are not met. 

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3 Minute Thesis Competition Returns to USU

Graduate students at the uniformed services university (usu) competed in a 3 minute thesis competition on april 3., april 8, 2024 by ian neligh.

Graduate students at the Uniformed Services University (USU) once again battled the clock as they presented their big ideas during the 3 Minute Thesis Competition on April 3. 

“This event helps students with learning how to convey knowledge to the public, practice with public speaking, and working on explaining their work,” says Summer Paulson, Graduate Student Council President and a member of this year’s 3 Minute Thesis competition planning committee. “Any thesis project from a graduate student can be presented, regardless of which of the USU Ph.D. graduate programs they hail from.”

Prizes were awarded to Air Force 2nd Lt. Cecelia Mangione for both first place and People’s Choice, to Marana Rekedal for second place and Mydirah Littlepage-Saunders for third place.

Starting at USU in 2018, the 3 Minute Thesis originally began at the University of Queensland, Australia, in 2008. The competition is now held at universities around the world.

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Three-Minute Thesis Grand Finale winners announced

Doctoral researcher Denis Ruto was awarded first place for his 3-minute thesis presentation on “Sustainable Nutrient Management Opportunities for Small Communities with Wastewater Lagoons.”

The Office of Graduate Education and Life announced the winners of the annual  Three-Minute Thesis Competition , which was held on April 3 during WVU Graduate Student Appreciation Week and Research Week.

Story by WVU Today Photos by WVU Today

Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

For the first time in WVU 3MT competition history, two doctoral students tied for first place. Denis Ruto, from the Statler College , and Paige Zalman, PhD candidate from the College of Applied Human Services, received the same scores to win. Zalman also won the People’s Choice Award. 

Even though Ruto acknowledged that it was a great challenge to narrow down his dissertation and research to under three minutes, he impressed the judges on his presentation titled “Sustainable Nutrient Management Opportunities for Small Communities with Wastewater Lagoons.” 

Meanwhile, Zalman scored points with both the judges and audience members with her presentation on “Exploring Music Major Mental Health Using Photovoice and Narrative Inquiry.” She emphasized the importance of qualitative methodologies that can help people better understand the nature of problems people are researching today.

Second place was awarded to Kayla Steinberger, an immunology specialist in the School of Medicine, for her presentation on “Hypoxia Regulates Vessel-Modifying Macrophages and Vice Versa in Tumors.” She emphasized that, as a future scientist, it’s important to know how to best communicate her science to the public, so she takes every opportunity to get in front of people and “make stuff that's really hard, sound really easy.” 

Vaishakhi Suresh, an industrial and management systems engineering student in the Statler College, received third place for her research presentation on “Exploring the Challenges of Handling Mass Fatalities during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” When asked why she entered the competition, Vaishakhi said, “It's a great opportunity to talk about her research to the rest of the WVU community.” She was also excited to meet other students in different fields and learn more about their research.

This year’s judges included Ming Lei, senior associate vice president in the Office of Research and Graduate Education and vice dean of research in the School of Medicine; Rachel Morris, biology doctoral student in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences; Mikylah Myers, associate dean of artistic and scholarly achievement in the College of Creative Arts; Patricia Slagel, assistant director of advising and student operations of graduate programs in the John Chambers College of Business and Economics; and Daniel Totzkay, assistant professor of communication studies in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. 

The internationally renowned 3MT competition, originally founded by the University of Queensland in Australia, challenges doctoral students to present their research topic and its significance in three minutes using a single PowerPoint slide. Competitors develop academic, presentation and research communication skills while gaining experience pitching their research succinctly to a non-specialist audience. 

Grand Finale prizes include: 

• First Place Prize: $1,000 

• Second Place Prize: $750 

• Third Place Prize: $500 

• People’s Choice Prize: $250 

Read more about all ten grand finale finalists and learn more about the WVU 3MT Competition.

Contact: Paige Nesbit Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources 304.293.4135, Paige Nesbit

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2024 three-minute thesis competition finalists announced, graduate students will compete in the final event on april 11.

2023 3MT winners from left to right: Keely Rodriguez, Kendra Isable, Candi Block, Isabel Penaloza, Fatema Azmee, Yu Rong and Justice Best.

The buzz is back with the Graduate School’s annual Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition this spring! Earlier this month, 42 graduate students rocked the stage in front of a live audience all vying for a chance to advance to the final round and win cash prizes.

A panel of esteemed University faculty and postdocs had the challenging task of judging this year’s preliminary event, evaluating students’ presentation skills and research content. If you are unfamiliar with 3MT, it is an annual spectacle where master’s and doctoral students are tasked with condensing their research into a lightning-fast, three-minute presentation with only a single slide. It is an adrenaline-fueled sprint through the world of academia!

Since 2015, the Graduate School has hosted this event, showcasing the power, beauty and brilliance of graduate education at the University. In addition, recent winners of this competition have gone on to compete, and place, in regional 3MT competitions putting the University on the map as a hotbed of intellectual prowess.

We are thrilled to announce this year’s 16 finalists (see below) and cannot wait for the final showdown. The 3MT final round of competition is set to take place on Thursday, April 11, at 7 p.m. in the Wells Fargo Auditorium at the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center. Students, family, faculty and community members are invited to join us and witness firsthand the awe-inspiring brilliance of our scholars. For those who cannot attend in person, the event will be live-streamed via Zoom so please register here on Formstack to receive the information.

Congratulations to the 2024 3MT finalists! Good luck on April 11.

(The finalists below are listed alphabetically by last name.)

Master’s Category:

• M.A. Criminal Justice 
• "What do our phones teach us about incarceration? A social media content analysis"
• M.S. Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology
• “Sustaining the beating heart of Cambodia: Fisheries management in southeast Asia's largest lake”
• “Zeroing in on gun violence”
• M.S. Biochemistry
• “May the pericytes be with you: Transport engineers you never knew existed!”
• M.S. Chemistry
• “Chemically recyclable dithioacetal polymers”
• M.A. History
• “Pushed to the limit: How the 1998 China floods revolutionized the relationship between China and the natural world”
• M.S. Teaching History (M.A.T.H.)
• “Dust in the wind dude: The Owens Valley everywhere except, in the Owens Valley”
• “Winterfat restoration in a changing climate”  

Doctoral Category:

• Ph.D. History
• “Creating the Enemy: The origins of the inter-American Cold War in the 1940s”
• Ph.D. Biomedical Engineering
• “Electrifying the fight-or-flight response: Nanosecond electric pulses for neuromodulation “
• Ph.D. Education - Literacy Studies
• “P re-service teachers experiences teaching K-8 Multilingual Students' (MLS) writing”
• Ph.D. Clinical Psychology
• “Identifying predictors of racial trauma to inform treatment development “
• Ph.D. Cell and Molecular Biology
• “Lighting the way: Tools to prepare for future pandemics”
• Ph.D. Education - Equity, Diversity and Language
• “Bridging the gaps: Evaluating the intervention programs to overcome academic disparities”
• Ph.D. Civil and Environmental Engineering
• “Accelerating bridge construction connections behavior during near fault motions”
• Ph.D. Political Science
• “Tough sell: Rising powers, domestic legitimation and costly international initiatives”

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12 grad students named as finalists for 2024 three minute thesis competition.

After six intense preliminary rounds, twelve exceptional scholars have emerged from a pool of 65 talented candidates, earning their place as finalists in Georgia Tech's highly anticipated annual Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition. On Friday, April 5, 2024, these finalists will hit the stage, harnessing their research expertise, to deliver compelling presentations in a three-minute format.

Congratulations to the following twelve finalists:

Karina Bhattacharya MID Industrial Design 

Vinodhini Comandur, Ph.D. Aerospace Engineering 

Mo Jarin, Ph.D. Environmental Engineering 

Anamik Jhunjhunwala, Ph.D. Biomedical Engineering 

Valeria Juarez, Ph.D. Biomedical Engineering 

Alexandra Patterson, Ph.D. Bioengineering 

Jeffrey Pattison, Ph.D. Aerospace Engineering 

Kantwon Rogers, Ph.D. Computer Science 

Mallika Senthil, MS Biomedical Engineering 

Wenting Shi, Ph.D. Chemistry and Biochemistry 

Shreyas Srivathsan, Ph.D. Aerospace Engineering 

Raghav Tandon, Ph.D. Machine Learning 

This year’s 3MT competition takes place on Friday, April 5, 2024, at 5:30 p.m. in the Atlantic Theater in the John Lewis Student Center. The entire Georgia Tech community is encouraged to attend the competition, which occurs as the finale of the 2024 Grad Student Appreciation Week. 3MT will also be streamed online and can be viewed at https://gatech.zoom.us/j/98696536715 .  Audience members and online viewers can vote for their favorite presenter to win the People’s Choice Award.  

Ph.D. winners can win up to $2,000 in research travel grants. The master's winner will receive a $1,000 research travel grant.   

Tech’s 3MT competition is coordinated by the Office of Graduate Education in partnership with the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), The Naugle Communications Center, and the Language Institute.  

For more information, visit grad.gatech.edu/3mt . 

Related Media

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For More Information Contact

Brittani Hill | Marketing and Communications Manager 

Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Education 

Related Links

• https://grad.gatech.edu/3MT

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Brazil Supreme Court strikes down military intervention thesis in symbolic vote for democracy

FILE - A supporter of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro salutes while singing the nation’s anthem outside a military base during a protest against his reelection defeat in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Nov. 3, 2022. Brazil’s Supreme Court unanimously voted Monday, April 8, 2024, that the armed forces have no constitutional power to intervene in disputes between government branches, marking a largely symbolic decision aimed at bolstering democracy after years of increasing threat of military intervention.(AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)

FILE - Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, center, and his Defense Minister Walter Braga Netto, second from right, watch a military convoy pass Planalto presidential palace, alongside military officials in Brasilia, Brazil, Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021. Brazil’s Supreme Court unanimously voted Monday, April 8, 2024, that the armed forces have no constitutional power to intervene in disputes between government branches, marking a largely symbolic decision aimed at bolstering democracy after years of increasing threat of military intervention. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)

FILE - Protesters, supporters of Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro, storm the Supreme Court building in Brasilia, Brazil, Jan. 8, 2023. Brazil’s Supreme Court unanimously voted Monday, April 8, 2024, that the armed forces have no constitutional power to intervene in disputes between government branches, marking a largely symbolic decision aimed at bolstering democracy after years of increasing threat of military intervention.(AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)

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SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s Supreme Court unanimously voted Monday that the armed forces have no constitutional power to intervene in disputes between government branches, a largely symbolic decision aimed at bolstering democracy after years of increasing threat of military intervention.

The court’s decision came in response to an argument that right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro and his allies deployed in recent years. They have claimed that Article 142 of Brazil’s Constitution affords the military so-called “moderating power” between the executive, legislative and judicial branches.

Bolsonaro presented this interpretation in an April 2020 meeting with his ministers, telling them that any of the three powers can request the armed forces take action to restore order in Brazil. In the years since, posters invoking Article 142 became a fixture at rallies calling for military takeover – and culminated in an uprising by Bolsonaro supporters seeking to summon the military to oust his successor from power.

All of the 11 justices — including both justices appointed by Bolsonaro — rejected that thesis.

FILE - Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, center, and his Defense Minister Walter Braga Netto, second from right, watch a military convoy pass Planalto presidential palace, alongside military officials in Brasilia, Brazil, Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)

While the constitution empowers the military to protect the nation from threats and guarantee constitutional powers, “that does not comport with any interpretation that allows the use of the armed forces for the defense of one power against the other,” the case’s rapporteur, Justice Luiz Fux, wrote in his vote.

Article 142’s vague wording had allowed room for some interpretation — although the one espoused by Brazil’s far right was “absolutely crazy,” said João Gabriel Pontes, a constitutional lawyer at Daniel Sarmento e Ademar Borges in Rio de Janeiro.

“This is not a Supreme Court ruling that will safeguard Brazilian democracy from new attacks,” Pontes said by phone. “However, it sends an important message to society that a military intervention has no constitutional basis.”

The constitution dates from 1988, three years after the country cast off its 21-year military dictatorship.

Bolsonaro’s 2018 election in a sense marked the return of the armed forces to power. The former army captain who openly waxed nostalgic for the dictatorship era appointed high-ranking officers to his Cabinet and thousands of active-duty service members and reservists to civilian positions throughout his administration.

For his 2022 reelection bid, he tapped a general as his running mate and tasked the military with auditing electronic voting machines whose reliability he cast doubt upon, without ever providing evidence. Following his defeat to leftist rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , his supporters set up camp outside military barracks for months to demand military intervention.

Bolsonaro never conceded defeat nor asked them to demobilize, and on Jan. 8, 2023 they stormed the capital , Brasilia, invading and vandalizing the Supreme Court, Congress and the presidential palace.

Federal Police later confiscated the cell phone of Bolsonaro’s aide-de-camp and found conversations between close advisers and military officials debating whether conditions and the constitution allowed for military intervention. The seizure was part of an investigation into whether the former president and top aides incited the uprising to restore him to power. He has denied any involvement.

Debate over the constitutional role of the armed forces reflects “the historic vice of an institution that never conformed to subordinating itself to civil order,” and the court’s vote reaffirms what is clear from any constitutional law textbook, said Conrado Hubner, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Sao Paulo.

“Nothing has the power to avoid a coup in the future. Nothing,” Hubner said. But the court’s position helps to combat justifications for a coup, he said.

Meantime, Lula has endeavored to stay on good terms with the military’s top brass. Last week, he forbade any official events observing the 60th anniversary of the date the military deposed the president and ushered in Brazil’s dictatorship, on March 31, 1964.

Virtually all historians characterize it as a coup. Others disagree, including Bolsonaro’s then-vice president, Gen. Hamilton Mourão, who wrote Sunday on X that the date represents the day “the nation saved itself from itself!” and that history cannot be rewritten.

In his vote, Justice Flávio Dino wrote that “echoes of that past stubbornly refuse to pass,” and that the court’s decision should be forwarded to Lula’s defense minister for dissemination to every military organization in the country.

Doing so “would aim to eradicate misinformation that has reached some members of the armed forces,” Dino wrote. “Any theories that go beyond or distort the true meaning of Article 142 of the federal constitution must be eliminated.”

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

Six Runners Share Their Boston Marathon Charity Stories

They are running the historic race for cancer, for rehab, for addiction, for girl empowerment, for others, and for themselves

Sean Mueller lost his best friend and hero in December 2022 due to a battle with illness. After Mueller’s father Peter passed away, he decided to run the marathon in support of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, which treated his dad “as if he were a rockstar.” Photo by Cydney Scott

Brendan Nordstrom (COM’25)

Marathon Monday is a uniquely Boston day—the spring air has finally arrived, the Red Sox will gear up for a rare 11 am first pitch, and, of course, an estimated 30,000 runners will take off from Hopkinton, Mass., on April 15 to traverse 26.2 miles to Copley Square. 

Over 22,000 runners entered the race by surpassing a qualifying time based on age group. The rest of the field consists of runners participating in the Bank of America Boston Marathon Official Charity Program—including many Boston University community members. If these athletes raise the minimum of $5,000, they are eligible to run for an approved charity. Six Terriers shared their stories of why they are participating and why their charity is meaningful to them.

Mark Sibold (LAW’25)

One left turn changed Mark Sibold’s life.

The BU LAW student was visiting friends in upstate New York about 11 months ago when he decided to go on a bike ride. Toward the end of the trip, Sibold took a left turn and was hit by a car going about 60 miles per hour, breaking “basically every bone” in his body.

Sibold regained consciousness six days later and spent two weeks in the ICU before transferring to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Charlestown, Mass. One EMT even told him that in 30 years, he had never seen anyone survive the injuries Sibold endured.

“That’s where my story into running the marathon picks up,” Sibold says. “I’ve done a few marathons before, but I was in a wheelchair the entire summer. I was like, ‘When I get back, I really want to run the marathon.’”

The recovery process for Sibold involved relearning tasks as seemingly simple as getting into the shower, tying his shoes, or scratching the other side of his back. 

“The main thing I learned is that I took so much for granted,” Sibold says. “Every single activity that I was to do again was like a new sort of milestone for me. I was like, ‘Wow, today I got out of bed.’”

He first started walking in August of last year. Sibold didn’t run until October, but even then, it was a slow buildup. The training started with running for just one—painful—minute, walking for four minutes, and repeating. Then, he would run for two minutes, then five minutes, pushing himself with each week. 

Sibold’s reasons for running the marathon are twofold. On one hand, he wants to prove to himself that he has recovered. On the other hand, he wants to honor all the patients at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital who aren’t going to be able to run.

“I knew that I was going to get better, but they maybe weren’t. I was going to be able to walk again, I was going to be able to run again. But they weren’t,” Sibold says. “I want to run the marathon to raise money for Spaulding, so they can continue to do research, hopefully, help those patients walk or run or whatever, and so they can enjoy their life.”

Caleb Daniloff

Overwhelmed after years of struggle with a child suffering from substance use disorder, Caleb Daniloff knew he couldn’t continue alone. Just like his child, he was being consumed. He needed an outlet.

“Addiction is a family disease,” Daniloff says. “A lot of parents will say, certainly in the early days when they’re desperately trying to solve this problem, that they become addicted to their kid’s addiction.”

Daniloff, a communications and marketing writer at BU for over 16 years, and his wife didn’t have a lot of people to talk to about the issue. Shame and stigma kept them quiet around friends, family, and coworkers. While it was all they thought or talked about to each other, they mostly kept it bottled up. 

That was until they found Learn to Cope , a peer-led support network for families dealing with an addicted loved one.

“When we went to that first support group meeting, for me, it just all kind of spilled out,” he says. “I did think that people were going to look at us and our situation like it was insane, and then I realized it was pretty much what everyone else was going through, and that was really comforting.”

His child has now been in recovery for several years and is doing well, but Daniloff and his wife are still involved in Learn to Cope. Daniloff started a writing group for parents, while his wife is a meeting facilitator. 

Daniloff is also running the marathon for Learn to Cope .

He has run 20 marathons and ultras, and this year will be his fourth Boston Marathon. During his family’s 12-year struggle, Daniloff often ran at the Middlesex Fells Reservation with his daughter’s dog Hank as a means of “escape.” He wrote about the experience last year for Runner’s World .

“I treated it as a sanctuary,” Daniloff says. “I have my own history with alcoholism and drug abuse, and when I got sober, running played a big part for me. It’s always been a coping tool for me, a mental health tool.”

Daniloff says running the Boston Marathon for the support group is a great way to bring attention to the disease of addiction and its impact on families, sending the message that “you are not alone” and “we can do hard things.”

“The marathon ultimately is a celebration of life,” Daniloff says. “It’s very communal, and Learn to Cope is very much a communal power.”

Katie Shannahan (ENG’20)

Katie Shannahan didn’t play girl’s hockey until she was 15.

Her father was in the Air Force, and through all the moves across the country, sports were one constant in her life. The places she moved to weren’t always “hockey hotbeds,” as she put it, causing her to play for the local boy’s hockey teams since it was the only option—an oftentimes hostile environment.

“Back then boys, and sometimes even parents, weren’t always welcoming to girls playing either. I had to get dressed in janitor’s closets, women’s bathrooms, or whatever corner they could find,” Shannahan says. “My ponytail often made me a target for the opposing team.”

When she was 15, Shannahan joined a girl’s team in Denver, an hour and a half drive from her house. Then, she moved to Michigan to continue her playing career before putting on the scarlet and white for BU. Playing for the Terriers, Shannahan was part of the 2019 Beanpot-winning team, in addition to making lifelong friends and earning a great education.

“Playing hockey for Boston University was an absolute dream come true. It was everything I hoped it would be and more,” Shannahan says. “I’ll never forget the first time I put on the jersey or the last time I took it off. BU will forever hold a place in my heart.”

The Boston Marathon is Shannahan’s first marathon, and she is raising money for Strong Girls United (SGU), a charity that empowers girls to be “strong, confident, and resilient through sport and physical activity,” according to the website . 

Shannahan volunteered as a female athlete mentor for SGU and recalls being paired with a fourth-grade hockey player. Shannahan says she had fun hearing the girl give a rundown of her games or something funny that happened on the ice.

“They get the girls involved in athletics, teach them mental skills, and provide mentorship,” Shannahan says. “Sports are the reason I have been able to accomplish many of my goals in life. I want younger women to have those same opportunities.”

Professional women’s athletics are in the dawn of a renaissance, including the new Professional Women’s Hockey League, which has sold out NHL arenas in its inaugural season.

“Young girls have the ability to dream of playing pro now, something I never had,” notes Shannahan. “I’m very excited to see women’s sports continue to grow. There is so much more to come!”

Aaron Stevens

Aaron Stevens’ office at Questrom School of Business is a collage of running paraphernalia, from the 31-pound medal he earned for finishing the 2020 Little Rock Marathon to the picture of him after running the 2014 Chicago Marathon, his first marathon. 

Stevens, a lecturer in the CAS computer science department and the Questrom finance department, has run 68 marathons so far—a reality few believed in when he was growing up.

“Nobody ever said you can do this. In fact, probably people implicitly said you can’t do that,” Stevens says. “My gym teacher in high school said, ‘Yeah, you’re the fat kid. You can’t do this.’”

Stevens was “really overweight,” as he put it, in high school, dealing with a lifelong food addiction. He would often try running, but work, sickness, or injury would deter him from continuing. He then met with a doctor and changed the way he ate, losing 90 pounds in the process.

“I wanted to lose weight. There’s nobody who’s overweight who doesn’t want to lose weight,” Stevens says.

He recalls the first time he ran for an hour. It was 2013 on a trail in Montreal, and Stevens says he was having so much fun, he just kept going. This led to his first half marathon, and eventually his first marathon in Chicago in 2014.

“Even the first half marathon, I mean I cried when I crossed the finish line because this was not something that anybody had told me I could do,” Stevens says. “I meet with students [who say], ‘Oh, I could never do that.’ Yes, you can. Absolutely you can do that. All you need to do is get started.”

This year, Stevens is running the Boston Marathon for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute . He first learned of the institute when his cousin was diagnosed with colon cancer. His mother and father both were affected by cancer, as well. Running the marathon is his way of showing support.

“There’s nothing I can do to help them directly. I’m a dropout when it comes to chemistry and biology,” Stevens says. “So, the one thing I can do is I can use my passion about marathon running to talk about it with everybody I meet and encourage them to donate money for cancer research.”

Em Gibb (Sargent’10)

Em Gibb’s bucket list will have one less item after Monday.

Gibb is a Massachusetts native and has stood on the sideline of Marathon Monday since her time as a student at BU. Now an athletic trainer who primarily works with the BU women’s hockey team, she has been both a medical volunteer and a spectator for the marathon. For the past four or five years, Gibb has watched the marathon from her usual spot at Bullough’s Pond in Newton, marveling at the way the race brings together the community.

Last year, Gibb recalls seeing a wheelchair participant break down. Immediately, multiple spectators ran to their houses to grab tools and spare parts, fixing up the wheelchair so the participant could finish the race.

“That moment to me was everything about what the marathon represents—it’s a sense of community so awesome that you truly have to be IN IT to get it,” Gibb says. “I decided on my walk back home that next year was my year—and here we are!”

While knee issues have deterred her confidence in the past, this will be Gibb’s first marathon. She has put together a mileage plan that works for her. And with the support of the hockey team and fellow athletic trainers, Gibb feels ready for Monday.

“I would absolutely not have had a successful training cycle without all of their support and help,” Gibb says. “The nice thing about your first marathon is that, no matter what, it will be a [personal record], so I just keep telling myself to enjoy the moment and not be focused on the result.”

Gibb is running for Mass Eye and Ear because she resonates with their mission and wants to help those with serious vestibular and ocular disorders. Her best friend from college, Michelle Carson (Sargent’11,’13), also happens to be running for the team, making it even more special.

“It definitely makes it about more than just you,” Gibb notes. “The model of the charity teams is a brilliant one because you get to live your dream of running this special race while also getting an opportunity to do so much good for so many organizations.”

Sean Mueller (Questrom’13, SPH’24)

Sean Mueller’s father, Peter, encouraged him to go to Boston University in 2009 and encouraged him to return in 2020, where he is now a doctoral candidate. Peter was much more than just Sean’s father. Whether it was a stressful exam or an athletic aspiration, he was there and supportive of his son. 

“My father was not just a parent, but also my hero and best friend, and I miss him every day,” Mueller says. “The transformation from the robust life-of-the-party figure he once was to a state of vulnerability due to his illness left a lasting impact on me as I reflected on health, life, and resilience.”

Peter then battled a condition that took him to the Dana-Farber, where Sean would accompany his father to his treatments until he passed in December 2022.

Sean witnessed the empathetic care the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute provided to his father and all patients, galvanizing him to run the marathon in support of them this year. 

“I witnessed firsthand the exceptional care and attention he received. The staff at Dana-Farber treated him with an extraordinary level of respect and kindness, as if he were a rock star,” Mueller says. “This experience not only affected how I cope with personal loss and adversity, but also left me with a profound respect for healthcare professionals.”

Monday will mark the first marathon that Sean has ever run. While he has been active his entire life, he says there’s a reason he ran the 400-meter during track instead of the distance events that seemed “painstakingly monotonous.” Before training for the marathon, Sean had never run 10 miles consecutively. 

The marathon training has come with hurdles for Sean, such as carving out time to run six days per week as well as “screaming” calves. However, running in memory of his father and for Dana-Farber has pushed him over these obstacles.

“Running in memory of my father, I am reminded that this endeavor is bigger than just me—it’s a tribute to him and a testament to pushing beyond limits for something meaningful,” Mueller notes. “I wish more than anything that I could share this marathon journey experience with him, knowing how much he cherished being part of my challenges.”

With eight combined years as a Terrier, Mueller has been witness to several Boston Marathons and says one of his favorite aspects is how the community rallies behind the holiday. On Monday, he says to be on the lookout for a runner with a big beard and a pink Dana-Farber pinny.

“I can’t wait to be willed to finish the marathon as I make my way through South Campus via Beacon St.,” Mueller says, “and finally into Kenmore Square, where I would always watch the marathon from.”

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