What constitutes a good thesis?
Here are some guidelines that give you an idea of what we are looking for in an honours thesis.
First, think of your audience. The readers of your thesis or research report will often be non-specialists in the field in which you are working. Thus thesis content should be presented in a way that allows examiners without a first-hand experience of your field of study to understand the work. Having said this, the examiners will have a good general knowledge of geology or meteorology and will be experts in a field closely related to your work. Nevertheless, if specific, specialist jargon is used in a thesis, it should be explained or defined. A thesis that is difficult to understand is also likely to be poorly written.
Clear writing is an important part of a good thesis. Also important is good presentation – although a thesis with excellent scientific content will be well regarded even if the student is not as skilled at producing graphics as others. Nevertheless, figures that are difficult to read or grainy will certainly be noticed. Figure captions should explain the figure properly. Again, clarity is a most important factor: at all times, the reader should be able to understand the work presented, without ambiguity.
Of course, scientific excellence is the main evaluation criterion. Note that this does not mean that the thesis has to be publishable in the peer-reviewed literature, although if it is then it will be regarded highly. A thesis that clearly and thoroughly documents a project, even if it does not contain genuinely new ideas, will still be considered good. In the past, work that was technically excellent and made useful recommendations, but was not really publishable, has been given high marks.
Overall, the evaluation criteria for a thesis are the following:
Note that critical thought is quite important. Ask yourself the following questions: what techniques or theories have been used in the past, and what are their deficiencies? How does my work make a difference to our understanding of the topic I am pursuing?
To get a first, a number of these criteria would have to be rated as excellent or outstanding, and no criterion would be rated as unsatisfactory. An upper second remains a very sound result and is well regarded by prospective employers.
Overall, it is important that a thesis should give the impression that the student knew why the work was worth doing, understood the context within which it was done, and has provided a common thread throughout the thesis that is easy for the reader to follow.