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The Thesis Seminar is a small but required course during your first Spring semester. In it, SDM program staff will present ideas and methods for approaching the entire thesis process. They will also bring in professors who have ideas for theses and want to serve as advisors. This is a good way to hook up an advisor early.
Online Resources
The MIT libraries maintain a list of thesis resources, including specifications for writing and submitting the thesis.
Finding an Advisor
Popular advisors routinely have more students who want to work with them than they can fit in. This definitely includes a number of the senior Sloan professors, such as Cusumano, Henderson, Utterback, von Hippel, and Roberts. Don't be offended if they don't want to be your thesis advisor: it's not personal. They often recommend another faculty member, usually a more junior or non-tenured one, to be your advisor instead. Engineering professors tend to be easier to hook up with, and ESD professors tend to be easiest of all.
Tips
1. Limit the Scope.
2. Solidify your idea as early as possible.
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13. Select Advisor early.
Lessons Learned
1. The threshold for an acceptable thesis is slowly being raised towards that of a full-time standard discipline MSc thesis even though they have a lesser courseloadcourse load. To avoid getting caught out by this read the ‘engineering’, ‘management’, and ‘systems’ expectations very carefully and make sure you can tick the right points off.
2. Be aware of your advisors commitments (busy/popular).
3. Ask in detail about how they manage the process and what their expectations are.
4. If you can, don't let it (thesis) evolve.
5. Don't rely on outside data sources.
6. Define your analysis method early.
7. Delivery in complete "chunks".
8. Limit the number of data sources-the more data sources the longer it take to analyze, interpret and write about.
9. If you are self-sponsored you probably have poor access to data sources so think more about a model-based thesis and/or a conceptual thesis. These require good co-ordination with faculty so select your faculty early.
10. If you are on the 13 month track then you have no time to write a thesis – so start in January by reading previous theses and noting the subjects, the standards, and the advisers. Then select a combination you can cope with, and discuss your constraints early and openly.
11. Be careful about having two advisors as this normally means extra work.