Bachelors Thesis

Bachelor Thesis

Description

The bachelor thesis is a (roughly) two month supervised research project/internship undertaken by students in their third year. Students work full time on their thesis during February and March, when they have no other course work, and should be physically located at the research organization of the supervising researcher. At the end of the thesis/internship, students should deliver a written report of their work to the referent instructor (Geoffrey Barrows) and present their work to the referent instructor and one other evaluator.

During the Spring of students' second year and Fall of their third year, students search on their own for a suitable research question and supervisor. Supervisors need not be researchers at Polytechnique. In fact, students are encouraged to look at organizations outside of Polytechnique to find supervisors in order to learn about new organizations and potentially prepare for careers after their bachelors. Suitable institutions include think tanks, government agencies, and potentially private firms. There is no remuneration for supervisors outside of Polytechnique, and internships are usually unpaid. If a student can not find a supervisor outside of Polytechnique or does not wish to pursue the thesis outside of Polytechnique, then students are free to ask researchers in the department to supervise the thesis.

As with most student projects, the exact question should be the outcome of a discussion between the student and the supervisor. A range of options exist. At one extreme, a student may decide on his or her own precisely what their thesis question is, and look only to the supervisor for feedback on data, methodology, etc. At another extreme, a student may have only identified a subject area (eg: finance) and thus consult with the supervisor to learn what would be a suitable question to address in the short period.

Please contact Geoffrey Barrows

geoffrey-masters.barrows<@>polytechnique.edu

with any questions

Evaluation

The thesis is evaluated 50% on the written report and 50% on the oral presentation. In both the report and the presentation, students should introduce the research question which their project addresses, provide some context in terms of background and literature review, present empirical methods (if the project is empirical), data, results, and conclusion.

Since the thesis is only supposed to run for 2 months, and since the project is conducted in collaboration with a researcher/lab, it is expected that the thesis itself is probably a small portion of a larger research agenda of the supervising researcher. This does not have to be the case. The student is certainly free to conceive the thesis topic entirely on their own. But given the structure of the thesis, the former will likely describe the majority of the cases. This is perfectly fine for the thesis. In this case, students should describe the broader question posed by the researcher/lab. And then describe in greater detail exactly the portion that the student worked on.

For example, a researcher might have an ongoing project on air pollution and productivity. The broader research question could be how shocks to air pollution affect labor productivity in manufacturing firms, and thereby prices, markups, and consumer welfare. This would be quite an ambitious project to undertake in just 2 months. Instead, the researcher might ask the bachelor student to collect the air pollution data and develop an instrumental variables strategy using wind direction. In this case, the bachelor student is not in a position to answer the larger research question. But they can at least describe the broader research question, why it is important, why the answer is not obvious, what has been done on it to date, etc. Then for the report, the student can describe in detail exactly what they did -- downloaded air pollution data, downloaded win direction data, merged the two, implemented an IV strategy. And then give the empirical findings.

I would imagine that a good report can be written in 10 - 15 pages, though students can write longer reports if they wish. Oral presentations should be about 30 minutes with questions, which usually means about 15 slides.