Finally it is done! For many years, I have encouraged our third year students to design their own dissertation topic. Initially, that didn't have an awful lot of uptake. The first four years I never had more than 11 students managing it. That doesn't mean that there were only 11 who tried; there is always a fair number who try but don't succeed. Then two years ago, there were too many tries, so I started the rule that they can only have three attempts. Sometimes students would have their proposal rejected, change one sentence, and then submit it again. And that was just taking up too much time. With the three-attempts rule they had an incentive to thoroughly incorporate all my comments.
Last year that worked well. This year I was just too popular. I had 41 students giving it a go. Altogether, I received 86 proposals. And I approved 25 proposals in the end.
There were 31 students who submitted the proposal before the last week in which I allowed that. Their approval rate was 77%. Ten more students left it until the last week. For them, the success rate was only 20%. They really are warned that it is not a good idea to leave it to the last minute. But what can you do?
I will have to reconsider how I do things. Having a look at 86 proposals for a dissertation is just too much. This year it was extra bad as I had to squeeze it in between everything else including jury duty. It is interesting to do; some student come up with really cool projects. But I am only one person, and there are only 24 hours in a day. There is some time to think about this, but something will have to give...
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| More than one proposal involved sea birds |
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