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[tin_cup_chalice]

For those of us who are currently writing. Or if you want to reminisce...

How many pages do you see your dissertation ending up?

I hit page 220 this morning and I think I'll have about 60 more.  That includes references and Appendices.

I'm in Education.

[zharkov]

I recall mine being about 200, and peers with 85 and 600+ pages, so there is a wide range depending on topic.  (We were in different social sciences.)

John Nash's was less than 30 pages, and of the 5 to 8 references, half were articles that he himself had written.  Of course, in his case, his topic -- game theory -- was new enough that he got in at the ground floor, so to say.

[starfleet_grad]

I once found a number of dissertations from the 1920s and 30s (nicely bound in book covers, with imprints on spine and all that) in my field that ran about 25-30 double-spaced pages. My advisor told me from the get-go to have 150 pages minimum.

[realfrancie]

Art history: 424.  Around 280 of it is text (Book Antiqua, 12 pt.)  The rest is comprised of bibliography, many pages of figures (images, tables, and graphs, yes graphs!), and lengthy appendices.

None of you should worry about length.  Setting those UMI/Proquest margins and parameters stretches out the most meager text.  The more typical problem, though, is trimming down flabby prose.

[dolljepopp]

I'm in a humanities field.  I was also told minimum 150, with 200 being better. Anything over 300 in our department is automatically assumed to be overwritten.  This for the body only.

[infopri]

Mine was 350 pages (including all the tables and figures), plus a lot of appendices and a 30-page bibliography, but I should explain that I had two chapters of lit review.  One was the typical theoretical/empirical lit review, but it was preceded by a "background" lit review of about 80 pages. 

I needed the background lit review because there had been very little theoretical or empirical work done in my topic area when I started, yet there was a huge (non-empirical) literature spanning many fields addressing the general area I was working in.  My committee agreed that, for clarity's sake, I should keep that background separate from the theoretical framework I was using.  Also, I was applying a theory that had never been used in this particular domain before. 

So, I had the first lit-review chapter to situate my work and the second to explain the theory and how I was using it.  Since very few dissertations have that extra chapter, for comparison purposes, you could consider mine to be 270 pages, with tables and figures integrated into the text.  (The total, with all six chapters plus the appendices and the bibliography, was 550 pages.)

[kaysixteen]

All pp in toto-- 425.

[tin_cup_chalice]

I once found a number of dissertations from the 1920s and 30s (nicely bound in book covers, with imprints on spine and all that) in my field that ran about 25-30 double-spaced pages. My advisor told me from the get-go to have 150 pages minimum.

Last year I was making copies on the department machine and saw a dissertation that somebody had left on the table next to the copier.  It was 125 pages.  About a month later I asked my advisor about the length of the disseratation thinking mine might be about 150 pages too long at the pace I was going.

He told me that the 125 page dissertation was okay for the EdD folks but for the PhD I was going to need quite a bit more.

[americanist]

Interdisciplinary humanities/social science field: 275 pages.

Those in my field who tend toward history have multi-volume works; those who tend towards sociology often have fewer than 200 pages.

[schoolmarm]

499...you have to pay more to bind 500 pages!  I remember that I re-sized a photograph or two to lose a few extra pages.

Historical, lots of pictures, huge bib.  Really three dissertations in one, and I will get two books out of it in addition to the basis for several articles.

Just get it done!  I spent way too long writing it, but I am getting the rewards now.

[hcx100]

665 pages, with appendix. New humanities/social science field, so there was a lot to be proven!

[case_insensitive]

Just for the record, you won't remember how many pages it was 17 years from now.  I think mine was 280 or somesuch - don't remember exactly. Ridiculously long for my discipline, but I did two distinctly different studies - really two dissertations.

[larryc]

I'll tell you this, I have never had any complaints.

[case_insensitive]

I'll tell you this, I have never had any complaints.

hehehe!

[epistephiliac]

My master's thesis was around 360 pages. It set a department record.
I'm getting a book out of it, but the hardest part of going from thesis to book is cutting stuff.

(For a competition, I had to send four hard copies to Korea, where the association in question was headquartered at the time. Cost me a frakkin' fortune. The good news is, I won. The bad news is, there was no cash prize attached...)

I'm really hoping to stay under 250 pages for the diss. I have eight chapters planned. I can do, say, 30 pages or less for each chapter, right? I do not need another oversized doorstop.