How To Compose A Dissertation Proposal In 10 Simple Steps


Stepping into a postgraduate dissertation program requires your writing to be well planned. You need to plan your research a couple of months ago and sometimes an year ahead. Basically, you should divide your writing program into 10 simple steps to accomplish task fruitfully.

Check out 10 golden steps-


  1. Come up with a striking topic: Narrow down your general study into a specific topic. If you are pursuing research in the field of literature, explore authors, however, if you are a science student, start peeping through the books.

  2. Select a topic you are passionate about: The topic should appear interesting to all. Spend some time and investigate its various parts. Find out if you want to know more about it or are losing interest. It will help you decide your level of excitement.

  3. Start your research: Once you see that you have enough interesting material, make points and collect content in various files and folders while organizing them.

  4. Citations: Ensure that you keep a track of authors and books you will be using for citation. One you finalise your research, talk to your professor as he would have a better approach for your proposal.

  5. Start working on the proposal: Once you begin, directions may not be clear but as you start writing, you will come up with new innovative ideas.

  6. Word Count: Keep track of your word count. The material compilation should not be too long or too short. Start with a broader topic and narrow it down further.

  7. Format: Organize your proposal according to the format asked by your professor- APA, MLA, Chicago or any other one. Begin with a title page followed by abstract, table of contents, introduction or overview, methodologies used, analysis of data, discussion on the research conducted, bibliography and appendices. This will be the outline of the proposal. This will help you in breaking the research work into various sections. Ensure that you keep appropriate margins from all the four sides and get your dissertation proposal written in Times New Roman, Helvetica style in 12 points. Apart from that keep a track of headers and footers, page number alignment, title page, etc. You should go through a well written sample piece before starting the research work or getting your final paper printed.

  8. Proofread: Once you have written all the sections, it’s high time that you proofread your proposal and mark errors.

  9. Editing: After mistakes have been found, make corrections in terms of content, language, grammar and spellings. You can also ask your close friend to have a look at the final proposal.

  10. Finally, submit.