Till KTH:s startsida Till KTH:s startsida

Procedures and Advice

If you are looking for a master thesis, see the page "Find a Thesis Project".

General advice and rules

Note that if you write your thesis in English, then your thesis needs to have a Swedish abstract in addition to the English one.

Some useful links and advice

If you have problems, then look early for help. Contact your supervisor or examiner, ask your peers or the program manager of the school. There also exist The Student Health Service at KTH who can also help you in critical situations.

The Center for Academic Writing at KTH provides students some support and links which might be useful before or in the beginning of your thesis writing: CAW

Other more general support is provided by the Academic Resource Center ARC, for instance have a look at their lunch seminars

Work plan

In the beginning of the project the student should do a work plan which should be discussed with the supervisor/examiner. The initial work plan needs to be approved by the examiner. 30 credits correspond to 20 weeks full time work (40h). This should be seen as the time budget. There is no fixed end deadline, it is Ok to take vacations, days off, or work less hours per week. The work plan should show reasonable work batches and milestones with deadlines. These milestones should help the student and the supervisor to check the progress and identify project completion risks. It is Ok (and normal) to deviate from the work plan during the work, but for large deviations the work plan needs to be revised. Major updates should be also reported to the examiner.

There is no formal requirement how to write the workplan, i.e., a well thought out work plan in a word document is sufficient, however one may consider online tools such as Microsoft Project, which is available free on the MSDN student portal for KTH students.

Instructions on preparing the presentation of your master thesis

If you plan to present your thesis:

  • Make sure that your thesis work is complete and you are ready to defend your thesis.
  • Please consider one of the dates and time slots available from the schedule and send an e-mail to the master thesis coordinator assistant (MA) so that he/she can book a time for you.
  • In the same email, make a CC to your examiner who has to approve that you are ready to defend your thesis and that he/she is available for the selected date.
  • In order to present your thesis, you need an opponent, whom you have to find yourself among master students.
  • Before the presentation, please send your report to your opponent and to the MA as soon as possible, but no later than 1 week before the presentation.
  • Prepare a 15-20 minutes long presentation. 
  • Send the title, abstract (in MS Word format), educational program, name of the supervisor, opponent, and examiner to the MA as soon as possible, but no later than 1 week before the presentation.

If you plan to act as an opponent:

  • Based on the rules, you need to act as an opponent at least once. So, you have to find someone to act as an opponent to.
  • Carefully read the guidelines for “details on opposition” 
  • Prepare a 5-10 minutes long oral opposition.
  • The opposition also includes a written report of 1-2 pages. This report should be written in a “review” fashion. This means that you should have a short summary (“abstract”) of the technical content, followed by critical remarks and comments on the technical content. The opposition should bring out a discussion between the speaker and the opponent. The focus of the opposition should be on reviewing the technical content, rather than on minor editorial details.
  • The opposition report has to be sent to the examiner of the thesis you are opposing to and the MA at least one working day before the presentations.
  • Bring a copy of the opposition report to the seminar for the speaker.

Master thesis coordinator assistant

Cao Le Phuong

Lärare Tobias Oechtering skapade sidan 29 november 2013

Lärare Tobias Oechtering ändrade rättigheterna 19 oktober 2015

Kan därmed läsas av alla och ändras av lärare.