Thesis protection

Each slide of your thesis defense must follow on from the one before it, in a smooth and logical way. On and on, right up to the end. But the design has to be as consistent as the content. Don’t switch color schemes or layout dramatically from one slide to another. Settle on one overall template and stick to it.

Rather, the thesis defense is designed so that faculty members can ask questions and make sure that students actually understand their field and focus area. Defending a thesis largely serves as a formality because the paper will already have been evaluated.

In most schools, the thesis represents a student's collective understanding of his or her program and major. Students who major in English, for example, typically explore language, literary themes, a specific author's work or a similar topic when writing a thesis paper.

Depending on the level of degree, a thesis paper can be extremely complex. Once students submit their theses papers to the thesis committee, they will be assigned a date to defend their work. In this case, “defend” does not imply that a student will have to argue aggressively about his or her work.