General Advice on MBA Dissertation Writing

Writing an MBA is a great next step to take in your education. It adds that extra qualification, allows you to truly specialize into an area, and hone your skills, talents and interests. However, at this level things really start to get serious. There’s a lot more expected of you and your abilities. At the end of the day, everyone is here to get better and not time waste. If you’re struggling to hit the mark you need to be hitting, follow these handy pointers.

  • Research Everything
  • Develop Your Craft
  • Cite
  • Extensive Edit

Research Everything

At this point you need to truly research everything before you start writing. Make sure you know exactly what you’re trying to say, where it all fits in, what you’re aim is. Of course it’s ok for your dissertation to mutate during the writing process, for new things to happen and change the flow, but you need to have a good plan in place to serve as the backbone to your work. Make sure you know where you’re going.

Develop Your Craft

At this level the quality of your writing should be top notch. Make sure you’re not waffling, take out any filler, change your adverbs for better verbs, and change adjectives for better nouns. Use the right tense, and stick to it. You don’t have to Stephen King, but you should certainly know the ins and outs of what makes for good writing.

Cite Everything, Always

At this level there’s no excuse for laziness. Cite your work or else suffer the consequences of poor arguments and plagiarism. When it comes to a masters, there’s really no such thing as too little citations. Limit your in text quotes, and try to stick to your own words, but always, always cite where you got your ideas from. By now you know there’s no such thing as an original idea. If you’re talking about a fact or a concept, back it up because someone else has already said it.

Extensive Editing

Your first draft might be good, but it will never be great. Editing is the process of improvement, of refining your work from ore to a diamond ring. Make sure you review, edit, re-edit and then double-check it one last time. Get a friend to help you, pay someone to proofread it, whatever you have to do just get it done.

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