I am curious as to how many chapters have been completed at this stage by others in their final or completing year? I am seriously worried about the few drafts I currently have and wondered if this is normal?

Depends on subject, and what's acceptable at your uni. or perhaps in your department. In a science-based PhD, I was told a good thesis should be around 5 - 6 chapters, 300 - 400 pages, anything up to 100,000 words...

Something like that anyway - this is all from memory so I could be wrong.

Its Social Science, but is it possible to write 6 chapters in 7 months?

I really hope so!

How are people pacing themselves?

I hope so too, I am completing a Media PhD (should submit by summer) and at this stage I feel it will never happen even though I have written 4 of 7 chapters. I feel all need to be rewritten and support from supervisors hasn't been that good (I am being moderate here). But I do know that dealing with it everyday is effective! I hope it works for all of us here.

I have just entered my final year and have one full chapter and two half chapters. So I hope it is possible to write most of it in a year or i'm in trouble! I keep trying to motivate myself by thinking each little bit I write gets me a little bit closer to getting it finished and out of my life!

I've got a little over three months to go and have a grand total of two and a half chapters to my name...... not unusual in science subjects but I don't recommend it!

Writing up hasn't started yet. However, I've got 2 papers out+3 in reviews. Each paper is more or less a chapter of my thesis, so I can say that my thesis is almost ready, even though it looks like a collection of paper. Just need to rewrite/rearrange the ideas in a more-thesis-like structure, plus write the introduction (boring) and the final discussion (boring).
I've written my master thesis (150 pages of organic chemistry) in 2 weeks, one article takes me no more than 3-4 days... so I think I will write up everything in 2-3 months.

300-400 pages... your external examiners would send it back to you immediately! There's no mininum nor maximum, it depends on the results you produce and the way it's written. I think 200-250 (including refs) pages are enough.

Regarding page numbers, I was told to aim for around 200-250 pages as well, and I imagine mine will be nearer 50,000 than 100,000 words. One of the post-docs in my lab had a thesis of about 400 but that's unusual in science and it had to be published in two volumes, you can't fit that much paper in a single binding!

======= Date Modified 25 Feb 2010 11:32:20 =======
I'm nearly finished writing up, and my thesis is going to be around the 400 page mark (including appendices, references, etc). I'm also going to hit the 100 000 word mark! I'm in the social sciences though and as far as I'm aware 80- 100 000 words is expected.

Eeris, in response to your original post, by the start of this year I'd completed 3 chapters of my 9 chapter thesis. I think it's definitely possible to write 7 chapters in 6 months. At the moment, I can get a chapter done a week if I work in it solidly. Two weeks max for a chapter. But that relies on you having done all your reading, and having all data analysed and ready to go.

You're absolutely right - I don't know where I got 3-400 from! I went and checked - yeah 200 to 250 is fine. I have completely finished my PhD already: my thesis was 334 pages long! But as Teek said, this was too much to put in one book, so my thesis is in two volumes. I did get a lot of stick about writing too much, but the examiners were fine about it and I had very, very few corrections to do.

It was so long because during my lab-work I did an extra side-experiment, kind of like a back-up research in case my main lab-work failed (which often happens in science!). Well, as it turned out, this extra side-experiment (as well as my main research) worked really well and threw up some really interesting results that I should be able to get a paper out of soon. So, since I'd put in all the work myself and it worked, I stuck it all in my thesis regardless of the extra pages it took up. But yeah, it's a case of 'how-long-is-a-piece-of-string?' I've seen successful science theses anything from 150 to 500 pages in length...

======= Date Modified 25 Feb 2010 16:27:24 =======
Ah ah, if I had to put all my extra work/side project in my thesis I would easily reach 2000 pages! ;-)

Hi Eeeris

Yes, it's definitely possible to write 6 chapters in 7 months - you might find tho, that the difficulty comes with all the rewriting. By the time I submit I'll have rewritten my thesis completely three times, and am hoping the third version will be good enough. Timing also depends on how quickly your sup can get chapters back to you. I'm also in social sciences, and will have 11 chapters, and, lucky me, am looking at doing about 115,000 words, and expect this will be around 350 pages. I've theoretically got about 4 months to go, and by the end of this week-end, expect to have half of written to second draft stage, another third done as first drafts, and I still have a couple of chapters to write from scratch - still an absolute massive amount of work to do.

Don't compare yourself to other people tho - it doesn't help and can just make you feel bad.