Just wondering how long people suspect their thesis will be in terms of word count (those that are currently writing up or have submitted?)

My thesis is running very on the long side even with me being very selective over the themes and data discussed!

The going rate is about 85,000 I think, that's how long mine will be. You should have a word count maximum set by the University though?

Our max is 80,000 words. I've mapped out the approximate number of words I think each chapter should have, and it comes to about 70,000 for my thesis, with room to go over!

Mine was 37500, plus an hour of music portfolio. I know someone who just submitted with 50000 words, 25 mins video and 25000 words in appendixes.

Mine was 810000 references and appendices included

I kept it short to about 50,000 words in 165 pages (hard to tell, I wrote it in latex)

- the appendices were a separate volume bigger than the thesis. Also social science.
Good luck!

I think if you are getting to over 100k words you will have problems. Examiners will be sick / bored by the end, and will question whether your scope was too large. Have a serious think about how to reduce it.

Mine will be between 75-80 000 words. That wouldn't be including appendixes or refs though. I'm on about 70,000 right now but am in the process of re-organising and re writing different parts. I'm doing a mixed methods thesis in Education.

I did want mine to be no more than 85k to ensure that the examiners did not get bored. My sup though reassured me that it was ok to hit the upper word limit. I think my approach will be just to keep writing until I have the full draft, then spend some time seriously chopping! There are chapters I wrote a couple of years ago that I feel I could easily trim down and I have started chopping sections out of my planned draft of the following chapters.

Thank you all for your contributions, I am sure I will get there in the end :)