Steve Tippins explains why most PhD students fail their dissertation prospectus: they don't treat it as a concrete plan to get their chair and committee to say yes. A prospectus needs to answer who, what, when, where, why, and match your institution's exact formatting requirements.
This document doesn't have to be perfect or exactly what you're going to end up doing, but it is a plan for moving forward, and your goal is to get your chair and your committee to buy in. Then you can move forward. Ultimately, what you're doing in your prospectus is you can think of it as the who, what, when, where, why type stage. Okay, what do you want to do? What's the problem? Who are you going to do it on? What has been written before? Why is this important? And when, meaning I'm going to look at this time period or I'm going to look at this other areas. So if you are answering those questions within the format that your institution wants, you're most likely going to be successful with your prospectus. If you're working on your prospectus and you're looking for help, you can join our free dissertation help community
