The advice about what to focus on with your thesis will differ based on your career plans. First, we discuss what might be a good strategy when you plan to take research-heavy careers and then we move to advice related to non-research careers paths.





Research careers

If you’re considering pursuing a career in research, you should make building your research skills a priority. In order to have a substantial impact, your research will need to be excellent in quality. There are several ways you can improve your research skills. Independently of your final thesis, you can consider joining some already established research group or project at your department and attending summer research programmes. Some of our online resources might also be helpful. When making final thesis decision, you should consider using methods you haven’t used before and which are harder to carry out (or which will allow you to get better at technical skills like data analysis and methodology). You should also make sure to choose a skilled supervisor with a good reputation in the relevant research community who will give you a good deal of feedback and care. The goal of your thesis at this stage is not so much to come up with new findings, but rather to build research skills and test your fit with this type of work.



You can get a general sense of what the academic career is like and whether you'd be a good fit for it here.



Impactful research directions

Ideally, you can build skills in directions that seem highly valuable (see our priority areas) in order to learn more about them and make it easier to contribute later. However, if you can’t find a supervisor who will help you hone your research skills in one of these directions, you should choose an area that allows for greater skill-building, and come back to more valuable directions at a later stage. You will likely have a chance to switch topics and start focusing on something important and meaningful when you'll be choosing the area of focus for your PhD.



Please let us know if you plan to work on any of our priority areas or if you’d like help with figuring out what might be most valuable for you to focus on. We can support you in your research direction and connect you with others working in these areas.



Non-research careers

Even if you don’t expect to pursue a research career, there are still opportunities for your thesis to help improve the world - you can focus on some of the problems that seem most important and use your thesis to learn more about them with the aim of working on them directly later in your career. If this is your goal, you should optimise not for generating new insights about the problem, but rather for gaining a more thorough understanding of it and how to tackle it. To learn more about which careers improve the world the most, see this guide.