Student Guides

UBC English Degree Requirements

Getting acquainted with your degree requirements is the first step to successfully completing your MA or PhD. This can also be a useful step if you’re a prospective student looking to get organized before beginning your graduate studies at UBC.

MA Students

The Department of English Language and Literatures has a thorough and easy to follow list of degree requirements for coursework-track and thesis-track students. This webpage outlines the coursework credits that are required for both thesis and coursework options, as well as further info on electives. If you are an incoming student, it might be useful to review the “Steps to Complete After Registration” provided by the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.

If you plan on doing a thesis:

Thesis-track students should begin to consider what they would like to investigate as their thesis topic during their first year. This is so that they can begin the process of finding a supervisory committee and drafting a prospectus within the first term of their second year.

If you are a domestic student, please keep in mind the Tri-Agency Canada Graduate Scholarships-Master’s (CGS-M) application submission date when planning for your thesis. The deadline to apply to receive funding for your project from SSHRC is typically in the beginning of December. So plan your writing accordingly!

A full explanation of what CGS-M is and how to apply can be found on the Financial Assistance page.

Further info regarding thesis writing (including a lot of helpful tips!) can be found under the “MA Thesis Writing” section below.

If you plan on doing coursework:

You can explore the course catalog on the Department of English website. Typically, students will have two courses per semester (excluding ENGL500). It is possible to enroll in more, but keep in mind that this will be challenging, particularly around final assignment season.

In your courses, you may be prompted to try a new approach to academic writing (e.g., literature review). Remember that no one knows everything and that imposter syndrome can be managed! Reach out to a peer, email a professor, ask the English Grads Discord, or refer to UBC Libraries staff and resources to get yourself situated. More tips and links for academic writing can be found on the Academic Resources page.

If you are a domestic student doing coursework, you may also apply for funding from SSHRC. Rather than submitting a thesis proposal, you would be submitting a proposal for a major research paper or project. Further details on this can be found on the Financial Assistance page.


PhD Students

Check out the PhD program requirements on the Department of English website.


International Students

Check out the UBC Student Services International Student Guide on the UBC Student Services website.


MA Thesis Writing

Your journey toward successfully completing a Master’s Thesis can be pared down to six steps*:

1. Submit a thesis proposal to SSHRC.

Typically, the deadline to submit a SSHRC proposal is in December. Canadian citizens and permanent residents are eligible, and applicants must be enrolled in full-time studies.

The application consists of a proposal with bibliography (one page each), a Canadian Common CV, two references, and up-to-date, official transcripts. Successful applicants may receive up to $17,500 in funding over the course of 12 months. The scholarship is non-renewable. Note that your research interests can change over time, and so you are not required to stick to the exact subject of your proposal after receiving an offer.

You can check out a list of award recipients on the SSHRC website. A full explanation of how to apply can be found on the Financial Assistance page.

2. Organize a supervisory committee.

Finding a supervisory committee isn’t as daunting as one might think! You can begin by looking through G+PSResearch Supervisors directory as well as the Department of English’s faculty directory to see who might be a good match for you and your project. The Handbook of Graduate Supervision on the G+PS website offers a useful breakdown of things you should consider while preparing for your thesis and organizing a supervisory committee. Also, feel free to email professors directly or drop by during their office hours! Even if a professor were to decline, they will likely be able to help you in some other way, perhaps by re-directing you to another faculty member who may be better suited to be your supervisor or reader, or by helping you work through some of your preliminary ideas for your thesis.

Your committee must consist of at least one supervisory and a first reader. Your supervisor must be a professor in the Department of English. They will be the committee member that you will be in contact with the most, and they are likely to be the most involved in the editing process. Every professor has their own supervisory style, just like everyone has their own teaching and writing styles. Be sure to establish early on what kind of communication and structure works best for the both of you. This includes how often you will be communicating, the mode of communication, and deadlines for thesis drafts (and turnovers). Aim to be in consistent (not necessarily constant) communication with your supervisor! Let them know about any struggles that you are having, any significant changes in your ideas, and any potential scheduling issues (e.g., if either of you will be out of town at a certain time).

Your first reader and other committee members do not have to be from the Department of English. If you intend to have a committee member from outside the department, be sure to communicate this with the department as well as your supervisor. Your first reader will also have their own approach to being a committee member, but it is likely that they will be a little less involved than your supervisor. However, be sure to keep them in the loop for critical items (e.g., drafts, deadlines), and feel free to rely on them for their input, especially if their area of expertise differs from your supervisor’s.

3. Write a thesis prospectus with the help of your committee and submit it to the department.

Your prospectus will be different from your SSHRC proposal, as they are meant to do two different things. Whereas your SSHRC proposal is meant to give a general idea of what you might be investigating, your prospectus will be a roadmap that you, your supervisory committee, and the graduate committee can follow to envision a possible end product. You are allotted a maximum of 1500 words, plus a bibliography that includes your primary texts and a collection of relevant secondary sources. The thesis prospectus is a space where you can explore your potential contribution to a specific field of academic literature and outline your methodology in more detail. You’ll need to provide relevant background theory, a working hypothesis, a body of work for analysis (which you can contextualize for the graduate committee if needed), and the approach you will be taking and scholarship you will be using to conduct your analysis (including potential limitations).

However, keep in mind that you only need to give enough detail to establish the feasibility of your project. Focus on explaining things that are key to understanding your project, and exclude things that you don’t need to (or can’t) fully explain at this point. Your project is likely to evolve over time as you read your secondary sources and spend time with your own ideas anyway!

You will be in communication with your supervisory committee while writing the prospectus. They will help you revise it to ensure that it will be approved by the graduate committee. Note that the graduate committee can send it back for any necessary revisions before approving it, but so long as your proposal covers all the bases and is clear and concise, it should have no problem getting passed!

4. Write and edit the thing!

There are several ways you can approach the thesis writing process, depending on your and your supervisor’s preferences. For example, you can write the whole thesis and then edit, or you can edit the chapters as you complete writing each one. Either way, ensure that you and your supervisory committee are on the same page about how you will be going about the writing process and when you will be sending drafts for them to review. You need to give your committee ample time to review your drafts. If you’re not sure how much time they will need, just ask!

While writing your thesis, be sure to keep detailed records of what you’re citing. It is recommended that you use a citation manager. The UBC Library website has a useful guide to the most common citation manager programs, such as Mendeley and Zotero. These programs allow you to keep a detailed database of all the information related to each source you use. Mendeley even allows you to upload files and links, so you can easily access all of your PDFs or webpages in one place.

UBC Library also offers writing help at the Center for Writing and Scholarly Communication (CWSC). The CWSC offers one-on-one consultations at no cost. The consultants can read through your work at any stage of the writing process (i.e., if you’ve just begun or if you already have a completed draft) and guide you toward more effective writing by focusing on rhetorical considerations. Consultations run for 30 minutes, and you can book 1 appointment per day, 2 appointments per week. Additionally, the CWSC offers workshops and writing retreats. You can learn more about the CWSC and their pedagogical approaches on the Academic Resources page.

It is also extremely important to get in the habit of backing up your work. Whether you prefer using an external drive or a cloud service (e.g., Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive), save every draft in a safe place so that you don’t risk losing all of your hard work.

Aside from actually writing and editing your thesis, the most important thing is to keep yourself healthy. It is extremely common to feel pressure when finishing a large-scale project, but this pressure is manageable, especially considering that you are surrounded by graduates who are going through the same thing and would love to support you. Having a writing buddy or circle may be helpful! Feel free to drop into the EGSC Discord and join the writing community. Using the Pomodoro technique, in a group or individually, has proven to help many graduates maintain a healthier relationship with their work. UBC’s Wellness Centre also offers resources that can help manage the stress of thesis writing. Check out the Student Well-being page for more details, or please feel free to reach out to the current Student Well-being Representative; they’re here to guide you to the resources that work for you!

5. Defend the thesis.

Generally, your defense is a conversation about your project. It need not be a grave occasion to be anxious about! Depending on your supervisory committee’s preferences, it may be a more formal or informal meeting, and the structure of the meeting itself can vary. It is recommended to ask your supervisor what your defense will look like and what you should do to prepare, well ahead of time. The defense commonly starts off with a period during which your committee members will take turns asking questions about the thesis. This is not an interrogation! The purpose of the Q+A is usually to bring out greater implications or nuances in your arguments. It is an opportunity for your committee members to gain a more thorough understanding of your thesis. They may ask questions about the scholarship you incorporated, related aspects of your chosen texts, or arguments that you may have gestured toward and didn’t necessarily have room to fully investigate. Think of it as being almost like a graduate seminar, but about your work.

At the conclusion of the defense, your committee will ask you to leave the room for a short period of time as they discuss their thoughts. They will then invite you back in and let you know if they approve your thesis for submission. At any point in the defense, they may outline some changes that they would like you to make in the thesis before you officially submit. Be sure to communicate these changes by forwarding your committee the final draft before going on to the last step of the thesis writing process.

6. Submit the necessary forms to the department and begin the submission process on UBC’s online repository, cIRcle.

Students should always refer to the official Thesis and Dissertation Submission instructions on the G+PS website. However, generally speaking, the thesis submission process will consist of:

• submitting the Master’s Thesis Approval form, with signatures from the examining committee members, and the Thesis Cover Sheet to the Graduate Program Assistant (English.Graduate.Program@ubc.ca).

• setting up and activating your cIRcle account.

• submitting the thesis on cIRcle.

Since this is a very important step of the process, it is highly recommended that you refer to the official instructions on the G+PS website and ask the Graduate Program Assistant about the submission process well ahead of time.

* All information on this page is written from the perspective of graduate students. This page is NOT meant to be treated as official instructions or guidelines, and it is not as regularly updated as the UBC Department of English Language and Literatures or the Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies websites. The information provided here is intended to provide experiential insight from graduate students ONLY; please refer to information provided by UBC faculty and staff, available on UBC websites, for official instructions regarding degree requirements, thesis/dissertation submission, etc.

Last updated: November 8, 2021 @ 12:20 pm

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