Senior year is characterized by defining events that students anticipate even as underclassmen. Feb Club, senior spring trips, graduation, and for some, the senior thesis. Starting sometimes even as early as junior spring, a portion of Penn seniors disappear into their archives, labs, fieldwork, and advisors’ office hours to produce a document that only people in their department will likely ever read. For students interested in academia, a thesis is an opening to a world of potential research interests and even practice for their future dissertation. Yet, for most students, a senior thesis is just the last obstacle standing in the way between them and graduation.
As a double major in international relations and environmental studies, the senior thesis has been weighing on me in particular, because I happened to choose one of the few majors at Penn to require one. I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit negotiating with two departments in completely different fields about whether a single research topic can somehow satisfy both. The answer is usually a resounding “maybe.” The more I consider my situation, the more I wonder, what does the thesis actually prove and for whom?
Some departments would argue that it teaches valuable lessons in independent research on how to formulate questions, reason with primary sources, and develop an original argument. For students headed to graduate school or law school, it’s a tool that will obviously prove useful. It’s possible departments require a thesis because they believe academic rigor should be demonstrated by everyone regardless of what they came to Penn to do.
Then why is this logic not applied consistently across departments? Within the Computer and Information Science, or CIS, department, a BAS requires a thesis that may be substituted for a senior design project. But the BSE offers no substitution creating two versions of essentially the same major that disagree about which final capstone proves aptitude.
That inconsistency also shows up in the College, where environmental studies requires a thesis, but its counterpart in the same department, Earth and environmental science, does not. I have even met students who dropped environmental studies for environmental science despite being more interested in environmental humanities and policy. The reason? Avoid the senior thesis at all costs and have room for other classes in their senior year. International relations works similarly as a growing number of students opt for the political science major with an IR concentration for its optional thesis. The thesis requirement doesn’t intensify rigor, it just quietly pushes students out of the major that actually matches their interests into a similar field that asks less of them.
It’s not necessarily the workload that is unattractive for students. Rather, once a thesis class is fixed on your schedule, junior and senior year stop being times to explore. Essentially, that flexibility from your underclassman years is lost. Study abroad gets harder to justify when you need a full year on campus with your advisor. A semester with Penn in Washington or a Penn Global Seminar course you want to take purely out of curiosity starts to look too risky. The eye-catching electives you wish to take outside your major would be the first to go when fixing your new schedule. Ultimately, your semester might start feeling like a checklist rather than something that genuinely excites you.
For students who are double majoring, a thesis in each major can mean fighting for an approved combined project or giving up on one of the majors. Even pairing a major with a minor in something like a language or a secondary interest might force you to start weighing pros and cons.
Many departments at Penn trust students to decide if they want to carry the weight of a thesis and be bestowed with an honors distinction. That system works as students who want the challenge or believe it may supplement their further studies can take it on. The departments that haven’t caught up should ask themselves what the requirement is proving if the thesis isn’t required for all or preparing everyone for the same future. Oftentimes, it is those who are most deterred that were the exact students who came to Penn for its breadth of experience.
ALYMA KARBOWNIK is a College junior from Maplewood, NJ studying international relations and environmental studies. Her email is alymak@sas.upenn.edu.
