MSc Mathematical Sciences Exam Conventions 2025-26

5. Dissertation

Each dissertation will be offered and supervised by a dissertation supervisor and have a weighting of two units. The word limit for dissertations is 7,500 words and this must be achieved in at most 50 pages (excluding code listings in an appendix). USM marks will be assigned to dissertations with the same meaning as regards class boundaries as in the mathematics/statistics papers with reference to the qualitative class descriptors in Appendix C. In arriving at these marks, the relative weights attached to mathematics/statistics, content and presentation will be 50%, 25% and 25% respectively.

Further guidance on dissertations can be found in the dissertation guidance handbook: https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/members/students/undergraduate-courses/teaching-and-learning/part-c-students/teaching-and-learning/dissertations.

Word Limit Penalties

Students will need to self-certify the word length of their project, and must submit their dissertation in both .pdf and .tex file formats. The department will use TeXcount (using "words in text" as the count) to conduct word count checks on a randomly selected subset of submitted work and therefore would encourage students to use TeXcount to confirm their word count prior to submission. Guidance on how to count words in a latex documents can be found on the Maths Institute website: https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/members/it/faqs/latex/word-count. 

There is a strict page limit of 50 pages. Assessors are instructed to stop reading once this limit is reached, and any material beyond the 50-page mark will not be assessed. As stated above, the length of a typical dissertation is 25-30 pages so approaching the page limit should be rare and will likely concern only a few dissertations (e.g. ones involving a lot of tables or diagrams). This page count includes all the dissertation content except program code. Further guidance on dissertations can be found in the Dissertation Guidance Handbook: https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/members/students/undergraduate-courses/teaching-and-learning/part-c-students/teaching-and-learning/dissertations.

The examiners will penalise overlong dissertations in line with the penalty table below.