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Research Project Application Form
Graduate School of Natural Sciences
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Use of this form is mandatory for all large research projects, notably final thesis work (“afstuderen”). It must be handed in by the student at the student  desk (“studentenbalie”) responsible for the registration of the grades of the respective MSc programme, prior to starting the project.


*** Student

  Name of MSc programme	
  First and last name of student	 
  Email address	
  Student number	 
  
*** Project supervisor

  Name and title (must be a Utrecht University staff member)	 
  Email address	
  Daily supervisor
  -- Fill out this section only if the project supervisor is not the daily supervisor ->
    Name and title 	
    Affiliation	 
    Address	 
    Telephone number	
    Email address	

*** Research project

  Title	
  Starting date            	
  Ending date	
  Number of ECTS	
  Short description of the project, including aims	

*** Agreements between student and supervisors

  Number of hours available for supervision	
  Planning/timing of the supervision (e.g. ‘weekly meetings’)	
  Agreed student work load (e.g. full time, 4 days/week, etc.)	
  Student absence (holidays, courses, etc.)	
  Supervisor absence (holidays, conferences, etc.)	
  Intermediate evaluations of student performance (specify at least two dates)	
  Presentations to be held	
  Lab/group meetings to be attended	
  Other activities agreed upon	
  Primary assessment criteria. (please see appendix for examples)	

*** Copyright

By signing this document, the student declares to transfer the copyright of any and all products, including the tangible and intellectual products, of the research project to Utrecht University. The rights of the student by scientific standards to be a co-author of publications or to be otherwise acknowledged are still recognized.
The student is allowed and must upload his final assessed thesis to the university publication archive IGITUR. At a later stage, the thesis may be made public via IGITUR, or its access may be restricted temporarily or indefinitely.

*** Signatures

  Student signature and date	

  Project supervisor signature and date	
  
  Master programme coordinator name, signature, and date
	

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*** Appendix: an incomplete list of possible assessment criteria

 * Level – Theoretical level, practical/experimental level, understanding of the underlying matter, amount of work in relation to number of ECTS
 * Problem handling – Methods, techniques, design instrumentation, implementation, experiments
 * Skills – Analytical skills, model building, distinguishing matters of major and minor importance, evaluation, independence, collaboration, self-reflectiveness, planning
 * Effort and attitude
 * Originality
 * Relevance, valorization 
 * Report/Thesis – literature survey, problem statement, style of writing, quality of Dutch/English, report structure, textual structure, coherence/consistency, conclusions/recommendations, neatness
 * Oral presentation – presentation/public speaking skills, structure, discussion skills, presentational aids