Capstone Writing: Tips & Tricks

[rachel83az]

"Despite the name, it's definitely geared toward the kind of writing that one has to do as a capstone project at one of the Big 3 and not toward a doctoral thesis."

Umberto Eco was Italian, in much of Europe you have to write a thesis at the bachelor level and master's level as well as the doctoral level. This is why. I had never heard of a 'capstone' before interacting with American's, other than in the context of a capstone project for engineering students.

If you would like to find more  guides, aides, advice on choosing a topic etc., search Google for "bachelor thesis topic advice" or "bachelor thesis advice [field of study]" etc. Its mandatory to write a thesis to recieve a degree where I am at, so there are thousands of resources available to help students narrow the scope of their topic, find a question to focus on, resource guides etc.

Yep, the book is mostly aimed at writing a tesi di laurea. This was, at the time of first publication, for the only level of degree that Italian universities offered. (Now considered a Master's degree, AFAIK.) In particular, the book is about writing a tesi di laurea for humanities students. He calls it a "literature review" (at least, the translation does) and the description is pretty much identical to TESU's capstone paper and the capstones required for Excelsior and COSC. 

The whole idea of writing a "thesis" for a 4-year degree is foreign to me. I vaguely maybe remember hearing about it being a thing in other countries, but I don't think I heard of it as an American thing until TESU introduced their capstone requirement a couple of years ago.