How to score the degree final year project (FYP)? | Wow that’s one hard question, but first I’d like to share this quote:

“6+3 = 9, and so does 5+4 = 9. The way you do things is not always the only way to do them.”

Thus, these tips are basically what I did during my final year in 2020 which might be useful and useless for some people at the same time. I would probably tell them in a row from the very beginning until the end. 

So, this could be a complete guide for the final year student to do their project.

Preparing for the project

1. Find a lecturer that you can literally talk to/with

“I can’t choose my supervisor. What should I do?”

Well, if you were assigned to a specific lecturer by the system, try to make friends with them and learn how to blend in. Remember, conducting FYP is actually a teamwork between you and the supervisor. Therefore, relationship and communication are the most vital ingredient that you should establish in your team.

2. Plan, structure, and propose doable thesis title

Some lecturers or supervisors prefer to discuss with their student to plan the project from the scratch, means from the title itself. While, some of the lecturers have already prepared the proposal for you which you wouldn’t have to bother and think about the abstract, objective, and methods of that project. 

If you do have the chance to discuss, express your capability to your supervisors. Tell them what you have experienced and you haven’t tried yet. Tell them what’s the main interest that you want to do in the project. 

If you like to explore more in Machine Learning, then tell them that you want to do that for your project. If you like penetration testing and development, then tell them that’s what you want. 

Some students were hyping on the title of their thesis which is long and hard to comprehend. Little did they know, the title itself actually influences the readers’ interest.

Make sure the title of the project must be doable by you. If it sounds alien and new to you, make sure you’re willing to sacrifice your time and put as much effort to learn about it. 

If the title and proposal were preplanned by your supervisor, then revise them again. Maybe there’s something that’s a little complicated and hard to be done. So, you can advise your supervisor to exclude or replace it with something else.

Tips to score for a final year project

1. Achieve all objectives

Remember that I say you should discuss what are the things that should be in your project? It includes the objectives too. The main component to score a good grade is to accomplish all the objectives given which means you have successfully completed the project. 

Now that you have achieved it all, what can you do to level up the score?

Do extra effort on the results by analyzing on the different aspect that is unlisted in the objective. 

For example, let’s say you’re working on the food image recognition project, you and your supervisor have agreed to have two main objectives which were to develop the pipeline and to obtain the highest accuracy out of it. You have achieved both and the extra work that you could do is maybe you can come out with:

• The best parameters for the neural network of your deep learning pipeline
• Or, the best features of the image that influence the accuracy 
• Or, the best method or calculation to be used in the activation function

It’s totally optional for you to do extra work, but by doing so, you can definitely uplift your project value.

Also read: AI vs. Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning vs. Neural Networks: What’s the Difference? 

2. Explain the discussion in-depth

This is one vital part which most student regrets. A good output without proper explanation is just a number. People won’t understand the result unless we explain it clearly. So, what can we do is to have as many resourceful illustrations and pictures of the result.

It can be either a bar chart, graft, a pie chart with a percentage score, or a sketch of it. Put proper labeling on each attribute in the illustration. Imagine your reader knows nothing about the topic, so you must put everything in place.

3. Prove your explanations with citation

Other than that, writing a thesis is all about formality and educational-oriented. Especially, if you’re writing a biological topic in which you can’t simply claim something that is newly found by you. You must have a supportive citation saying that your result is valid and proven. 

Have you heard about the false-positive results? He is a demon. We thought the result was perfect but it’s actually a speck of hidden dirt. So, citing and proving your result is simply important to get a good grade.

4. Reduce plagiarism score in Turnitin

This is to qualify that your writing is legit and original because copy and paste are illegal in the thesis. That’s why I put this as the last point because if your discussion and result were superb but if the plagiarism checker detects pirates, you still can’t get the credits.

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Another thing that I didn't mention is to make sure you follow all the formality and format of the thesis based on our university guidelines. This seems like the simplest thing to be done but it's indeed the silent killer in every failed submission. You can double check with your supervisor before submission.

I wrote this based on my experience, so maybe others would say differently. Should I also write about some tips for the fyp presentation? Comment below if you want me to write about it. 

Also, if you also have some tips to share, please and please comment them below so many other readers can benefit from them. Thank you in advance!

Feel free to email me with any questions at theamerzing@gmail.com

All the best!