The thesis proposal or dissertation proposal is the document that states the intention of the undergraduate degree student or postgraduate degree student in pursuing thesis or dissertation project. The proposal document is submitted to the dissertation or supervising committee overseeing the student's project. The proposal states the student's research goals, the proposed methods of investigation, and other important aspects of the project.

The thesis proposal is the first challenging and complicated task for an undergraduate degree student performing a dissertation project especially if he has simultaneously to research and write other types of academic writings such as UK essay writing tasks on specific topics within the same term. For example, the undergraduate students who would research and write genetic engineering essays would have a difficult time for the duration of the term because those essays involve extensive amounts of technical research, and they have to think about the dissertation projects that they are doing in the same term.

Since the dissertation projects could be performed by postgraduate degree students who are already beyond the traditional undergraduate university or college age level, it is not uncommon to see senior citizens such as grandfathers and grandmothers who would still pursue postgraduate educations such as taking up master's degrees. So it is inevitable that a grandmother pursuing a master's degree would have to research and write a dissertation project, and planning and writing a dissertation proposal is usually her first priority because it is the first document to be submitted to the supervising committee overseeing her project.

The first thing that would probably come to the mind of the grandmother pursuing a master's degree and performing a dissertation project as an essential part of her degree's requirements would be her opinion on how to go about in outlining and structuring the dissertation proposal. The outlining and structuring of the proposal document is usually the first step to be performed before the actual writing of the proposal itself. The answer to her opinion is similar to what other master's degree students would do with their proposal writing tasks, which is reading and studying the necessary materials from which they would learn on how to outline and structure the proposal document.