Today we discuss how to write a project proposal and get instant approval from your head. Since I’m an Electrical Engineer, the post would mainly focus on electrical engineering projects.
But the points that we discuss below are relevant to other disciplines as well.
Electrical engineering departments, in general, accept only core electrical projects.
Embedded projects are not the main interest of electrical engineering professors. Especially, in the case when there are separate branches for electrical and electronics in the institute.
But electrical projects are not limited to only machines, power systems, control systems, and power electronics projects. Electronics would also come under electrical engineering.
HOW TO WRITE A PROJECT PROPOSAL?
Let’s see how to select and get approval for an electrical engineering project from the institute. An academic project is not always about the interest of students.
The topic should be selected based on many factors — potential to get a high score, innovation, relevance in the field (electrical engineering), feasibility to implement, result-oriented, etc.
The steps to follow to get approval for your academic projects are listed below
HOW TO FIND A TOPIC FOR AN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING PROJECT?
The conventional method to find the electrical engineering project topic, suggested by many professors is as follows.
- Read international journal papers in your area of interest
- Find the research gap in the project paper
- Find a suitable solution and proposal to remove the research gap
I believe the method will not work for me. I struggle to find research gaps! Let’s see some other methods to find the project topics.
What I really suggest is to find your area of interest first. It’s better if you have at least a small idea about the topic on which the project is to be done.
Then search for the topics and related papers in international journals. Don’t forget to check the most recent publications also.
It would be quite easy to find if your idea is already researched and implemented. If not, you are lucky.
Here is a post that explains how to find 100+ electrical engineering projects in easy 5 steps.
Even though you find an interesting and innovative project topic your task to get approval from the project panel is not over.
Further steps to write a project proposal are below
- Find an attractive title
- Well-defined objectives and expected results
- Write a catchy description
- Mention the latest journal papers as references
We can check each step in detail.
HOW TO WRITE AN ATTRACTIVE TITLE FOR YOUR PROJECT?
The title of the project does matter. A good title should reflect what you do in the project and attract the readers to your project.
Let’s see one example.
I’m doing a project — DCDC converter.
I list a few titles for the project here.
- DCDC converter
- DCDC converter for Electric Vehicle
- Novel two-stage DCDC converter with minimum switching loss for Electric Vehicle
- High-efficiency DCDC converter for Photovoltaic systems
The title of the project should answer the following questions.
- Where can I use the converter? (Application)
- Why is the converter a special one? (Novelty)
From the list of 4 titles of the same project (they can be different projects also. Yes.. we got 4 project topics!) I would prefer the last two titles.
You can also suggest this kind of attractive title for your project.
HOW TO WRITE A PROJECT DESCRIPTION AND OBJECTIVES FOR YOUR PROJECT PROPOSAL?
The description and objectives of the project proposal should justify the title that you provided for the project. For example, the objectives of a project to develop a DCDC converter can be as follows.
- Develop a simulation model of a two-stage DCDC buck converter
- Simulate and find the efficient operation of DCDC converter in a vehicle simulation model
- Develop hardware setup of DCDC converter
- Compare the performance with simulation results
The description of the project proposal explains how you proceed with the project. I recommend you explain the objectives briefly in the description.
If the project panel reads the description they cannot stop accepting your project proposal.
MENTION THE LATEST AND RELEVANT JOURNAL PAPERS AS REFERENCES
References are important in a project proposal. They are the papers that you referred to related to your projects. Those papers should be from reputed journals such as IEEE Journals.
I recommend using journal papers and trying to avoid conference papers.
You can select any of the standard formats (bibliography formats) to enter reference papers.
Usually, you can get project proposal forms from the institute itself. Different universities follow different formats for project proposals.
NOTE: Don’t forget to prepare more than one project proposal. In case one gets rejected you should have a backup plan.
CONCLUSION
We discussed how to write a project proposal for engineering students and get them approved. Approval of the project depends on how you write the proposal.
The title, objectives, description, and references written in the way we explained in the post would increase the chances of the project getting approved.