Literature reviews are the first step in any graduate school project. Before you are ready to add your unique insights to the scholarly conversation, you need to become familiar with the vocabulary and ideas of the most important scholars in your field. Thoroughly research the scholarly literature in your field and put together an annotated bibliography of important works.
Get started on a literature review project by searching the keywords "literature review" in the scholarly databases specific to your field.
An example of a literature review graduate school project is creating an annotated bibliography on the role of women in contemporary philosophy.
If you are pursuing a graduate degree in the humanities or marketing, you may choose to do qualitative research projects. These projects use non-mathematical tools like interviews, storytelling, critical analysis and participant observation to evaluate and explore scholarly theses.
The tools you use for these projects will vary according to your field. For example, social scientists might use focus groups or ethnology tools, while literature scholars might use content analysis or semiotics.
An example of a qualitative research project would is comparing job satisfaction for male and female philosophy professors.
Graduate students in the sciences will work on quantitative school projects. These kind of research projects use statistical and experimental tools to explore scholarly theses.
If you are doing graduate work in the physical sciences, you will use tools like laboratory tests. If you are doing work in the social sciences you may use statistical tools in your graduate school projects.
An example of a quantitative research project is a statistical comparison of tenure, salary and citation rankings for male and female philosophy professors.