Graduate students suffer from many pressures when writing adissertation. Deadlines loom, jobs are highly competitive,publishing is always a bonus, and these are often combined withoutside research, teaching fellowships, or other occupations. Inorder to finish a quality dissertation without too much wasted timeor effort it is useful for students to begin early and to think hardabout their projects in a variety of ways. Students may have a broadconceptual interest or field interest without a focused andtractable project. In addition to the normal practice of discussingpotential projects with advisors and mentors, there are several waysto evaluate potential projects that may be overlooked. This essayhelps bring a good dissertation project to the front of severalpotential ideas a student might have by describing severalcharacteristics for comparison across topics. In addition, thisessay provides a rubric by which students can develop and discuss aproject with faculty and colleagues. Without a doubt, one of themost important aspects of preparing a dissertation project is todiscuss that project with faculty mentors and potential committeemembers (Banesh 2001). Between thesediscussions, or before the first discussion of potential projects,students can spend considerable time thinking about various ideasfor their thesis or dissertation. Students approaching their projectsystematically may have many projects they are considering and wishto narrow down those projects to a manageable few before discussingthem with advisors. As a first time dissertation writer, however,most graduate students are unaware of criteria that can be used toevaluate and compare their ideas objectively so they can compareseveral project ideas and narrow down the field. The criteriadescribed here combine and extend other criteria previouslydeveloped, such as developing questions that are important in thereal world and those that contribute to scholarly literature (King,Keohane, and Verba 1994). The criteriadescribed below were developed specifically for dissertationprojects, but are also very useful for students writing theses forother purposes such as undergraduate senior projects. The guideprovided here should enable students to compare several potentialideas objectively to begin to find a viable project. Although theinitial development of a thesis project based on a student'stheoretical or empirical interests is mostly idiosyncratic andpersonal (See King, Keohane, and Verba 1994; Van Evera 1997), once astudent's interests emerge there are some common ways to objectivelyevaluate several dissertation projects. This essay helps studentsdevelop several ways to think about their dissertation projects andcreate a rubric so that several projects can be evaluated oncomparable terms.Thanks to the twoanonymous reviewers and Ronald B Mitchell who made instrumentalsuggestions on improving the text.