Culminating Experience/Thesis: Berklee College of Music

The Master of Music and Master of Arts programs at Berklee College of Music conclude with a culminating experience. The culminating experience represents the highest expression of a student's learning at the graduate level and helps to shape students’ next steps in their careers by providing them with an opportunity to complete unique and original professional work. Through the culminating experience, students make a creative contribution to define and/or solve a problem that exists within their profession. This contribution may take the form of a research project, a creative project, a practical project, and/or another project of the student’s devising. Berklee graduate students can find more information below and in the Library's Culminating Experience Resource Guide.

Students are required to document their projects with a written proposal. This proposal must be approved by the faculty advisor and/or program director. Students then assemble a culminating experience committee to guide and evaluate their work. Upon completion of their projects, students reflect on the experience and consider the next steps. 

In their final intensive semester, all students are required to present their work to their culminating experience committee and, if applicable, the entire Berklee community.

Upon completion of their culminating experience, students will have:

  • made a creative contribution to the profession, and/or defined and solved a problem that exists in the discipline of study
  • designed and executed an original project;
  • produced a professional piece of academic and/or creative work, whether a research project, composition, recording or production, performance, practicum, or clinical experience that is analyzed and summarized or other;
  • evaluated their experience, assessing the contribution made to the profession; and
  • analyzed their own artistic, professional, and personal growth as a result of having completed the experience.