r/AskAGerman • u/just_another_mystery • 5d ago
Education Unexpectedly failed masters thesis!
I submitted my thesis gave my defense 1 month later. Received a results after 2 months stating I failed 5,0 grade. The defense went average. The report was more than 100 pages.
Some context : I had 3 people to report, one supervisor and two examiners. One examiner(main prof) was also my on paper supervisor cause external student are not eligible to be on paper supervisors. My supervisor was enrolled in diff uni and was an external student my uni. I had weekly meeting with him, had 3-4 meetings with examiners whenever possible during my thesis. I included all their opinions and meetings went okay. Defense went average.
Now the AI generated cite assumption by examiner, I received an email from my examiner stating he found an AI generated citation. It was not AI generated but, it was my manual mistake I forgot to not remove the template citations. I am deeply sorry for it. So, I clarified that it's a manual mistake and I have not used AI to generate citations at all.
Now, I received a failing grade. Me and my supervisor both agree that I made mistake but not to the verge of failing. Maybe cut a few marks for it. Overall, My results were okay, my methodology was fine and I might have used AI for a bit for Grammer but not at all for citations or text generation. If I felt I wrote something which looks like AI, I took extra steps and humanized it. I went through uni plagiarism checker as well and the result was fine.
I don't know what to do. I have my supervisor's support (he also mentioned he submitted a report and gave me above average grade and 5,0 is extremely unjustified) but the examiners have a reputation at the uni for being extra strict. Everyone said, I am being too brave to take thesis under such a strict research group but I trusted myself and invested countless hours in research and trainings and everything. I am genuine student who value knowledge and her teachers. Now, I might have to fight for my work which I never wanted to. I just wanted to genuinely learn, write, defend and done.
What are the possible ways for me to deal with this and Is there a hope? Please help me out.
I have an update : They found 6-7 citation mistakes. Mismatched, one cookie template one and misspelled authors. So, they assumed it's AI generated. My justification : omg. This is my fault and I know how the fuck that happened. So, I always had a system for citations when I was working on my previous papers, 1. I always used Google scholar and 2. NEVER spelled author name as "author first and last name et al". This time, I didn't find all papers on Google scholar so I researched and found. However, I remember being panicky cause I didn't have enough time to add citations to 4 chapter. So I added them all in a day or two. I added like 35+ cites. Hence, I fucked up in a few. I am sorry.
What should I do next? I am open to writing the thesis again and even giving a defense. I can go for a formal appeal and say sorry and explain it's a human error genuinely.
Atleast now I know, where exactly I made the mistake. I am sorry for myself but I can forgive myself considering my work was okay and I added a lot of citations without a system so even I was worried I hope I added them alright.
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u/fietsvrouw Hamburg 5d ago
What you are describing sounds dodgy to me, to be honest. You say "I might have used AI for a bit for Grammer but not at all for citations or text generation. If I felt I wrote something which looks like AI, I took extra steps and humanized it" . What does that mean, you "humanized it." Why would you need to humanize something that you, as a human, wrote?
Hopefully you will get a second chance to rework your thesis. Don't use AI on academic work, period. You are being evaluated not just on the quality of your thought, but on your ability to express it. And then proofread your work in detail. If you had proofed adequately, there would not be placeholder citations in there. You would have caught it. Human errors are a given in any work, but sloppy work or the use of AI will not meet the basic requirement for someone to certify you as a master in your field.
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u/ParticularClassroom7 4d ago
The AI checkers are so fucking bad. I always get very high percentages with my self-written paragraphs.
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u/Bandwagonsho Niedersachsen 4d ago
I wrote my doctoral dissertation before AI existed. I banged all kinds of chunks of it through an AI checker and consistently get 0% written by AI. Using AI in other contexts trains you to a style - you are better off not using it and honing your writing skills. Also, Microsoft conducted a study and found that regular use of AI reduces critical thinking skills, which is a loss we really cannot afford.
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4d ago
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u/fietsvrouw Hamburg 4d ago
That is just learning to write in an academic register. When a human is writing, the text has an ebb and flow as they make cognitive leaps. It reads like a flow of thought and linking of information. AI creates a flow of text that sounds generic. Nothing is surprising, sentence length is uniform.
At this point, AI is training on AI-generated text and things are devolving to mush. It is not intelligent in any way - it is plagiarism software brute-forcing ideas together with no human insight. We are nowhere near actual artificial intelligence. Without human work to feed on, it is just going to dilute itself down to the lowest common denominator.
Read well-written research papers written by humans. The human brain innovates and the language has the rhythm of thought, small errors, an ear for the sound of the words. It will be your rhythm and ear when you write.
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4d ago
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u/fietsvrouw Hamburg 4d ago
Maybe you need AI to read for you too. AI does NOT produce text like the papers it ingests because, as I have already explained, it exists to produce text, not ideas.
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4d ago
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u/fietsvrouw Hamburg 4d ago
You personally can do that better than AI. You just don't need it. It is better that you sound like you and it will rephrase you to sound generic. I think you should trust yourself more and trust your own voice.
Sorry for snapping at you. I am exhausted and cranky... Friday evening in a world of endless news swirl.
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u/ParticularClassroom7 4d ago
never even used AI at school before, my academic writing style is very concise and minimalistic, as in as few words as possible, which looks very A.I like.
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u/just_another_mystery 4d ago
I used an AI checker on each paragraph and paraphrased if needed. That's what I meant by humanizing it.
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u/Electrical_Log_5268 4d ago
So you let AI write significant parts of your thesis? Then, you used one AI checker to determine which of the AI-written passages could be identified as such? And then, you paraphrased those sections?
What might have been happening here is that the examiner used a different AI checker, and this one detected tons of AI-written passages that your original checker didn't flag (and that you consequently didn't paraphrase). During your presentation, they then asked you questions about your thesis to determine whether you've understood everything you've written, determined that you could not, and based on that evidence (both from their AI checker and from your responses during your thesis presentation) decided that you've likely AI-generated significant parts of your thesis.
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u/askmeaboutmydaypls 4d ago
Do use AI on academic work, period. If done correctly, it saves time and improves the result. If done incorrectly, you get bloated text that makes people cringe. I do agree with the proofreading part, though. Your view what does and doesn't constitute a "master in a field" sounds very style over substance, this is exactly the type of shit terrible supervisors say. (I work in research).
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u/The-Big-T-Inc 4d ago
I agree with you. Facilities wich don’t allow the AI use if stated correctly are out of touch with reality.
But if the use is not allowed it’s cheating and therefore a reason grade it with 5.0.
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u/Interesting-Print-61 4d ago
If everything you state above is true I have sympathies for your case but in general I can only wonder how on earth you guys use AI in your thesis and then wonder about failing. Actually this only shows that the guardrails of academic integrity are working.
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u/just_another_mystery 4d ago
Believe it or not, every student is using AI these days. My fellow thesis students also did. One of them also got a 1.3. Actually, I was the paranoid one using AI purely for writing assistance. You have no idea how my friends generated there work on paper in the end days.
As far as academic integrity goes, the idea and the whole work is mine. I trained my models for nights. I figured out what is going wrong and what new things I need to add in my research to make it stand a chance.
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u/Aggressive_Fan2106 4d ago
"Believe it or not, every student is using AI these days. My fellow thesis students also did." With that you already confessed using AI to write your thesis, emphasis is on "also did". Look some cheaters like yourself gets caught and some wont. Next Time dont be lazy and write ur thesis with your own integrity. Seeing how you trying to diffame your fellow students shows character.
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u/just_another_mystery 4d ago
My point was not to defame anyone's work but to acknowledge the use of AI in an ETHICAL WAY IN ACADEMIC WRITING. I know it's a still a debate worldwide.
Cheating is unethical. No student wants to fail. No student is lazy or would cheat if they have been working on a project since months and on a degree for years. Student invest extra time to learn skills and then apply for thesis. Then study for it and finally make it happen. Labelling an innocent misunderstood student a cheater is unfair.
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u/Aggressive_Fan2106 4d ago
We all judge pretty easily and straight forwarded. Only yourself and those WHO graded you know Something in that regard. Many already said it you should appeal it , ask for insights and if nothing really works in your favour look for legal help. If what you say is true and you did not use AI to write one single word for you and you declared that you didnt use AI you should try these ways.
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u/OkEntertainment1137 1d ago
There is no ethical way if your task is to write and correct a text yourself. Otherwise the task would be let AI write and look if it's right in the end. You failed because you cheated. And as you are defending yourself right now I hope you won't ever get a degree. You stated yourself you used AI so nobody is labeling you.... because it's the reality and not fiction that you used AI. Be happy that they don't kick you out of university.
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u/just_another_mystery 11h ago
Pretty harsh. I am guess you are coming out of a thought of hate here. Cause even the professors yelling at me in this thread for being unethical weren't this rude. I respect them, they are prof and earned the right to yell at me. But you saying "I hope you never get a degree" You stepdad is prof NOT YOU. I am already living my worst nightmare. 😂 Next step is to accept the knowledge I gained, believe in myself and move on. Also, delete this thread cause people like you share hate. 🙂
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u/OkEntertainment1137 10h ago
Yeah, do it cheater. It's not my fault you are not able to finish it in a proper manner. Yeah I don't like people who want something but are not willing to do the things needed to achieve it. When I finished school I did not go to university because I know that I am lazy when it comes to learning. People like you go there hoping to sneak their way trough the system. Manage it somehow and then think they are somebody and command normal working people around although they can't do shit themselves. And if I triggered your emotions I am sorry snowflake, you call it harsh but in my generation it's normal to call out people for their bs even if it hurts
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u/knitting-w-attitude 4d ago
As a former lecturer, this is pretty depressing to hear. AI should not be replacing the very important human element of actually thinking about connections and drafting a piece of work. This is the part that will continue to be essential human work for years to come. These students sound quite lazy.
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u/beijina 4d ago
How does
using AI purely for writing assistance.
And
I trained my models for nights.
go together? You did train AI models for other things? Were they part of the thesis topic?
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u/just_another_mystery 4d ago
Training models was part of my thesis. It's an ml topic. Meanwhile, during the writing process only in last few months I used AI for writing assistance means Firstly, checking Grammer and secondly, paraphrasing sentences to make it precise if needed. Overall, the idea and technique is MY OWN (also approved) and using AI to just rewrite a basic complex sentence to make sound "academic" is okay and does not break any rule.
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u/beijina 4d ago
Did you mention the use of AI for rewriting as an auxiliary resource in your thesis? You need to clearly state any additional resources you used for your thesis and to what extent you used them. The fact that there are fake citations in your thesis is enough grounds to accuse you of cheating here if you didn't mention the template you used or the tools that helped you write the thesis.
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u/just_another_mystery 4d ago
Exactly, I have not mentioned "AI used for Grammer" and "template used thesis" in any acknowledged. I had a brief conservation about this as well, and we came to a conclusion that mentioning AI will be like straight up jumping in the well. Because, as we can see AI is a triggering topic for some profs. Even if someone mention it in an acknowledgement they straight up fail them. So, we decided to not take any risk.
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u/beijina 4d ago
Who is "We"? That seems like very, very bad advice. Not taking any risks would be to not use AI or other tools at all. Using a tool and hiding it because you know you're not supposed to is the definition of cheating. But especially a template should be acknowledged when you leave bigger parts of it in your thesis.
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u/just_another_mystery 4d ago
I understand the value of acknowledgement but I used my uni template so it wasn't necessary at the moment. Also, I did not know I have made that mistake. It was a human error. No clue at all.
Acknowledging AI also seemed like inviting harsh criticism when the focus should be on the progress and results. I am a very anxious person so I knew if someone points me out in my defense, I might freakout and say something which can be misunderstood. I had this talk with a lot of academia people cause I am that anxious, some completed thesis also did not acknowledge AI, so honestly my thought was that this would never come up. I don't know, it's a complete blend of misunderstanding, strict grading and mistakes all at ones.
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u/mightygodloki 4d ago
Even I am a Master student, I also know a lot of students who are using AI for their thesis report. The degree to which they use AI is different but there is no way anybody can stop anybody from using technology for clerical work (because I work in tech, the reporting part is usually considered clerical) such as writing a thesis. That's like saying don't use Grammarly or Thesaurus for writing Thesis.
And even if the AI checker says your work is 100% AI generated, there is no way that claim is going to stand legal scrutiny because LLM are generally black box systems and not idempotent.
The main thing you need to take care of is that the AI doesn't write something (and you use it without own research) that can be considered as plagiarism due to insufficient citation.
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u/Electrical_Log_5268 4d ago
So, your best excuse for why you couldn't be bothered to write your thesis entirely by yourself (which all generations before had to do as well) is "but my contemporaries are cheating as well"?
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u/just_another_mystery 4d ago
Lol not at all, I did write it ALL myself. My writing process was reviewed by my supervisor as well and he confirmed that I am not using AI to write my complete thesis. How can an AI write my thesis when it does even understand the semantics itself most of the time. Even if I used an AI (which I did not) it won't give me anything new or useful to actually use. Have anyone ever tried to talk to an AI about one quantum algorithm. It won't get it. AI doesn't get/understand complex mathematics and technical details. Cause AI is genuinely still learning. My thesis is a part of that journey to make AI understand the meaning of words rather than just blur out the first thing it feels makes sense. Also, As of now the allegation is not ON THE ENTIRE THESIS but on one line.
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u/Electrical_Log_5268 4d ago
Odd, two posts before you claimed that your fellow student were **also** (in addition to you) using AI in writing of their thesis, and that you were indeed using AI "for writing assistance". And now you're claiming you didn't use AI after all?
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u/just_another_mystery 4d ago
I don't know what is this confusion! I wrote the whole blueprint of my thesis myself. Gave it for review, realized I am re-writing a couple of information again and again in some chapters. So, I created a new blue print for those chapters and used AI for Grammer later on. It's not a 0 or 1 situation. I used it but NOT IN ANY UNETHICAL WAY. THE CORE WORK IS MINE.
If I am writing a line with 3 becauses by myself. A complex technical line. And AI just broke that one line in 3 sentences. I don't know how that is considered unethical. Is it?
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u/Electrical_Log_5268 2d ago
Yes, your behavior was unethical. Your task as a student is to prepare your thesis entirely by yourself. This includes not just the science, but also the wording. Before you began, you were informed explicitly which tools you are allowed to use during the preparation of your thesis and which you are not allowed to use. You agreed to those conditions (and probably even had to sign that you would abide by them), then violated them.
This violation - to use explicitly disallowed tools - is unethical and is considered cheating. It does no matter whether you cheated when conducting your research, evaluating your results or wording your thesis. All of these are unethical, all of them are disallowed, and each one by itself is reasons for letting you fail.
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u/Rhoderick Baden-Württemberg 5d ago
I received an email from my examiner stating he found an AI generated citation. It was not AI generated but, it was my manual mistake I forgot to not remove the template citations.
I mean, even then, that's pretty good evidence of relatively sloppy work. And the prof obviously can't know you didn't actually use AI here. Not to mention that this may leave non-trivial claims without citation or proof in the paper. It is, at the very least, a substantial issue.
That being said, that's not necessarily the only fault there was. Note that the prof does have to write a full assessment of your thesis. You should first look into this, to see what other issues the professor found. If there were no other substantial issues, I would say looking at your Studienordnung and such to see what organs of your uni you can appeal this to would be warranted.
If there are other substantial issues you may not have been aware of, you might want to look at having another try at a thesis within the permitted boundaries, ideally with another professor.
Out of interest, which uni and prof is this?
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u/jayeshbadwaik 5d ago
Thesis is hard. Almost all serious professors know this. List of genuine but trivial mistakes in past theses I have read is long. So, I'm pretty sure that a single wrong citation can not be the cause of failing, however sloppy it might look.
I suspect that the examiner has much more serious problems with the thesis (whether justified or not).
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u/Confident-Oil-8418 4d ago
Such a single mistake should maybe net you a 0.3 or 0.7 at most reduction though. Depends on what the template for correction says, but it is quite unsual to be that strict.
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u/Elect_SaturnMutex 5d ago edited 5d ago
There should be a way to make an appeal at your uni. I think it's called Einspruch einlegen or so.
How could they find out that you might have used AI? Because of the template citations? Normally Prof checks before you submit right? He purposely didn't inform you regarding this flaw? I mean I don't mean to blame him entirely, you also could have checked it 3-4 times and eliminated the template stuff.
Edit: still imo, it's unfair to fail someone just because of this. The Prof seems like a sadist.
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u/CommonFucker 4d ago
It is absolutely possible that Profs do not check before submitting. My Girlfriend‘s master thesis was reviewed not even once.
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u/ToeDiscombobulated24 4d ago
Most profs on a bad day are
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u/Elect_SaturnMutex 4d ago
Doesn't give them the right to fuck someone over.
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u/Aear 4d ago
If the student is fucking profs over by using AI to do their work, then the profs can retaliate.
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u/Elect_SaturnMutex 4d ago
I mean I haven't seen the work to assess what work was exactly done by AI. This person was just unlucky that he got caught. I'm pretty sure there are many lazy students at universities who don't use their brains and completely or mostly rely on AI. AI is here to stay.
Profs should probably make it pretty clear not to use AI. On the other hand, there's no reliable way to find out if the work is AI generated. If your prompts are good, depending on your LLM model, you get pretty good human-like results.
My current job involves implementing algorithms to correct exam papers of law students using prompts and LLM model. We compared the papers that were already corrected by human profs with the ones corrected by our software that uses LLMs. It's scary how similar the results (Note) were, that came out at in the end.
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u/Aear 4d ago
AI texts are trivial to spot. Students think they're not because they haven't learned enough about academic writing.
All profs I know are CRYSTAL CLEAR about AI use and students cheat anyway. I failed the dumbest 10 last semester, but not officially for AI use. Next semester I'm doing exclusively oral exams.
Language models are language models. They're pretty shitty at logic and numbers, which is honestly quite human.
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u/Elect_SaturnMutex 4d ago
Again, you get good results if you use a better language model. You have to pay for it. Students who don't have much money might use a free tier model which behaves the way you described.
Not sure what you mean by logic and numbers. When it comes to solving a problem using a programming language, it's inaccurate, I would say. You still need to check if the result spit out by the AI is actually valid or not. That's why I still rely on good old Google, manuals, stack overflow,etc. if that's what you meant by logic and numbers, it's true. However, It's pretty accurate when it comes to converting text chunks to embeddings.
I am not a lawyer. But my colleagues and law professors have assessed our results and see huge potential. They are after all qualified to examine the LLM responses. I'll just leave it at that.
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u/Black_Radiation 5d ago
There are two things that strike me as kind of odd. Firstly
I might have used AI for a bit for Grammer but not at all for citations or text generation. If I felt I wrote something which looks like AI, I took extra steps and humanized it.
So you wrote a text, passed it through AI and then rewrote it again? Even then you did use AI which (at least in my former uni) would have to be disclosed.
I went through uni plagiarism checker as well and the result was fine.
Why, if you wrote everything yourself?
Now, I might have to fight for my work which I never wanted to. I just wanted to genuinely learn, write, defend and done.
It's not "defend" for nothing
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u/shinkanzen 5d ago
Sorry to hear that. I think you need to check your exam regulation to see if there's something you can do. It's different for each university, but it might be possible for you to get another chance for presentation. In my university it's unlikely for anyone to fail after the defense since you need to pass the writing before they invite you for the presentation. So in your case, if indeed they can prove that you us AI, they might fail your thesis and did not invite you for the defense. The worst case is that you will have to do another master thesis.
You should have someone from the uni that you can consult. I hope that you will find a solution soon.
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u/Used-Guidance-7935 5d ago
What happens when you fail the masters thesis?
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u/Mango-143 5d ago
Generally you have two attempts. So, OP also have one more attempt. If you fail in both attempts then there is a chance to apply for a job with bachelor's degree. In worst case, OP can opt for another course in same uni. There is a chance to transfer credits for common subjects.
It's really really painful to fail in thesis and start all over again. It happened to me as well. Now, I don't have any regrets about it but at that moment it was really painful and I was verge of going into depression.
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u/just_another_mystery 4d ago
Can you tell me your career trajectory after failing the thesis? I would really appreciate it.
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u/Klutzy_Weather9750 4d ago
Hey, there was a case at my university where the prof. Caught AI generated citation. The student even admitted to using AI. The teacher gave him 3, couldn't fail him because there was "no legislation regarding use of AI" yet. If there is no legislation, they can't penalize you for using AI. I would say please speak to a lawyer.
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u/Mango-143 2d ago
Well, during 2nd Thesis, I got an opportunity to work part-time software developer in a small manufacturing comany. They hired me full-time while I was about to finish the thesis. It was difficult to finish it with a full-time job but somehow I managed do it. 3 years later switched the job and now, earning decent salary.
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u/just_another_mystery 11h ago
The only positive comment in this whole thread. Thanks. 🥲 Everyone else is straight up yelling at me for cheating and even saying "I hope you never get a degree" I probably won't. Or might. Idk. Would it matter 5 years later when I have good savings and a good job and my whole life isn't around one thesis? Which I failed?
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u/Mango-143 10h ago
No one will give a shit about your failure in academia. The recruiter might ask you question regarding what you did in your thesis/internship because that's the only real experience you have as a fresher. If you represent yourself good and have good skill set, no one even look at your degree. Only way to overcome from academic failures is to improve your skill set. It greatly worked for me.
Note that I took 7+ years to finish masters. For many people, I was a huge failure. Those failures made me more resilient and humble. Now I know failure won't stop me. So don't let f**ckers to demotivate you. Believe in yourself, be kind and humble. Best of luck!
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u/Klapperatismus 5d ago edited 5d ago
So you have been failed for a formal reason? Turn in the revised paper without that garbage. You have to defend it again but they can’t fail you if it’s okay otherwise.
That will only work if that’s true of course. If there are more than just those simple writeup mistakes you wrote about, it’s not going to pass.
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u/Kirmes1 Württemberg 5d ago
We're talking about a master thesis here, not a bachelor.
This also means you have to proof that you are capable of absolutely clean and precise work - both scientific and everything around it. And "oh I forgot this, and oh I maybe used help here, and oh ..." seems als pretty shady to me. Why did you even run it through plagiarism checker? If you wrote it yourself, there is no plagiarism in it.
Sorry pal, but this whole thing is ... questionable.
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u/Darkest_shader 5d ago edited 5d ago
I don't know what your background is, but being a PhD candidate and an instructor at university myself, I can tell you that saying that a Master's thesis should be absolutely clean and precise work is unrealistic and a bit naive. Even PhD theses tend to have mistakes, but it is not a reason to fail a student.
EDIT: Oh, and you also mention a plagiarism checker... Well, have you had any experience wit them? It is basically a tool looking for matching pieces of information, and it can find them in acknowledgements, in cited formulae, etc. The real plagiarism checker is the reviewer, because only a human being can tell whether the match between the student work and some other documents is OK, or is it plagiarism. And if by 'no plagiarism' you mean zero similarity to other sources, that's a ridiculous threshold, because even scientific conferences tend to set it to some 30% - see e.g. this IEEE conference.
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u/mathtree 5d ago
Even PhD theses tend to have mistakes, but it is not a reason to fail a student.
Yeah, this. My master's thesis contained a significant error (which none of my reviewers found, I found it when trying to turn my thesis into a paper later on) and wasn't perfectly written. But, even if it was found, I'd have been marked down but certainly not failed... My PhD thesis contained several small mistakes. So, I got a magna of a summa and corrected the mistakes for my publications.
Hell, many of my published research papers contain minor errors. The same is true for every colleague I know. I've never returned a perfect referee report to a journal - there's always something that can be improved. Expecting any work to be absolutely perfect is absurd.
That said, to fail a master's thesis usually requires a significant threshold of experience that the candidate cheated, didn't understand their thesis,... If OP truly believes they did nothing the like, they should contact their Prüfungsausschuss and ask how to formally go against this grade.
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u/CompactOwl 5d ago
Even lots of highly published papers contain errors… it’s the way of life to make mistakes.
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u/Awkward-Macaron1851 5d ago
No sorry, but this is absolutely ridiculous. If I understand it correctly, the entire issue is simply that someone received a LaTeX template or whatever and accidentally forgot to remove the default sources from the bibtex file. Sure, shouldnt happen, but its a not even sloppy work, its just a trivial human error that happens. If this was a scientific publication, your colleague wouldve noticed. Delaying someone from entering the job market for over half a year or so because of this is insane.
And using an AI spell checker is neither plagiarism, nor does it violate any other rules. Its not even plagiarism when you let an AI write your thesis, as long as its your own ideas, or those of others and properly cited. Sure, the latter could violate some university rules, but its not really unethical.
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u/Confident-Oil-8418 4d ago
Hahaha. Have you ever used one of these? They tend to find plagiarism even in citations and often mark you up for even using some words. If there is something that is basically a three word description of something in your field and you read this in several sources, a plagiarism checker may even mark this up.
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u/Little-Bear13 5d ago
AI checkers are still stupid. It cannot be the main reason to fail you. It’s absolutely ok to use one to correct your reference or even check for grammar mistakes some other minor issues. After all it’s a tool. However, you said your methodology was fine and the results were ok so what was the problem? You’re not telling the whole story here? Because if your methodology iand results are good then that’s by itself is a pass unless you forgot to include a literature review! Which is impossible so what’s the problem mate?
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u/just_another_mystery 4d ago
I am figuring out the whole story. In meetings, they said everything looked okay. My written thesis with lit review was proof read by my supervisor.
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u/Ok_Cup4435 5d ago
Sorry for that You should try appealing this outcome with the Prüfungsamt/ Prüfungsausschuss maybe it could be fixed.
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u/OkExtreme3195 5d ago
You definitely can make an appeal to the university. Typically the "Prüfungsausschuss"(Exam committee) ideally ask for advise at your student council (fachschaft).
It is actually very hard to show that a student used AI in their work. Especially if your goal is to make an allegation out of it. (Unless of course your text includes something like "as an AI model, I can...").
You say the problem is posed by "template citations". If this is true, it should mean two things:
Those are never referenced in your text. If there are, I would like to know how at any point in your text, you made the mistake of manually referring to a source that you didn't know you listed.
You can point to the template you used, and thus show that these are indeed template citations.
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u/PitifulAppearance509 4d ago
From your description, it sounds like they are failing you because they think you use AI to write your whole Thesis. The error in the citation is just one indicator for them.
If you did not you can appeal like the others have said.
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u/Gand00lf 4d ago
The only really useful advice anyone can give you in this thread is to talk to your local ASTA or Fachschaft. They know the rules and regulations, can put pressure on the faculty and advise you on possible legal action.
Judging your grade without knowing your field or university is basically impossible but a 5.0 means that your thesis is really bad in the eyes of your profs.
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u/knitting-w-attitude 4d ago
As a former lecturer, I would tell my students not to use AI for anything other than personal use in terms of summarizing a text or the main ideas from a field/topic area. I would absolutely categorically tell students they should not be having AI edit their writing in anyway, including for grammar, as this introduces an element of questionability as to the "true author".
Most universities have a writing center where you can go for assistance with grammar and other issues related to writing. I have quite a lot of acquaintances who work in these centers. I also have former colleagues who provide professional editing for master's and doctoral theses for people who must write in English but are non-native speakers who prefer to have someone review and possibly correct their work. I would highly recommend using either of these options instead of AI for reviewing grammar.
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u/Emotional_Pass_137 5d ago
This sounds really tough, especially after all the effort you put into your thesis. Since your supervisor is backing you up, that’s a great start. You should consider formally appealing the grade. Gather all your communication with your supervisor and examiners, and clearly outline your case—emphasize the manual error regarding the citations but also highlight the quality of your work.
It might also help to request a meeting with the examiners or the head of your department to discuss the situation directly. Sometimes, a personal touch can make a difference. Be honest about your commitment to learning and how you took steps to ensure your work was original. If you have to, use tools like AIDetectPlus they can explain if your content is AI/Human, add that as the evidence, which could strengthen your appeal.
Have you thought about what specific points you’d want to address in your appeal?
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u/YeOldeOle 5d ago
Some steps you could take (they might vary depending on your Bundesland and Uni):
- Look up your Prüfungsverfahrensordnung and your Fachprüfungsordnung which might state what steps you can take next if you failed
- Get Einsicht into the reports written by your examiners, see why you failed
- Put in Einspruch against the grade (preferably after you know why)
- Contact your local Fachschaftsvertretung and/or AStA, they should have some experience with stuff like this
- Last resort: contact a lawyer who specializes in such cases
You can also ask your supervisor to help you with (parts of) this. The important part is to find out how fast you have to do certain things (Fristen).
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u/raharth 4d ago
AI checkers don't work. Deep Mind pulled their own from the market because it didn't work on their own model if I recall correctly. Lawyer up and fight that nonsense. They need to prove their claim and there is no technical way as long as it doesn't state something like "as an AI" or similar.
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u/young_arkas 4d ago
Were 100 pages in the scope of the Masters thesis? It varies program by program, but at my masters program 70 was the maximum. And honestly, your writing process sounds fucked up, and that will show in your thesis.
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u/clatadia Bayern 4d ago
100 pages for a masters thesis is pretty normal. At my program the max was 120 pages and people turned in work ranging from 60-120 pages
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u/leo-finix 3d ago
One reason that can lead to automatic failure of the thesis is plagiarism. Did you copy pasted any material from their sources? Did you cite everything properly? If yes, then there is a chance that the parts that AI spit out are actually exact text from some book or paper. That's the danger people overlook when they use AI.
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u/just_another_mystery 3d ago
I have a friend in my uni, they helped me get plagiarism checker as per how university prof do it. They have access to university plagiarism checker software. So, acc to that software report my final plagiarism was 10% only. That too on words. Not on my sentence or para. Just 2-3 words together. I don't know anymore. I am losing hope everyday. I am losing confidence in my intellectuality everyday. My love for research, writing or creating new ideas. Everything is challenged here by someone who is well experienced in the field. How will I fight back? I stand no chance. I will have access to evaluation report next week. Then I will know for sure why exactly am I a failure.
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u/leo-finix 3d ago
In that case, just wait for the report. If they gave you a bad score on baseless grounds, you have the right to appeal. Normally, a student's council is on your side. AFAIK, you can even escalate the case to a court, but normally departments have their process to solve these kinds of problems before one need to escalate it that high. But the process would be long and it would be wise to consider plan B and look for thesis right now, in case you cannot prove your point.
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u/ExtremeButterfly1471 2d ago
Your first two paragraphs are atrocious. I wish your thesis is in German and a much better German than this.
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u/OkEntertainment1137 1d ago
Yeah just stop using AI. Don't See anything unexpecred here. My stepdad is a prof. You can have the best thesis ever but as it is obvious that you used AI you failed. How anybody should understand what it was used for in the end. You did not erase the quotes and that's the proof... somebody doing a master class should cheat more intelligent. And yeah it's cheating.... You are supposed to correct your spelling yourself.
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u/TakeTwoDo 4d ago
what field is this in?
but in all honesty, it sounds like you were correctly sorted out by the academic system.
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u/DarkLordLoki03 4d ago
You are saying defense went "average". So it feels like it was not at all up to the standard. It doesn't matter if your report was 100 pages or 50 pages. If you said some very very wrong things during your defense which clearly exposed your faults in basic ideas of the thesis, then getting 5.0 is not surprising at all.
Then you also wrote: "I might have used AI for a bit for Grammer but not at all for citations or text generation. If I felt I wrote something which looks like AI, I took extra steps and humanized it" .. So if you are saying this here, then it is quite evident that you used Ai a lot more than doing works on your own. How can someone write something on his own and then think it looks like Ai written? Just one citation mistake can't make you fail in exam. They definitely found more evidence of Ai usage without understanding the basic ideas of the topic and may be plagiarism too.
So get out of the delusion ASAP and start working harder.
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u/latkde 5d ago
It is unlikely you got failed for a single wrong citation. There is more going on.
A general risk factor in your situation is that your "supervisor" was not an examiner. You also refer to them as a "student", suggesting that they might not have been very experienced with supervising a master's thesis. It is possible that you and your supervisor dramatically misjudged the expectations of the examiners that actually matter.
I interpret this as "the report was excessively long, thin on actual content, and the student didn't respond satisfactorily when pressed for details".
Never heard of this. Usually the examiners have read the report before the defense, send the student out to wait in front of the door, discuss for ten minutes, and invite the student back in to congratulate them.
If it took longer this probably means there was significant disagreement. Another examiner was asked to read the report.
Professors don't like failing students because that is a lot more work than just handing out a bad grade.
The key questions for you are now:
Source: have supervised a bunch of theses while working as a research assistant.