At the FHNW School of Business, students may write their Bachelor thesis alone or with one partner. The intuitive expectation is that two people produce a better result than one. Yet Lindenmann (2023) found no significant grade difference between individual and team-written theses, a result the client found difficult to accept. This study replicates and extends her analysis using the same dataset, now enriched with supervisor-level data that Lindenmann deliberately excluded, to investigate which factors best explain the absence of a team advantage.

Using R, the thesis-level dataset (n = 377) was merged with supervisor data (207 supervisors). Nine research questions were examined through six statistical methods: descriptive statistics, cluster analysis, group comparisons using Welch t-tests and one-way ANOVAs, Pearson correlations, multiple linear regression with interaction terms, and variance and tail analysis using Levene's test and Fisher's exact test. Key variables included team setting, prior GPA, supervisor engagement and grading history, student interest, and topic selection type.

The central finding confirms Lindenmann's result that team setting does not predict the bachelor thesis grade. The most influential factor is the supervisor's grading tendency. Supervisors who awarded higher grades in the past continue to do so (r = .439, p < .001), suggesting that the choice of supervisor matters more than whether students work alone or in a team. Student interest was the second strongest predictor, and students who chose their own topic reported higher interest in their thesis and achieved better grades. Individually written theses had a higher proportion of self-acquired topics (77%) compared to team theses (50%), which may partially explain why individuals perform as well as teams. These findings provide FHNW with a clearer picture of what actually drives thesis performance. It is not the structural choice of working alone or in a team, but the quality of supervision and the degree to which students are genuinely engaged with their topic. This insight enables FHNW to focus attention on the factors that matter most for student success.