Halawa

Quals study groups are not official groups. They are just students who meet to study together. However, it seems from the unofficial Quals description page that all students study in groups because groups offer the following advantages: (1) They give you a chance to master part of the content you are studying by explaining it to the others (teaching gives you greater knowledge depth than just reading). (2) They give you a chance to accelerate on the complementary parts by actually listening to them being explained by your co-members, which will save you considerable time if you compare it to the case of having to read everything for the first time from the textbooks. (3) They increase your exposure to the material by as much as the members of the group will give you extra knowledge, expose you to unexpected questions ... etc. (4) They give their members the chance to actually simulate the examination process, thus helping in reducing the stress to some extent. (5) They leverage your experience about Quals questions by exposing you to the union of all previous years' Quals questions that your co-members will be able to gather from here and there. I would encourage you to also visit the official and unofficial Quals guides by googling "Stanford EE Quals". You may start to take a look at the available areas. You have to choose 4 areas. I have chosen "Computer Hardware", Computer Software", "Signals", and "Systems". As soon as you choose yours (even if you will choose some of them roughly), you can tell us which areas you are interested in. Within a day or two, I am going to make some sort of a web group so that we could post materials more flexibly. Best Regards, Sherif Halawa Alexandria, Egypt

Howdy all! Congratulations to all of you out there who have been admitted to Stanford EE for their PhD. As you might know by now, one of your near-future plans should be to enroll in a Quals study group. So I thought of creating this post so that (1) we can get to know each other before we actually arrive at campus, and (2) try to coordinate our efforts and share our knowledge and experience concerning Quals. Longing to hear from you folks!!