Written and oral exam during PhD..

[eklavya]

This is an open question to current/past PhD candidates in any and all fields. So please chime in.

In my field particularly, and I imagine in most others as well, you need to pass a written and an oral exam to be qualified as a 'real' PhD student. Most people usually take it after a year (if they went from MS, like me) or after 1.5-2.5 years (if they went from undergrad). I have heard that the written test nails you, and the oral grills you? In reality, how hard are these exams? I have heard that in most programs, they are graded on a pass/fail scale, so perhaps the level of fear isn't as high as advertised? And are you given guidelines by your professors/committee regarding what to study, and how to prepare? I think folks in my program who have already passed the exams would be the gurus to turn to, but I also wanted to hear from those in gradcafe who are/have already been in that boat.

Thanks!

[waddle]

In my field, there is one program that has infamously difficult qualifying exams. There's a high pass rate (~90%) but mostly because the students get so scared of failing that they study nonstop for 2-3 months before their quals.

What I hear is basically that the exams are designed for the faculty to understand what you don't understand--and maybe to beat you down a little bit, but hey, that's just part of grad school, right?

[Eigen]

We do cumulative exams instead of qualifying exams- basically, each month, they herd us into a room, and give us three tests (one in each major subdiscipline) that can be on anything. And I mean anything. The pass rate depends on who wrote the test- but usually it's not more than one or two people, and can often be none.

We have to pass 6 of them over the course of the first three years.

It's not so much difficulty (you have lots of chances) as tiring because your chance of passing each one is quite low.

We also then have an oral presentation (we have to give a comprehensive literature review of a chosen field as part of our departmental lecture series) and something like the traditional oral exams, where you have to defend your proposed dissertation defense to your committee, including your work up to that date. Passing the oral exam (and all the rest) qualifies you as a candidate, and then you do your dissertation/defense.

[LJK]

The general model in Psychology (I have heard of some alternate formats but this is the majority one I believe) is to write multiple journal quality review papers for the written portion. I have heard of some schools requiring 2 and some requiring 3. The general format is coming up with a question for each paper and a list of articles that should be read and become part of each paper. It is the point in the PhD process where students need to go broad and develop some berth in their psychology knowledge, so there is usually a minimum conceptual distance that the topics must be from the main line of research the student is doing (in the case of schools that have 3, usually one is able to be more closely related to their research). The oral component is usually a defense of the student's written positions.

[eklavya]

Ok.. this is starting to make more sense now. From what you guys say, the oral appears to be the lit review kind of thing, but presented vocally. The writing seems to differ from field to field... in most lifesciences, I've been told that you'll be asked factual questions, and questions to test your hypothesis designing and your method of experimentally testing the hypothesis. It perhaps isn't a nightmare, but I wanted to know what I am getting myself into.

Thanks guys.

[iopsych]

In our I/O program you have 3 comprehensive exams after the third year. One in organizational psychology, one in Industrial psychology, and the third in research methods. There are 10 questions for each section, answers are graded pass/fail and you must pass 7 in order to pass that section. The difficult part about it is there are sections on the exams that are not covered in classes and no real reading guides are given. For example we did not cover organizational theory or recruitment, yet there were questions on each. The professors reason that in order to be fully competent you need to know these areas, but in order to thoroughly cover each one we would be taking classes for 4-5 years. There are 1-3 people on average that fail one section each year. I studied about 25-30 hours a week for about 3 months to prepare for them, putting in 40-50 hours the last 2-3 weeks.

We do not have an oral exam, but from what I know, the schools that do have them actually use the oral exam to defend their responses on the written section.

Edited February 27, 2011 by iopsych

[rising_star]

In my program, written exams are based on a list of readings that you develop in concert with your committee. We have a few days per question (questions are written by committee members based on the reading list and one's project) to write 10-15 page responses to each. Then, 2-3 weeks later, we do our oral exams, which cover the material we submitted in our written exams and our dissertation proposal. I'm pretty sure they are pass/fail only, and you can retake them at least once if you fail. Also, if they don't like your written responses, they can postpone the orals.

[fuzzylogician]

In my program we are required to write and defend two "Generals Papers" which are original (publishable, but not necessarily published) research papers in two distinct subdisciplines of linguistic. The defense consists of a 1-1.5 hour presentation of the work to one's committee followed by a question period. In some cases the committee will request that changes be made to the paper. The grade is just pass/fail--only pass, really, because they won't let you defend if you're not ready. We're supposed to defend the first paper after the 4th semester and the second after the 5th.. though in reality most people take longer to finish both papers.

[TransnationalHistory]

This is something I am also curious about...so far most of this thread has been from the sciences. Anyone in the humanities care to talk about what Orals are like? I'm not afraid of writing, but when under pressure I can get tongue-tied.

[UnlikelyGrad]

Another scientist here...

From what I can tell, our written exams are based primarily on our classwork, possibly also on stuff we had to learn on our own for our dissertation research. We have 5 days of written exams; each day you get problems from one of your committee members. Then one day of orals. From what I can tell, any question is fair game--I'm expecting some ridiculously hard ones, but also questions regarding stuff covered in undergrad which are applicable to my field of study. So you really do have to know your stuff backwards and forwards.

A friend of mine in English Lit is studying for his exams right now. He had a list of reading that's fair game. It seemed daunting to me--I think almost 100 books! Yikes.

[Sigaba]

I found the experience of preparing and taking Ph.D. qualifying exams quite stressful. (The exams consisted of four three-hour written exams--one in an outside field--and an hour long oral exam by a five person committee.) Three steps that I found very helpful were:

• Accepting that one can never be as prepared for qualifying exams in history as one would like.
  
  • One simply cannot know every detail of every event and the historiographical debates surrounding interpretations of those events.
    
  • If a member of an exam committee decides he wants to play "stump the band," you're going to reply "I don't know" sooner or later.
    

  [*]Scheduling to take my exams in as short as an interval as I could tolerate. (I borrowed this concept from a class mate who took his written exams on consecutive days and the oral exam as soon as possible thereafter.)

  [*]Using the intervals between exams to rest, to think ahead to the next exam, and not to think back.

HTH.