Qualifying Exams: study strategies etc

[wreckofthehope]

Thought I'd see if anyone else who is doing (or has done) exams would care to pool tips and strategies for their successful completion.

 

I'm currently studying for my central exam, and passed an exam in my minor field earlier this year. This one seems so much more intimidating, in part because I feel like I have to master it all (my list gets bigger every day, despite pruning)...I mean, I'm hopefully going to be making my career in this field. Argh, gots to know it alllllll!

 

So, yeah. 

 

How is everyone else finding exams?

[juilletmercredi]

I think your strategy has to be tailored towards your exam itself - i.e., is it written or oral, is it 4 hours or 2 days, how long is your list, and when's the date?

 

I started studying for my written qualifying exam on research methods (6 hours locked in a room; answer 3 essay questions, one you wrote yourself, and define 11 terms), which I took in May 2011, in February 2011.  I had a weekly study group I met with.  We were all taking the exam on the same date.  We each took an essay question and answered it, made copies of our answers and distributed it to our partners, talking through the answer and where we got citations from.  That way, I didn't have to answer as many essays myself but still got the benefit of seeing a good completed answer.  We worked on areas of expertise (the anthropologist answered the ethnography questions; I answered the statistical and quantitative questions and the mixed-methodologist took interviews and focus group questions).  We also divided up the reading lists and discussed the reading with each other; that way, I only had to skim the materials that I wasn't assigned to read.  We obtained a list of terms from students who had successfully pased (the 11 come from a pool of 150 terms, and we're supposed to give a one-paragraph definition of each) so that we didn't have to track down definitions alone, and quizzed each other using flash cards.  Each week we focused on 15 terms to learn.

 

Studying for my oral qualifying exams (which I took in May 2012) was a completely different experience, because those are not a standardized date and they're very individual.  This is a 2-hour oral exam with two professors who can ask you anything on the two lists you submit to them, and the purpose is to test the boundaries of your knowledge in the field and also to see if you are ready to write a dissertation.  I compiled my lists using old students' lists that were made available by the department, adding on other works as necessary.  Then I got to reading.  This exam took about 2 months to prepare for, and most of what I did was skimming and reading relevant excerpts.  Then I would summarize - either aloud, or I would write summaries of what I was reading and organize them and reread.  As I got closer I used to sit in my room and talk out loud about the points I was reading to see if I could discuss them in tandem with each other.

 

In both cases, I thoroughly enjoyed the process of studying.  No, really!  You get to learn so much and when else are you going to have dedicated time to just read major works in your field?  I think I learned more studying for those two exams than I learned in my coursework.  But you definitely don't have to master it all.  Think of your qualifying exams as a foundation upon which you will build your career.  This is just laying the concrete.  You don't have to know everything, but what you learn from qualifiers is where to start and how to find the stuff you don't know.

[wreckofthehope]

I think your strategy has to be tailored towards your exam itself - i.e., is it written or oral, is it 4 hours or 2 days, how long is your list, and when's the date?

 

I started studying for my written qualifying exam on research methods (6 hours locked in a room; answer 3 essay questions, one you wrote yourself, and define 11 terms), which I took in May 2011, in February 2011.  I had a weekly study group I met with.  We were all taking the exam on the same date.  We each took an essay question and answered it, made copies of our answers and distributed it to our partners, talking through the answer and where we got citations from.  That way, I didn't have to answer as many essays myself but still got the benefit of seeing a good completed answer.  We worked on areas of expertise (the anthropologist answered the ethnography questions; I answered the statistical and quantitative questions and the mixed-methodologist took interviews and focus group questions).  We also divided up the reading lists and discussed the reading with each other; that way, I only had to skim the materials that I wasn't assigned to read.  We obtained a list of terms from students who had successfully pased (the 11 come from a pool of 150 terms, and we're supposed to give a one-paragraph definition of each) so that we didn't have to track down definitions alone, and quizzed each other using flash cards.  Each week we focused on 15 terms to learn.

 

Studying for my oral qualifying exams (which I took in May 2012) was a completely different experience, because those are not a standardized date and they're very individual.  This is a 2-hour oral exam with two professors who can ask you anything on the two lists you submit to them, and the purpose is to test the boundaries of your knowledge in the field and also to see if you are ready to write a dissertation.  I compiled my lists using old students' lists that were made available by the department, adding on other works as necessary.  Then I got to reading.  This exam took about 2 months to prepare for, and most of what I did was skimming and reading relevant excerpts.  Then I would summarize - either aloud, or I would write summaries of what I was reading and organize them and reread.  As I got closer I used to sit in my room and talk out loud about the points I was reading to see if I could discuss them in tandem with each other.

 

In both cases, I thoroughly enjoyed the process of studying.  No, really!  You get to learn so much and when else are you going to have dedicated time to just read major works in your field?  I think I learned more studying for those two exams than I learned in my coursework.  But you definitely don't have to master it all.  Think of your qualifying exams as a foundation upon which you will build your career.  This is just laying the concrete.  You don't have to know everything, but what you learn from qualifiers is where to start and how to find the stuff you don't know.

 

 

This is so interesting, thanks!

 

All of our exams are oral exams and sound similar in set-up to your orals. The minor was an hour and a half, while the major will be two hours. My preparation for the minor took about 10 months, and I expect  preparing for my major will take about the same, which, until now, I thought was fairly normal! Were your lists mostly shorter works/scholarship...what sort of things were on them, genre-wise? I'm guessing the big difference is the need to read and master a field of primary texts in my discipline (English), which can take up a lot of time. My current in-progress major list has about 70 primary texts (including 50 ish novels, and then another 30ish full books of secondary scholarship and ten or so articles) on it...many of them I've read before (which helps) but not with the kind of questions in mind that my exam is asking...so really I still need to read them again. We have a third oral exam prior to the dissertation that's on just the materials you'll be using for your dissertation. I definitely found the minor exam a great experience, and it helped me feel more like a scholar than a student - it felt like I was mapping out my approach and interests in a very proactive way. At the same time, though, it felt a little like a practice for what I'm doing now...with the major I'm fretting about coverage and how this exam is going to hem me in, or not, hence wanting to include as much as possible. Obviously massive coverage is neither possible nor productive, so I'm trying to fight my urges and cultivate a more task-oriented attitude to the whole thing!

[PsychGirl1]

Talk to older students- they should have quals binders they can pass down, advice, and suggestions.

[MoJingly]

I just passed mine last week, but we just have an oral exam in front of our committees.  I found myself studying really obscure things because I kept thinking, "but what if they ask me THAT?!"  A lot of those things we never even touched on. 

 

I think a good place to start (which I read somewhere and ended up doing), is to try to think of the things they could ask you that would be embarrassing not to have a answer for. For me, that included things like "what does that acronym stand for?" or "What kind of filter are you using, and what does that mean?" I have been to all too many presentations where a really simple question confuses the student, and it is hard to take them that seriously after that. 

 

But most importantly, try to relax.  I kept reminding myself that even though my formal studying started a few months ago (I think probably 2 in total?) I had really been preparing ever since I started grad school. Good Luck!!  

[mpheels]

Ours is a take home written exam - one week to answer 4 questions, up to 20 pages. We get a couple of weeks off after the end of classes in May, then take the test in June. The department emails the topic at 9am on a Monday, and we have until 5pm Friday to turn in our responses. We have a series of required courses this year that are supposed to prepare us for the exam. Each class has one major writing assignment, and in theory each writing assignment lines up with one of the four questions, so we're learning how to structure our responses now, and the test will really be test of our ability to search, compile and synthesize information.