Qualifying exam vs. Research

[SNU_Aero]

Hello everyone, 

I got started graduate school in 2015 and I am currently a second year Ph.D. student. During the first year, I have heard that it has been so difficult for students to pass the qualifying exam. For example, 4 students out of 10 may be failed to get though the exam. 

It feels like that I am really passionate doing research; however, in the meantime, I have concerned about course works. It would be better if I am able to handle both research and course work but I would say that I can't do that simultaneously. (Please don't ask the reason why I can't) 

For those reason, I have been thinking about the priority in this year. Could you please recommend me how to deal with the problem? Please note that I will take the qualifying exam on Fall 2017.

Thank you in advance for your Kindly reply. 

[AP]

I am not sure I understand what the problem is. Could you paraphrase?

[SNU_Aero]

Let's say you are a second-year student. After one year, you need to take a qualifying exam which has been known as very difficult one to pass. One more assumption is that you are very passionate to conduct a research. If so, during this year, what area would you like to focus more on? 

Please note that you are not able to handle both research and study, instead of it, you are required to only focus on one of them. 

[fuzzylogician]

Let's abstract. There are two things you want in your life, A and B. You absolutely have to have A to survive. You really really want B, but you don't have to have it. You have to choose just one. Which one do you choose? Seems pretty obvious that A. 

That said, the notion that you can't do both research and study for the exam seems to me wrong from the get-go. You had better learn to do both, because at *every* given point in your academic career there will be multiple things competing for your attention, and often many of them will have harder deadlines and more immediate consequences than doing research (I must be prepared to teach next Wednesday, or I won't have anything to do in class; I must submit a grant application by date X, or I won't get funded; I must read a student's paper by our next meeting, so that we can discuss it, etc.). You have to learn to combine research with these other activities and prioritize it according to your workload and needs, or you won't get any research done basically any time. Sometimes you're busy and you do less, sometimes you have more time (|cough| summer |cough|) and you do more. But stopping altogether would be a mistake. 

[TakeruK]

I think this is a question that students in your own program can help you with a lot better. They will know the expectations that your faculty has for your research progress and the standards for the qualifying exam.

I agree with fuzzy that you cannot completely stop coursework or research. Our jobs is not designed that way, we don't get to choose one or the other as we please. However, you mention "priority" in the first post and I think this is how you want to approach the problem. It does make sense, to me, especially for a "new" grad student (i.e. before passing qualifying exam) that you prioritize either research or coursework at certain points in your degree. 

But the best way to do this depends on the expectations of your program. I can give you an example. In my program, after the first year (i.e. 12 months), students must have completed two small research projects and all of the required classes (6 classes spread over 3 quarters) and they are expected to have 1 or 2 electives completed as well. The qualifying exam is all oral and mostly on the research, however, the question period will also cover material from the required classes. This means that a student definitely must be able to do research and coursework in the first year to succeed. However, students generally prioritize coursework during the school year (only 29 out of the 52 weeks) and research during the winter break, spring break and summer months (minus 2 weeks for vacation, however, most first years choose to take vacation after the exam). The summer is an especially good time to prioritize research. But, in the last 4 weeks or so prior to the exam, students generally stop research completely (basically what is complete at this point is what will be presented in the exam) and spend the last ~month reviewing background material. This involves some review of the coursework but also taking the time to step back from the project and really understand the big picture. After spending a whole year on the minute details of your project, it's necessary to remember why this science is being done in the first place. You can talk to the older students for suggestions on how to plan this upcoming year.

Setting priorities means deciding at what "level" do you want to devote your time to one or another. Everyone has a different working style so maybe you really do not want to be switching your brain from coursework to research all of the time. One strategy you might employ is to dedicate certain days of the week for coursework and other days for research. For example, I might choose to only do homework and reading on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and then spend all of my work time on research on Thursday and Friday. One complication is that you might have classes on Thursday or Friday, so just attend those classes, take notes, but don't do the assignments until your assigned coursework day. I find this strategy helpful for later stages of the PhD, where you may have more than 1 project but no longer have classes. Some people are great at working on two projects in parallel but I prefer to spend a few days at a time on a project, then switch.

Setting priorities also means setting how much time you will work on a particular thing. If you dedicate X days to coursework, then you must only spend that much time on coursework. This will often mean that you have to stop working on an assignment before you are 100% happy with it. But sometimes that's okay. There are diminishing returns after a certain amount of effort has been put in (both for learning and for getting points/meeting requirements). One problem many new grad students have is the desire for perfection. Sometimes, it is important to just do what you need to get a satisfactory score (for degree advancement purposes) and then move on to working on something else that you need). Again, this is an area where talking to older students and maybe faculty on the program's expectations is important.

[St Andrews Lynx]

On 21 August 2016 at 7:37 AM, SNU_Aero said:

It would be better if I am able to handle both research and course work but I would say that I can't do that simultaneously. (Please don't ask the reason why I can't) 

At the risk of being provocative...I want to ask. 

Is it that you feel you are unable to balance both (i.e. imposter syndrome or poor self esteem)? Is there a medical reason you struggle with both? In the literal sense, most of us cannot manage both at exactly the same time (I wouldn't get far trying to write my essays while performing an analysis in the lab for instance) but we usually have to switch between the two during the course of a day and wouldn't give up entirely on one for more than a week or so.

The reason I ask is because as grad students we are expected to balance both research and coursework in our early years. Yes, you need to do well in the coursework to pass your qualifying exams...but your advisor won't want to keep you past qualifiers if you have no research progress to show by that stage. Sometimes to do both it means making sacrifices, and working longer hours than you would like. 

Talk to the graduate students in your department who passed the qualifying exams. Find out the balance they struck. How long before their qualifying exams did they start to prepare? How much research did they accomplish during their first 2 years?