In the spring of 2008, I sat down in my department chair's office so we could review a copy of my transcripts. After double-checking, we realized that with the completion of the fall 2008 semester, I would fulfill the department's Ph.D. requirements for course credits. Trying to sound undaunted, I offered him the familiar graduate-student line: "Now all I have to do is write my dissertation."
"Well," replied my chair, "you have to pass your exams first."
"Exams?"
As he explained the rudiments of comprehensive exams, I suspect that he read the surprise on my face. Of course I knew of the exams; I just didn't know much about them. I assumed they were some minor formality that I could hop over, and that my coursework would suffice as preparation.
After leaving the office, I did a little research into my newfound fate. The purpose of comprehensive exams hasn't changed much since the early 19th century, when German scholars systematized the Ph.D. degree by defining its four basic elements: the application process, seminars, a set of exams, and a dissertation. Ostensibly that sequence of tasks identifies talent, teaches the art of asking and answering good questions, provides a foundation in the relevant literature, and then creates some new knowledge.
Like many departments, mine requires four exams, in four fields of study, administered by four faculty members, who form a committee. One of the four represents your major subfield, two are from subfields of your department, and the fourth is from a field outside your department. Typically the process involves you and each of the four faculty members agreeing on a book list, from which you are then tested.
Each of my examiners had a different idea about what a comprehensive exam ought to entail. At first I saw that lack of standardization as a problem. For my out-of-department field, for example, the professor picked all of the books for me and gave me a clear essay assignment meant to make me grapple with the ways in which the field had changed.
In one of the subfields on which I was tested, the book list was a joint effort. I wrote a rough list of books based on what I had read, what I wanted to read, and what commonly appeared on seminar bibliographies. My faculty adviser then scratched out titles that seemed too narrowly focused, outdated, or redundant, and added some classics and cutting-edge work.
For the third subfield, it was pretty much up to me. I brought a load of textbooks home from the library and pored over their bibliographies until I had a list of about 100 books that seemed to appear most frequently or were cited most often.
For my major field, I listed everything I had already read, organizing it into themes and pertinent time periods. Wherever it appeared that I had read little in a given theme or time period, I inserted titles from seminar bibliographies.
Once the head of my exam committee scratched titles off that list and added others, it was time to begin my intensive study.
At first the only point I saw in taking the exams was to pass them and get on with my diss. Some good advice cured my myopia.
Most of the faculty members whom I cornered told me to "enjoy" the task, which sounded absurd, if not cruel, as I stared at my long reading lists. But I soon found myself savoring the experience of being surrounded with a bunch of the most important, new, or classic works in my fields.
Suddenly I was reading with the intent of organizing my impressions into a big, and hopefully clear, picture of those fields, rather than for the immediate, frantic task of cranking out another seminar assignment. The competitiveness of weekly seminar discussions with bright, motivated, and critical peers disappeared. The need to criticize each book as a single entity faded, as did the need to churn out weekly academic reviews or critical analyses. I immersed myself in the transition from working on short-term assignments to indulging in a more comprehensive project.
A bit of practical advice helped me see a shared intention behind what I had misconstrued as a lack of standardization. At different times, all of my faculty examiners pointed out that the books on my reading lists would be with me for the rest of my academic career. Aside from occasional bouts of blurred vision and wishing that those books weren't in my life at all, I started to realize that my work might translate into something useful, even marketable.
As I organized titles into ever-growing piles in my basement, I saw potential courses emerge. I started jotting down ideas for new syllabi. The process of going through the books helped me imagine teaching from them. For one of my four fields, the written exam became a survey-course syllabus with an annotated bibliography, including a justification for each reference.
The exams no longer seemed like just a hurdle to my dissertation.
Although I had no weekly seminars to attend during this time, I made a habit of strolling my department's floor and popping into open doors. Occasionally I actually had a question about some book or historical argument, but mostly I just tried to get people to talk about their exam experiences.
It was like hearing people tell about running a marathon or traveling through a third-world country for the first time. They were proud of their struggles and recounted how transformative they had found the experience. One guy recalled wallpapering his apartment with notes and holding cutthroat quiz sessions with fellow students, a few of whom became lifelong friends. I sensed a degree of nostalgia that I have never heard anyone associate with, say, writing a dissertation.
A month before my exams, I quit reading and started studying. What I knew about each exam helped me order all the notes I had taken from the books, as well as the three or four academic reviews I read for each one. For one exam, I compiled 10 essay questions, one for each theme or time period within that subfield. At test time, my examiner would give me four of the questions, and I would write on two of them.
I grouped my notes under the question that I thought they best answered, outlined essays, and even wrote out thesis statements and some key points of analysis for each of the questions.
In contrast, another of the exams promised to be a complete surprise. So I simply honed my notes into outlines, bullet points, and concise quotes. That's as close as I got to a shortcut. Since I'm a failure at using memory tricks, and I find study groups a distraction to good studying, I turned to rote memorization. I went to bed each night with my notes, and when I woke up the next morning, I sat down at the computer and retyped them. In between, I simply rehearsed them as if they were lines for a play.
Two days before the exams, I felt ready for the curtain call. At that point, I quit studying, took a few long runs and walks, played with my dog and my daughter, and did my best to go to bed early. In four separate four-hour sessions over two days, I poured out as much of what I had learned as possible into the written exams. The one consisting of the four chosen essay questions allowed me to write elaborate essays that I had carefully outlined. At the other extreme, the exam about which I knew nothing in advance challenged the flexibility of my knowledge, forcing me to make new connections between books and their arguments.
I walked away from each one with the satisfaction of having done all I could.
When I handed in my final exam, a friend who was a faculty member in a different university's history department happened to be there. She patted my shoulder and said, "This is as smart as you'll ever be."
Because I still had a two-hour oral exam with all of my examiners, I went home to give my notes one last look and didn't try to discern whether her comment was a compliment or a warning. The truth of it struck me midway through the orals—which were the most enjoyable and singularly transformative part of the whole experience. Fielding a battery of questions that ranged from curiosity about details of particular books to my own interpretations of themes within fields, I felt smarter than I ever had. More important, I felt as if I were talking my way into a new peer group.
Of all the benefits that came from preparing for and taking my exams—identifying the pertinent literature, grappling with and grouping the major arguments, imagining new interpretations and new courses, and experiencing this exercise in sheer discipline—the biggest was psychological. Field exams helped me to imagine myself as a teacher as well as a lifelong student. I will always see my faculty examiners as my teachers, but exams taught me to see them as colleagues as well.
A year out from those exams, and after teaching a survey course while trying to stay on the dissertation track, I'm already nostalgic about my year of exam prep. But I still hope they are the last exams I ever have to take.
Editor's note: If you would like to contribute a First Person essay to the series on graduate-school work and life, please e-mail your ideas and essays to denise.magner@chronicle.com
Comments
1. plclark - January 07, 2011 at 05:21 am
This piece would have been a lot more interesting if the author had included details specific to his discipline and his own personal experience as well as actual intellectual content. It turns out that the author is studying history (as is mentioned, once, towards the end of the article), something of plausible broad interest to the Chronicle readership and in particular of interest to me, though I have seldom thought about it since high school. I would have liked to hear something specific about what books he read and what he learned from them. Some of the sources he suggested as reading materials turned out to be out of date and were replaced by better ones. Sounds interesting: do tell?
Instead of such specifics, what the author offers as insight is: "Field exams helped me to imagine myself as a teacher as well as a lifelong student. I will always see my faculty examiners as my teachers, but exams taught me to see them as colleagues as well." This is disappointingly diffuse: as a current faculty member and (therefore) former student, it doesn't tell me anything I didn't already know or describe anything I haven't already experienced.
2. blaz311 - January 07, 2011 at 06:57 am
As someone for whom this article was intended, I found it quite helpful. I have, at this point in my academic career, only heard fables about prelims and scared whispers from other students. This piece helped to put the process into a framework. I think I get what they are about now, even though the author is in a different field. That is, because he kept it broad I found it applicable. I think I can imagine what my future prelims may entail.
So, thanks for putting some light on a very little discussed area of the Ph.D. process.
Also, how 'bout those Bobcats? Big Sky Champs. Maybe next year, Griz. ;)
3. cobbhr - January 07, 2011 at 07:37 am
Overall I agree with plclark. I'd like to add a comment about this single sentence: "At first the only point I saw in taking the exams was to pass them and get on with my diss." You've taken such care in your writing that the colloquial shortening of "dissertation" to "diss" in this one instance mars your writing and stopped me from a fluid reading of your text. I'll imagine that "diss" slipped through your final edit.
4. lpeterss - January 07, 2011 at 08:18 am
Oh, come on, plclark and cobbhr. This is a first-person narrative essay, not a dissertation itself (and "diss" is an entirely appropriate informal term to use in such a context). Thank you, Mr. Brooks, for a lovely and informative reflection; comps/prelims have a bad reputation these days, and you show how well the process can work under the best of circumstances.
5. 2011phdstudent - January 07, 2011 at 08:55 am
Not all preliminary exam experiences are this way (or even close). For my PhD exam I compiled and edited the best pieces of scholarship I did throughout my academic tenure (including two original works) and defended each piece against a set number of outcomes.
The process described by the author is similar to the comps I took when completing my Masters degree (with slightly less reading).
I think the best advice is to ask, early on, what your preliminary exam process entails and work closely with your advisor so there are no surprises. It should not be a process you begin thinking about at the end of your coursework, but rather at the beginning.
6. v8573254 - January 07, 2011 at 09:18 am
Your essay made me remember that I enjoyed the preparation, also. I knew none of my questions in advance, and a couple were real surprises, although not unpleasant ones.
7. 11333651 - January 07, 2011 at 09:45 am
I agree with lpeterss. I believe that inclusion of details specific to the author's discipline would have been a distraction from the main points of the essay, and their absence did not diminish the author's impact. Nice writing.
8. henry_adams - January 07, 2011 at 10:04 am
Thank you, David Brooks, for sharing your story. I'm glad that things went so well for you. My own experience was less pleasant. After I'd studied for months, my examiners ignored my reading list entirely and asked about anything they wanted to. I survived, but I felt like I'd been tricked.
I'd like to know how you managed to get so far in your program without knowing more about the exams. At the very first meeting of new grad students at my university, the director of graduate studies discussed the exams at length. The dreaded exams played a major role in grad student culture. People who survived them told tales of feeling enraged or bursting into tears.
9. plclark - January 07, 2011 at 11:01 am
I am glad that the piece was helpful to current graduate students. I take the point that possibly I am not the intended audience, but then exactly who the intended audience is could be made more clear.
However, as others have pointed out, you have to be quite uninformed about the process of your qualifying exams to be much edified by discipline unspecific and department unspecific advice about them. Now that I think about it, I did learn something interesting from this piece and also from the comments: that some students really are this uninformed. For instance, in the opening passage of the essay the author vividly describes his own state of knowledge on the subject: "Of course I knew of the exams; I just didn't know much about them. I assumed they were some minor formality that I could hop over..." This is such an unusual take on qualfiying exams -- of course they are meant to be challenging to the extent that passing them is not a foregone conclusion; that's rather the point -- that I was drawn in to read the rest of the piece.
Evidently the author is not the only one who finds any information about quals hard to come by, since one of the commenters wrote: "I have, at this point in my academic career, only heard fables about prelims and scared whispers from other students."
This is a big concern! Graduate programs should be informing students about their qualifying exams from the moment they arrive, since this is often the biggest hurdle in the program before the thesis itself. Moreover often it is the case that success in coursework is not itself viewed as very impressive or even necessarily so important by faculty members without attendant success on qualfying / comprehensive exams.
Speaking as a member of my department's graduate committee, we are always trying to find ways to make the process clearer and wider known to both faculty and students. For instance, see
http://www.math.uga.edu/graduate/quals/quals.html
a webpage which has lots of information about qualifying exams including links to many previous years' exams. (These are the written quals only, and most students take the same written quals and are responsible for the same material. In my department, we also have oral quals which come a year later and in which there is a more individualized syllabus, including at least one recent research paper. Speaking frankly, there is still room for clarifying the expectations of these oral quals. The student and her committee do often find themselves with nonidentical expectations on the day of the exam, which is frustrating for all.)
To be honest, I have seen a lot of graduate students with blinders on at the beginning of their academic program: i.e., they actively try not to think about things which come later down the road, the better to focus on their more proximate tasks. Of course this is a very poor strategy. So sometimes there are even psychological issues about ignorance of quals to deal with: I hope that the faculty reading this piece are mindful of these.
Finally, I find lpeterss' comment that I am imposing dissertation standards on this essay to be strange. Believe me when I say that none of what I am asking for has anything to do with anything that I have ever seen in a thesis in my subject area (mathematics). Indeed I am explaining what I like to read in a narrative essay: specific details adding up to a distinct, personal experience. As mentioned above, I learned that a very general description of qualifying exams in PhD programs is useful to some students -- but (in my opinion, of course) it doesn't make for a very engaging narrative. By way of contrast, Henry Adams' pieces paint a picture of specific students and faculty at a specific English department. This makes them enjoyable to read as narrative even if I don't find them to be useful as advice.
10. plclark - January 07, 2011 at 11:02 am
Sorry, I had intended to sign my last comment but forgot:
Pete L. Clark, Ph.D.
11. digiwonk - January 07, 2011 at 11:10 am
Thank you for sharing your experiences with the exam process: I'm going to forward this piece to my own graduate students, as a model of how to study, with what aim in view, and as the warning that indeed, this is is as smart as you'll ever be! (I'm still consulting notes I took during my exam studying. That was in 2001.)
However, I was very surprised that you made it all the way through your coursework with no idea what the exams would entail, what their purpose was, or that they were more than an administrative hurdle. The exams are such a big, time-consuming part of the degree that to enroll in a PhD program without knowing what this milestone entailed and represented seems a pretty big gap. Perhaps the exams are not well-documented in your department's handouts or promotional or orientation material. Or perhaps you were incurious! I imagine a little bit of both. I'm glad it worked out so well for you, but I would caution any PhD student, or those applying to the PhD, to learn about the exam process and requirements much much earlier than the end of coursework.
Best wishes with the diss!
12. 11223435 - January 07, 2011 at 11:20 am
A very timely essay for me: first, it is helpful--this semester, I am teaching a short seminar to help graduate students with reviewing the literature (and writing about it) in the major field for their qualifying exam. The second seminar is designed to help students work this review of the literature into their dissertation proposal. I enjoy these seminars, admire my department for having developed them, and believe they are remarkably helpful (as suggested by commenter #9 above), and I will make sure to direct my students to this article
The second reason I enjoyed the essay is more personal: I am close to retiring, and because I have switched fields here, I've begun the process of slimming down all the files in my storeroom at home. When I looked at some of my notebooks from my doctoral study days, I could barely understand what I'd written, even wondered at the fact that I'd ever known what I was looking at in my own once more-legible handwriting,and all this deleting engendered at least of couple of emotional and intellectual responses. David Brooks put it very concisely: I realized that in those days, I was as smart as I've ever been--and I haven't been that smart in a long time!
A great essay, maybe preparing graduate students for both (?) these moments.
13. cleverclogs - January 07, 2011 at 11:52 am
Just to explicitly state something that has been implied here:
Comps, or quals, or orals, or "areas" as they are sometimes called, are not only discipline-specific, they are institution-specific, department-specific and advisor-specific.
Even their purpose can change. Some advisors think they should launch you into your diss, others think they should test you for comprehensive knowledge. Some have you write answers to questions in an essay-test kind of way, others have you work up rationales for these areas which are used to drive an oral exam. Some advisors want to tell you what to read, others expect you to come up with the list yourself. This can happen within the same department if not all the faculty are on the same page (if for example, there is an old-school / new-school divide in your department).
The best advice I got, and can give, is to seek out other people who worked with your advisors and see what their experience was like. And then trust yourself. This is YOUR program of study and this is the step that will move you from a student to a colleague.
14. skaking - January 07, 2011 at 01:37 pm
my sociology dept started comps right around the time i was about to be abd, back in the late 90s. they said i could take them (i didn't have to); i said no thanks. i got my degree, book, tenure, blah blah blah. these exams just seem like more busy work -- if you're good, you will learn this stuff on your own. doesn't seem to me that these exams are worth the time invested by the students and the faculty who have to deal with these...
15. mmarion - January 07, 2011 at 03:35 pm
I am glad that Mr. Brooks will be writing regularly for this site. My guess is that every reader who has gone through the process of the exams at the end of doctoral coursework thought back on the experience, whether it was like that of Mr. Brooks or not. I knew about the 'generals' at Ohio State but did not give them much attention until I was far enough along the doctoral road to care about them. Then, I was surprised at how the four different people on my committee saw things and how I should be tested. At the end of the process, I did feel as smart as I'd ever felt because I had survived a rigorous testing process.
16. ellenhunt - January 08, 2011 at 04:25 pm
My experience in sciences was similar. It shouldn't have been, but when I looked back on it, the oral exam was the best part.
17. clarinetsarethebest - January 08, 2011 at 05:51 pm
I agree with a lot of the comments here - I'm not quite sure how you got to what I assume was your third year of a PhD program in the humanities without knowing what comprehensive exams are or how they're set up. I'm pretty sure I knew what they were by sophomore year, as soon as the TAs in my political science classes started complaining about "comps." And a simple perusal of the history department's web site made perfectly clear exactly what you've explained about these so-called "comps."
I did like the essay, though; comprehensive exams in history (which I think might be your field?) seem like the part of a graduate education that is most about learning (and are the only part of a graduate education that I have any remote desire to do). Good luck finishing!
18. henry_adams - January 08, 2011 at 08:32 pm
I want to clarify something about my earlier comment. When I asked how the author got so far without a better understanding of comps, I wasn't being critical or sarcastic. When I was a grad student there were things I didn't know about until I bumbled into them. I hope that in a future column David Brooks explores whatever kept him from a fuller knowledge of this major part of the program.
19. oldphilprof - January 09, 2011 at 12:31 pm
I greatly enjoyed this primarily because the process described was so different from my own. In my doctoral program, comprehensive exams were entirely written -- nothing oral. We were not given book lists. Rather, we took our first comp. during our first year in the program. The rest of the comps. (there were a total of 4) were taken one per semester so we finished our comps at the same time that we finished our course work. The idea of having an entire year in which to do nothing but read and study my discipline in an organized yet generalized way sounds wonderful! I am just so jealous!
20. profperf - January 11, 2011 at 12:34 am
re: plclark: why is it that it always seem to be people at second or third rate programs who feel the need to so exacting, critical, and pedantic? I think you would take all the fresh air out of any classroom you walked into!
21. 11290463 - January 11, 2011 at 10:06 am
How did you get into a doctoral program without having a clue about qualifying exams? That was exam enough for me!
22. pete_l_clark - January 11, 2011 at 03:03 pm
To profperf: on the face of it, it is your comments, rather than mine, which seem calculated merely to insult. But perhaps I am mistaken.
In fact I am very passionate about teaching, especially at the graduate level. If you wish to discuss my teaching or the quality of my departmental program, please feel free to contact me. My name is Pete L. Clark, I am at the University of Georgia, and with this information my email can easily be found.
23. zagreb - January 11, 2011 at 05:24 pm
plclark/pete_l_clark is right on the money here, of course, and honestly it's getting pretty tiresome how often the Chronicle commenters are more intelligent than the actual articles above the fold (at least when the commenters aren't flogging their politics, that is). This piece is numbingly, painfully vague exactly where it needs to be specific, handing us generalities and Hallmark-card nostrums where it ought to be reporting on a single, personal experience. It'd be great to hear more about how and why the writer failed to be informed about his qualifying exams for so long, and the multitude of failures his graduate program must've committed to get him to that point; but this isn't that article, it's a bunch of airy generalities and chicken-soup-for-the-academic-soul. Fail.
24. grampsbro - January 17, 2011 at 07:32 pm
Far from a distinguished intellectual myself, not one college credit earned, I greatly enjoyed the subtle jocularity and quite audible honesty of this author's first article. Thank you for appealling, without pandering, to more than just the collegiate upper eschelon; that's the point of education right? I look foward to reading articles to come, and having a private chuckle at the closed-minded self-serving comments below them. Like this one.