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[unspoiled]

I am compiling a thread on old and new experiences on preparing for comps/generals/prelims.

This could be a starter link:

http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,35373.0.html

[imawakenow]

Here's another one titled "Comps: Study hints?":

http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,44109.0.html

[histgradstudent]

Talk to more advanced students who have taken comps in similar areas. Don't pay attention too much to what everyone else is doing. Comps becomes an echo chamber of worried people and its sometimes not helpful. Find methods of working that make sense for you and don't get caught in the trap of thinking that because everyone else pretends to spend 15 hours in the library a day you need to too.

Here's another one titled "Comps: Study hints?":

http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,44109.0.html

[hythloday]

See elsewhere...

[unspoiled]

Here's another one:

http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,32557.0.html

I really wish the search function would function better....

[larryc]

Here was my tactic, and I hope that none of my old profs are reading this.

We did a week of written exams followed by a 2 hour oral exam from a four person committee. The oral exam was where the professors would pick out statements from your written exams and call you on them.

Somewhere in the first few pages of each of my written exams, I made one controversial historiographic claim--and offered no support for it at all. "The Puritans were X," I confidently wrote, even though there is a huge debate going on whether the Puritans were X or Y or even a bit Z. I purposely appeared uninformed in an area where I was actually very strong.

It worked like a charm. Each professor used most of her or his question time to grill me on these statements, and I was so very ready. In fact they had no time left to ask me about the thousand and one things I was supposed to know but did not. I breezed through.

About halfway through my advisor acquired a sly grin. He had figured out my little game and was vastly amused.

[sugaree]

Larry this is deliciously evil! (and totally would not have worked in my program where the bulk of our oral exam was devoted to defending the dissertation proposal).

[unspoiled]

And here's the link to Larryc's formula on how to read a book in an hour:

http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,28552.msg387055.html#msg387055