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[frogfactory]

Anyone else due to start planning for comps in the near future?  Gird your loins here, with me*


My boss has suggested I take mine by the end of the Spring semester, before finals.  I'm looking forward to getting them out of the way, I guess, but not so much looking forward to sitting a six hour written exam + 2-3 h oral, and then having to sit my last finals shortly afterwards.  The alternative would be to either try and muster my committee to convene in early summer (which apparently nearly never works) or to wait until the autumn (which would mean a long wait between the end of classes and the exams, interrupting lab time).

I'm still not even sure who's meant to be on my committee (although the idea of getting to choose my own examiners is kind of cushy) yet.  The time to get organised is looming near...

If you're in the same boat, join me here to plan and organise and chew on fingernails.


*Probably not meant to be as suggestive as it sounds.

[ucprof]

Good for you for planning ahead!  Wish all our students in my dept did this.  Comps are an unfortunate necessary evil of the PhD program.  Think of them as like eating spinach, or peas, or whatever vegetable is good for you but that you also hate.

[scampster]

Good for you for planning ahead!  Wish all our students in my dept did this.  Comps are an unfortunate necessary evil of the PhD program.  Think of them as like eating spinach, or peas, or whatever vegetable is good for you but that you also hate.

Here is where I confess why I really am an impostor - I never had to take any comps. I had my prelims (which had both written and oral components), during which my committee could have theoretically asked me any question from the undergrad or grad coursework. But no one did. They just stuck to my research proposal.

[ucprof]

Here is where I confess why I really am an impostor - I never had to take any comps. I had my prelims (which had both written and oral components), during which my committee could have theoretically asked me any question from the undergrad or grad coursework. But no one did. They just stuck to my research proposal.

No wonder you have the name SCAMpster.  You pulled a fast one - it is a right of passage in the PhD program to be completely miserable for months on end preparing for those darn PhD qualifying exams.

[southerntransplant]

Lord almighty, I hated mine with a passion. After the written exams did nothing less than turn me into a human filet, I walked into the oral exams sure that I knew nothing about anything at all.

Good job starting preparation now.

Think of them as like eating spinach, or peas, or whatever vegetable is good for you but that you also hate.

When I think of mine, I think of a mile-long gauntlet I need to run through.

Mace and clubs optional.

[ucprof]

Think of them as like eating spinach, or peas, or whatever vegetable is good for you but that you also hate.

When I think of mine, I think of a mile-long gauntlet I need to run through.

Mace and clubs optional.

I really hate peas.

[scampster]

Here is where I confess why I really am an impostor - I never had to take any comps. I had my prelims (which had both written and oral components), during which my committee could have theoretically asked me any question from the undergrad or grad coursework. But no one did. They just stuck to my research proposal.

No wonder you have the name SCAMpster.  You pulled a fast one - it is a right of passage in the PhD program to be completely miserable for months on end preparing for those darn PhD qualifying exams.

Good thing this is anonymous fora so that when my application falls across a search committee's desk they don't say "Oh this one... She didn't take comps? Without that rite of passage she is still in academic puberty, despite the PhD in hand!" I was a physicist amongst biologists and chemists, so I was pretty dang lucky that I had no comps as my background was totally different from all the other grad students...

[ucprof]

No worries scampster . once you are finished and publishing no one case how you did or what you did on your comps/quals.  But since you described yours in such gory detail one has to needle you about it - especially those of us who suffered for months (I know I did).

[scampster]

No worries scampster . once you are finished and publishing no one case how you did or what you did on your comps/quals.  But since you described yours in such gory detail one has to needle you about it - especially those of us who suffered for months (I know I did).

Haha, I wasn't really worried :-) But if I ever have grad students of my own, I won't be able to tell painful tales of comps as they are prepping to take theirs...

[ucprof]

Haha, I wasn't really worried :-) But if I ever have grad students of my own, I won't be able to tell painful tales of comps as they are prepping to take theirs...

Not a problem.  Just send em to the forums.

[ucprof]

Also being a physicist amongst bio/chem people I think buys you ALOT of clout - just a personal opinion.  Clearly biased.....

[anon99]

Good job planning ahead.  Talk to whoever is in charge of your graduate program (grad studies) to see what the format is.  It varies greatly between universities and departments within a university.  You may have no input in the composition of your committtee or you may select several of the members.  Knowing who is on your committee will help a lot in terms of studying.  If you are planning on doing your comps before finals (I am assuming these are for classes you are taking and not ones you are teaching), leave a bit of recovery time in between.  Plus the members of your committee will be pushed for time towards the end of the semester.  Most students I know who have done comps recently basically wrote off 4-6 weeks and did nothing but study/prep.

Good luck

[short4bob]

I just completed my written comps a few weeks ago and am awaiting committee feedback before scheduling orals.

A few things I did that helped a lot (my committee was already together by this point):

- Met with each committee member about 6 weeks before exam week (we do 5 questions, 5 days, 8 hours apiece in my program) to discuss the general upshot of each question
- Made way-too-detailed outlines of each potential question (allowing me room to forget stuff), including making post-it diagrams of important names and major theories (ah, yes, Dude's Theory X is on pink post-its in the bathroom next to the mirror)
- Realized that I was reviewing stuff I already knew and there was nothing new showing up in the exams (I realized this about 10 days before D-Day. I strongly recommend you do it sooner)
- Reread my dissertation proposal draft's lit review and methods section (I knew there were going to be questions directly related to my research interests as well as one about research methods)
- Went to bed about an hour or more earlier than normal through the entire week of exams
- Made sure I ate 3 meals of relatively non-crappy food a day (my spouse helped greatly with this, but those unpartnered can enlist friends and colleagues to help make sure you stay fed)
- Took a big bottle of water with me each day to make sure I was staying hydrated
- Made time to outline what I was going to write before I started writing

A few things I didn't do that would have helped things to go more smoothly:

- Didn't make sure there was a quiet space reserved for me to work
- Didn't make sure that all the parts to the laptop on which I was writing responses were in the case
- On the first day, didn't save regularly enough and lost about a third of my work even though autosave was supposedly on (save, save, save!). Had to stay calm and recoup a lot of losses.

I was teaching last semester and had everyone from a fellow graduate student to one of the deans step in to make sure that my class went smoothly for the week I was taking exams. Don't be afraid to ask for help with your other projects, if you have them. And if people do help, don't forget to thank them profusely. (But you knew that already.)

I found comps to be the single most mentally exhausting thing I have ever done. They're like the intellectual version of rushing a fraternity with all the hazing but with much less partying (until afterward!). In my case by the end of the week my brain was complete mush. It's simultaneously as bad as everyone tells you and not bad at all. Take care of yourself and remember -- you already know all this stuff or they wouldn't be asking you about it.

Best of luck!

[frogfactory]

Thanks, bob, and everyone else who's posted.

I didn't think I was especially planning ahead, as I know one grad student in my department who basically holed up for an entire summer to study for comps (and barely passed), and I have to pick my committee.

On the one hand, people I respect very much tell me it's an incredibly arduous experience and I will need to hole up and study solidly for weeks.  On the other, everyone passes, and I don't think there's been enough content in my four semesters of classes to warrant weeks of solid revision to commit to memory.

I'm sort of flip-flopping, Necker cube style, between barely contained panic (everyone tells me this is the hardest academic test I will ever have and that I will know more at the point I enter the exam than I ever have done or will do ever again in my life) and inappropriate complacency ("Well, if they passed Suzie, who can barely form a coherent thought, there's no way I'm going to have problems...").

Ho hum. 

[barred_owl]

I will wish you luck, FF, even if it is well in advance.  I completely understand your mixed feelings.  When my comps approached, I wasn't quite sure what to expect, except that I would receive a set of questions, one set every other day, from my committee members.  IIRC, I was allowed to use notes, books, etc., except for one committee members' questions. 

Some of the questions were quite specific, others were more theoretical/hypothetical in nature, and the one I remember most concerned what, at the time, was a relatively new discovery (you will laugh--the question was "What are restriction endonucleases and why are they important?"  Yes, it was that long ago!).  When all was said and done, one committee member asked me to expand on one particular answer before he would give the green light, but I succeeded.

The thing is, although I found comps to be rather emotionally draining, I don't think it was the hardest test I've ever experienced.  The hardest test, by far, was enduring the rigors of those years in the Ph.D. program--ups and downs, challenges, hardship.  If you can survive that, then comps will seem like a mere speed-bump on the road to completing your doctorate!  All good wishes to you!