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[allez]

Can a newbie join in?

Right now, my plan is to take comps in August (just before the start of my 3rd year).  I'm actually just about to send an email to all of my committee members to try to nail down a time for my program of studies meeting, basically getting everyone to officially agree that my coursework is sufficient and get all the required signatures.  Then, I'll contact them again in April or May and spend my whole summer studying.  I'm on a research assistantship through the summer and hoping to get it all out of the way before juggling comps and teaching in the Fall.

Good luck to you, frogfactory and others!

[frogfactory]

Welcome, Allez!  What's your subject?

[allez]

Welcome, Allez!  What's your subject?

Thanks!  I'm in the biological sciences (human, applied type stuff with some basic science thrown in for "kicks")

[kron3007]

I just finished my comps recently, so I feel for you.  In my case the build up was much worse than the actual exam, the exam itself was actually not bad at all.  I cant believe the obscure details I was studying that never came up (not even close).  That being said, it was all material that I should have known in the first place, so it was all good.

I would definitely recommend going back and reading an intro textbook in your field, it is amazing some of the fundamentals that get lost along the way.

Any way, good luck but I'm sure you will do fine.   

[boston]

This thread is very helpful to me. I plan to sit for field exams in the fall and I am already starting to stress. The doctoral handbook specifies that the exams last for eight hours and cover course work in the areas of concentration and related research methods. There has been a great deal of variation, depending on who is in your committee. Some students admit that they were given study questions, others were given reading lists, and some students were given absolutely nothing to go on. I wish my department had a more specific process for the field exams.

[frogfactory]

Boston - It'd be useful for you to find students that had each of your committee members for comps and quiz them about what the format was.  My committee members all openly told me which students they'd examined before and advised me to talk to them so as to know what to expect.

[frogfactory]

Bumping this on my first day of studying for comps.  I'm not allowed back into the lab until afterwards (although I'm still sitting classes and teaching).  So far today I have: done some grading.  Shortly I will head into class for a couple of hours, then I will come home and hopefully finish grading.  *sigh* 

I don't like the thought of being out of the lab for so long.

[curiouscortex]

T minus 7 days til my comps.  I'm fluctuating between "shoot, I've forgotten everything about *random esoteric topic from a class I took 3 years ago*, must go study it" and "There's no way they'll expect me to know this, why am I wasting time on this?!".

I did a practice oral exam today with several of the other graduate students from my lab and they brought up some topics that I totally would never have thought to review... I'm glad to have some time to brush up on those areas.  Right now I'm feeling pretty confident, and my adviser seems to think that I'll do great.  There's still that nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I'm missing something and am going to look like a fool when I get up in front of my committee...

[frogfactory]

Good luck, curiouscortex!  What's the format of your exams?

[curiouscortex]

My comps are a 2-hour oral exam with a committee of 5 professors from the department (my adviser + 4 randomly selected).  I get 5 minutes at the beginning to explain the research I've been working on, and then the committee members are allowed to ask pretty much anything they want.  I had to choose a few topics off of a list (none of which are very relevant to what I do of course) that they'll try to cover over the course of the exam.

I've been told that they'll keep asking more and more difficult questions until they find something I don't know.  I guess it's kind of like the GRE... if the questions get harder, you know you got the last couple answers right... if they get easier you know they weren't happy with your last answer.

[frogfactory]

That's what they're telling me too - at some point the best answer will be "I don't know".  Mine's a 6-8 hour written exam - three questions, one from each committee member, followed by the oral the next week which is part post mortem on the written exam and partly like what you describe.

[curiouscortex]

Good luck frogfactory!  For our "written" component of the exam, they just take some papers we wrote for core classes... supposedly they can ask us some questions about them, but I've never heard of that actually happening.

I'm totally uninterested in reading or studying anymore.  I just want to get this thing done with so I can have time to focus on my research again.  You're lucky to have some time off out of the lab before your comps, because trying to keep up with studying and research has been a struggle for me.

[frogfactory]

Yeah, though I'd rather have time off from classes and teaching instead! 

[allez]

Hey there.  Good luck to curiouscortex - just a few days to go and then it will all be over!

Frogfactory, I'm impressed that you get time out of the lab but agree that it would be better to get out of classes and teaching. 

My comps committee meeting was last week and everything's official now, so I'll be going back to them in May to get a reading list and then trying to schedule in August.  I'm on research with no classes (just dissertation hours) this summer, so there's that at least.  We have 4 written exams (1 from each committee member) that are 2-3 hours long and then orals a couple weeks later.

[kron3007]

My comps are a 2-hour oral exam with a committee of 5 professors from the department (my adviser + 4 randomly selected).  I get 5 minutes at the beginning to explain the research I've been working on, and then the committee members are allowed to ask pretty much anything they want.  I had to choose a few topics off of a list (none of which are very relevant to what I do of course) that they'll try to cover over the course of the exam.

I've been told that they'll keep asking more and more difficult questions until they find something I don't know.  I guess it's kind of like the GRE... if the questions get harder, you know you got the last couple answers right... if they get easier you know they weren't happy with your last answer.

That sounds almost identical to my comps, and it sounds like we are lucky (no written section).  Mine were not bad, I found that I had studied to much more detail than was needed, but it was stuff I should know anyway.  The questions seemed more about testing your ability to integrate information and come to reasonable conclusions.  I had a lot of hypothetical situations proposed where they would ask how I would procede etc. 

As you stated, they told me after that if they sensed weaknesses they would have dug deeper into the details.  I guess this was a compliment of sorts.  I've also had profs tell me that at defenses (I would guess it would also apply here) one of their goals is to get the student to say "I dont know". 

Any way, good luck with the comps.