prelims/qualification exams

Graduate School
1

<p>Anyone have a good experience with the prelims/qualification exams? Want to share experiences and thoughts?</p>

<p>I haven’t taken my quals yet. Just nervous. Any good prep advice?</p>

2

<p>Find copies of the old exams (usually online) and go through every single one of them.</p>

3

<p>I’m more concerned about oral defenses.</p>

4

<p>I actually sort of enjoyed my oral defense, to be honest. In my program, the prelim is a written research plan for the student’s thesis, followed by a 2-hour oral defense. My oral defense went really well, and I got some great suggestions about my thesis from my committee members.</p>

<p>My PI gave me some advice before my defense, which I will share:

  1. Take credit for the things you’ve done – when you did something, say “I” rather than “we.” (When you didn’t do something, say “we.” )
  2. If you don’t know the answer to a question, say “I don’t know.” Don’t start BSing. You can try to offer a tidbit of information you do know – “I don’t know a great deal about topic x, but I do know that it’s quite analogous to topic y, and blah blah blah,” but if you don’t know, you don’t know. That’s okay.
  3. Don’t assume the faculty member is an expert in your area of research. Tailor your use of jargon and acronyms to what you might expect them to know, and when in doubt, explain a little more than you think you need to.
  4. Don’t feel you need to answer a question right away. If you need a second to think, bring a bottle of water and take a sip to give yourself a little bit of time.</p>
5

<p>A girl cried coming out of her defense at my school. I thought that was a little bit overwhelming. I think she passed though.</p>

6

<p>A person locked themselves in their bathroom and refused to come out and had their spouse call their lab mates, friends, whomever because their PI wanted them to make a few corrections to their written thesis before submitting it, too. </p>

<p>Just saying people have different reactions to different things. :slight_smile: If she passed, she passed. My last “oral exam” went rather well. I found the hardest thing was trying to figure out on your feet what they were really trying to ask you with their questions. Once I got around that, I usually got to the answer they were looking for, sometimes it just took me starting out along the wrong path a few times until I found the road they wanted, if that makes sense.</p>