Preparing to Prepare

by Jennifer Davies

Become familiar with your department’s expectations and guidelines for the exam; departments can vary dramatically from one another, and even various programs within departments may have different procedures for the exam process:

Find out what your responsibilities are.

Are you required to craft your own lists, or are lists provided for you? (Some departments even require a combination of both.)

Are you responsible for assembling a committee, or is there a core of faculty who are in charge of the exams?

Are you responsible for scheduling or are there set dates on which the exam is administered?

What sort of paperwork, at both the CGU and the department levels, is required of you?

Are you required to take preliminary exams or oral exams in addition to the written qualifying exams?

Ask questions. If you hesitate to avail yourself of all the resources your department has to offer, you may miss out on some valuable preparatory aids (both mental and academic) available to you.

Are past exam questions and answers available to you in your department office? Are there students who have recently passed their exams and who would be willing to talk to you about the process?

Some departments may allow you to structure your own exams. Find out if your department is one that allows you to craft your own questions. Some professors may actually encourage this (it means less preparation for them and may also ensure better essays from you).

If you are someone who doesn’t do well on timed or oral exams, consult your committee members for advice. Some departments allow take-home exams for those with difficulty succeeding on timed exams. Another helpful hint if you are someone who gets very nervous in oral exams: ask the advisor of the committee to provide you with a first "throw-away" question. In other words, ask him or her to come up with a very general question to start you off so that you have a few minutes to talk to the committee about a question on which you have prepared an answer. This can be a very general question such as, "Identify one or two common threads which unify the lists you have studied." Many committees will be happy to do this for you—it can get the ball rolling for everyone involved.

Get to know your department secretary/administrative assistant well. Chances are, he or she has seen and administered many of these procedures before and can help you navigate the idiosyncrasies and paperwork of your particular program. Make sure to ask which forms you need to fill out both for your program and for CGU—these forms can sometimes fall to the wayside, so to avoid any future paperwork nightmares make sure you complete them all in a timely and organized manner.

Find out the nitty-gritty mechanics of taking the exam. These may seem unimportant now but on exam day, you will be glad to have made such preparations. How much time are you allotted for each exam? Are you given access to a computer or is the exam hand-written? Is it qualitative or quantitative? Is it "open-notes" or from memory only? Are you allowed scratch paper? Are you allowed to take food or drinks into the exams (particularly important for those of you who must take 6 hour exams)? Are you taking the exam in a room by yourself or will there be others present? Are you allowed to print out a copy of the exam after you’ve taken it?

Are there other requirements you must fulfill in order to attain ABD status? Some departments hold screening exams, others require that you complete annotated bibliographies or survey articles, still others require both a written and an oral exam. Find out what you need to do—it will help you to develop a plan of attack and alleviate the anxiety caused by "surprise" requirements.

Decide on the purpose of your exams. Different programs give the exams for any number of reasons, some of which are listed below (as pieced together from various institutional handbooks):

To continue building on knowledge acquired in coursework. In other words, to fill in gaps in knowledge in your discipline.

To develop a foundation of expertise in your particular field or specialization.

To prepare for dissertation writing.

To prepare to apply for jobs.

In other words, the exams should help you "To demonstrate an ability to examine systematically how the relevant knowledge you have gained can be integrated into a coherent framework of thought that is both professionally useful and intellectually exciting." This is, regardless of discipline, program, or department, a fairly good explanation of the qualifying exam’s general purpose. You should, however, consult with your committee members to determine more specifically what your goal in studying for the exams should be, particularly if you are in charge of creating your own reading lists. Some lists may be very specific to your field of study and may function as a base from which to extend future research (i.e., dissertation research). Other exams may function as surveys which test your breadth or depth of knowledge in a particular area in order to test what you have gained from your coursework and to prepare you to teach college-level courses in your discipline. Some exams rely on a general base of knowledge but ask you only to know a handful of major works well (depth); others require a familiarity with a survey of works (breadth). Some exams may attempt to do all of these things. No matter what the case, find out what your committee expects of you and try to streamline your lists or reading as much as possible to fulfill these expectations.