Ph.D. Qualifying Exam
This page was last updated Friday, May 8, 2008
The 2008 Ph.D. qualifying exam will be held on Thursday, May 22th.
To register to attend, please send an email to Carol Adrine with your name, research area, and names of your research and academic advisors. Questions should be directed to Dr. Horst von Recum, the faculty coordinator of the qualifying exam.
The exam will be held in Nord 310. Continental breakfast will be served from 7:30-8:00am. The exam will begin promptly at 8:00am.
The Ph.D. qualifying exam will consist of two parts. Part I is a Written Exam which will be from 8:00 AM until 12:00 PM on May 22th. Part II is an Oral Exam which will be scheduled with you to be taken sometime thereafter (tentatively scheduled sometime between June 11th and June 29th. Every effort will be made to find a time which is convenient for both the student and their oral committee). The final results will be determined about 10 days after all exams have been administered, and after a review by the full Primary Faculty in BME. The results will be announced soon thereafter.
The Written Exam of the exam is closed book. However for each section of the Written Exam you will be able to take one page (front and back) of notes. There will be four sections, so that means you are allowed to bring four pieces of paper total. Only one note sheet may be out at a given time (i.e. only the 451 note sheet may be out during the 451 exam). Note sheets and answers for each section will be collected at the end of that section.
Calculators are allowed, but cannot be pre-programmed with answers, solutions etc. No laptops and no PDAs with internet access. Absolutely no cell phones or iPods are allowed. The Oral Exam is closed book and closed notes. No calculator, nor any other aid is allowed in the Oral Exam.
Part I, the Written Exam, will be a comprehensive exam on material covered in your first year graduate level core classes (451, 452, 403, and 409). This part will consist of four sections which should take approximately one hour each to complete. Sections will cover only material covered learned in that core class (similar to a comprehensive final exam for that class). Students are required to answer all questions. While specific information from undergraduate classes will not be asked, any material that was required in order to take the graduate core classes will likewise be required to take the qualifying exam. For example while you did not learn how to do basic multiplication in your graduate core classes it was expected that you knew that information before you were allowed to take the core. There will not be any "specialty" questions. All questions will cover material learned in the core and therefore should be answered just as easily by any graduate student in the department.
Special Note: Since most students taken the qualifying exam will have taken EBME 451 from Dr. Kourennyi, we have put in a special effort to make sure questions in the 451 Section of the Written Exam will be on material that you have seen.
Petition to postpone the Oral Exam.
All students taking the Written Exam are expected to also take the Oral Exam, unless, with the agreement of their advisor, they choose to postpone the Oral Exam for a year. The petition process is installed so that students have time to see how well they did on the Written Exam and decide whether they want to take the Oral Exam that year. The Written and Oral Exams do not need to be taken in the same year. The only requirement is that every student pass both Exams before they are eligible for PhD candidacy.
Students choosing not to take the Oral Exam should let Dr. von Recum or Carol Adrine know as soon as possible. You should not wait until the day of the Oral Exam to change your mind. This should be obvious as it is disrespectful of time and effort the faculty would have put into organizing your Oral committee.
Part II, the Oral Exam, will examine your ability to combine and integrate the information from the four core classes and apply it, particularly in your general area of expertise. As such the questions asked in the Oral Exam may be more similar to what was seen in previous years Qualifying Exams. You may want to look at the questions from earlier years in the exams posted below.
Students will be tested for 1 hr each in front of a committee of 3 faculty members. Each student's committee will be randomly assigned, however research and/or academic advisors will not be allowed on a student's Oral Exam Committee. Instead one other faculty member will be chosen who has a general understanding of that student's research area. That faculty member will be the chair of the Oral Exam Committee.
Committees are randomized in an effort to ensure normalization. Additionally the questions and answers will be determined beforehand. It is therefore in your best interests to not discuss your exam with others.
Grading/scoring : Both the Written Section and the Oral Section will be graded on a Pass/Fail basis.
• Students are required to pass the whole exam: the Oral Part and the Written Part (all 4 sections).
• Students can take any part or section of the exam twice.
• If the students fail any particular part or section of the test they may choose to take only that part or section over again. They do not have to retake anything they have previously passed.
• Example 1: Student "A" fails the EBME 451 section of the Written Exam of the exam, passes the other 3 Written sections and passes the Oral Exam. That student only has to take the EBME 451 Written section again next year (about 45min to 1 hr).
• Example 2: Student "B" passes all of the Written sections but fails the Oral Exam. That student only has to take the Oral Exam again next year.
Past Exams: Note that the exam format has changed this year. The Written Exam this year will be substantially different from previous exams in that each of the four sections will be comprehensive for the material only from that core clas. The Written Exam this year will not be intended to test material across core classes. The "cross core" material (i.e. the ability to integrate and apply information) will be tested in the Oral Exam. Since this integrative ability was presumably what was tested in previous years exams, we have provided some exams for your perusal.
• 1998 PM section
• 1999 AM section
• 1999 PM section
• 2001 AM section
• 2001 PM section - systems, modeling and imaging
• 2001 PM section - sensors and instrumentation
• 2001 PM section - biomaterials and tissue
engineering
• 2002 PM section
• 2003 AM section
• 2004 AM section
• 2004 PM section
• 2005 AM section
• AM section (unknown year)
