Qualifying exam

The following procedures for the qualifying exam were adopted by Astronomy Graduate Faculty on 4/27/90:

Basics

There will be no change in the format or the timing of the qualifying exam: 2 written parts in early September with 6 questions to be completed out of 9 in each part; each part is designed to take 3 hours which the students are given 4 hours to complete. This is followed in a week to 10 days by an oral exam of about 2 hours duration conducted by a core committee of 3 faculty members for all candidates with 2 other faculty individually selected for each candidate.

[Note: the number of written papers was subsequently reduced from two  to one]

Procedures

The procedures for the Astronomy graduate qualifying exams remain much the same, but a new Qualifying Exam Committee is defined. This committee will set the exam and conduct it, and will make the decisions on pass*, pass, fail after collecting all information on the students' performance on the exams, in course work, and in research work in accordance with the following procedures:

1. The oral and written committees we have had in the past should be combined in one Qualifying Exam Committee which will administer the written and oral parts of the qualifying examination.
2. The committee will have 8-9 members, including a chair. The Astronomy Graduate Chair will serve ex officio. The committee may divide the responsibilities for the written and oral parts among themselves.
3. The committee will be appointed by the Graduate Chair from the members of the Professorial and Graduate faculties, with the preponderance of members those faculty who have taught graduate courses in the past 2 years.
4. The committee will set the Written Exam from questions submitted by the Graduate Faculty. The questions submitted will have answers as well to aid the committee in its selection and modification of questions. A student member who has recently passed the qualifying exam will act as a confidential advisor to this committee.
5. The committee will organize the Oral Exams. For consistency, there will be a core committee of 3 chosen from the Qualifying Exam Committee who will participate in the exam of all the candidates. There will be 2 additional members chosen individually for each student. These 2 may be external to the Qualifying Exam Committee and will usually be chosen to reflect the student's research specialties and interests. The individual student will be asked to suggest particular Graduate and Professorial Faculty members for his/her committee. The student may also "denominate" any individual that he/she would prefer not to have on the committee. All five oral examiners will grade all questions addressed to each student.
6. The Chair of the Qualifying Exam Committee will collect all reports on the students courses and written statements from the students' research supervisors and advisors and will distribute them to the committee members.
7. The Qualifying Exam Committee will consider the students results on the two parts of the exams, the course evaluations and the performance in research work in reaching its decisions on Pass* (proceed to the PhD. program plus receive Master's degree, Plan B), Pass (receive the Master's degree, Plan B), or Fail.
8. Appeals: If a student fails two attempts to receive a Pass*, he or she will not be able to continue the program. However, at the request of the student and 2 members of the Qualifying Exam Committee, the entire Graduate Faculty will be convened to reconsider the outcome.