Sociology Department

Sociology Department> Degree Programs> Graduate Program> Comprehensive Exam

After the dissertation committee has been formed, the student is allowed to move to the comprehensive examination stage. The comprehensive exam is a week-long take-home essay examination on two fields of sociology, followed by an oral examination before the dissertation committee. The student selects the two fields for the exam, subject to approval by the committee. The fields should be selected to define broad areas of specialization and to provide sufficient background for the student’s planned dissertation research. The fields should also align with the expertise of the dissertation committee sufficiently so that the committee is in a position to very competently judge the student’s mastery of the fields.

Once the fields are approved, the student prepares a bibliography for each field, and submits them to the committee members for review and approval. Each bibliography must provide a complete overview of the main theories, debates, and findings in its field and include the field’s most influential works. A field bibliography will therefore be significantly longer that the reading list for a typical advanced graduate-level seminar. When a field has widely accepted and well-defined subfields, each major subfield should be represented and the bibliography divided accordingly into sections. The student is responsible for reading and being familiar with each work listed in the bibliography, so the list should not be so long that this is not feasible.

Upon approval of the bibliographies, a date for commencement of the written exam (typically on a Monday) is agreed upon by the student and committee, with sufficient lead time to allow the student to gain familiarity with the readings in the bibliographies. This date can be rescheduled by similar agreement if it later turns out to be unworkable.

At least three weeks before the written exam is scheduled, the committee chair solicits essay questions from each of the committee members, and writes one or more questions as well. The questions should together provide a thorough and rigorous test of the student’s knowledge of and ability to analyze the set of readings. They should focus on the two fields and not require knowledge of material outside the bibliographies, beyond what would be expected of any student in good standing at a similar stage in the PhD program. The chair may specify to members the fields and subfields for which each should ask questions, in order to ensure full coverage of the readings. The chair can request revision or replacement of questions.

All the questions, including the chair’s own, are assembled into an examination. The exam should require the student to write essays in response to three or four questions, with possible latitude for choice. The questions are submitted to the department graduate secretary at least one week prior to the scheduled start date for the exam. The graduate chair then reviews them and can either approve or request changes. Although the graduate chair and committee should make every effort to come to agreement on the questions in time for the scheduled start date, if this is not possible the start date can be rescheduled.

The student picks up the exam from the graduate secretary on the morning of the day the exam commences, and has until the same time one week later to answer the questions and return the completed exam to the department secretary. Students may consult existing written sources, but may not receive assistance from anyone in preparing their answers. Essay length should be enough to state a clear argument and provide convincing evidence from the readings. Typically, this is 2500 words or more per essay. When the exams are returned to the department, they are distributed to the committee members.

An oral exam is scheduled approximately two weeks after the end of the written exam, by which time the committee members should have read all the answers. The oral exam is an extension, but not repetition, of the student’s written exam. Hence it should focus primarily on having the student clarify, elaborate, and extend their written answers to the exam questions. The committee may probe perceived weakness in logic or evidence in the answers, and ask the student to defend them. It may also ask the student to discuss the implications of the ideas expressed in their answers for related theoretical and empirical debates in the two fields. It is permitted to extend the exam over more than one meeting if sufficient time is not available to complete the oral exam to the satisfaction of the committee.

When the oral exam is completed, the student is again asked to leave the room while the committee evaluates the exam. The committee may reach a consensus to issue a pass, fail, or conditional pass for the combined written and oral exam. In the case of a conditional pass, the committee should specify necessary and sufficient remedial actions that must be taken, as well as a deadline for fulfilling these conditions. If a consensus cannot be reached, a majority decision is made on whether to pass or fail the student. The student is then invited back in and informed of the committee’s decision. If the student has passed the comprehensive exam, it is typical for the committee to use the final part of the meeting to briefly discuss the student’s dissertation topic and schedule for writing a dissertation proposal.

Subsequently, the committee chair submits a letter to the department graduate chair reporting the dates and outcomes of the comprehensive exam, including any requirements applied to a conditional pass. In case of a conditional pass, the chair must also submit a second memo informing the graduate chair whether the student has met the conditions specified by the deadline. A student who fails to meet the conditions by the deadline is judged to have failed the exam unless the committee by consensus agrees to extend it prior to its expiration.

Should the student fail the comprehensive examination, she or he may take it a second time, in which case she or he should follow a similar procedure as with the first exam to schedule the dates for the written and oral portions. A second failure means that the student is dropped from the PhD program.