Students are eligible to pursue their General Examination after advancing to Prospective Candidacy. While there is no required timeline by which the General Examination must be completed, students generally use one or two quarters after completing their RSI to complete any required coursework and to prepare for the General Examination.
You must meet with your Supervisory Committee to review your course of study to date and to discuss the content and format of the General Examination (more information below) no later than the middle of the quarter prior to the quarter in which the General Examinations will be taken. Your Doctoral Supervisory Committee will need to approve your Course of Study at this meeting relative to your readiness for the General Examinations, taking into consideration your training needs to support the direction of your Dissertation research. Not all students will be prepared to identify the direction of their Dissertation research at this initial meeting. If that is the case, please be aware that you may be asked to take additional coursework once the direction of your Dissertation has been identified. For example, if you anticipate that your Dissertation research will use qualitative research methods and you have not taken coursework in that area, you likely would be required to take coursework in qualitative research methods. If such changes are needed, you will also need to revise your Course of Study, resubmit it your Doctoral Supervisory Committee, and gain their approval at the future time point that the additional courses have been completed. If your committee advises that you take additional coursework, this does not require that your General Examination be delayed. This meeting with the Supervisory Committee also provides you with the opportunity to provide input on the direction of possible exam questions that will move your work forward (more information below).
For this planning meeting with your supervisory committee, set aside at least 90 minutes. Come to the meeting with your course of study and a draft of your generals questions to share with the committee. Students may want to start the committee with a brief (few minutes) review of their research interests, any significant points about their course of study, and reasons for proposing the generals questions they have. This gets the committee up to date on your interests and goals. Then, the bulk of the meeting is spent discussing each question so that the student and committee can explore the content, scope, and format for each question to best meet the students’ goals and program requirements. After the meeting, the committee chair will ask committee members to help finalize the generals question(s) in their respective areas, and should circulate the final version of the questions to all committee members for their approval.
Once your Doctoral Supervisory Committee has approved the questions for the General Examination, the Chair of your Doctoral Supervisory Committee will forward them to the Co-Directors of the PhD Program for PhD Core Faculty approval. After approval of the questions by the PhD Core Faculty, the Chair of your Doctoral Supervisory Committee will be responsible for communicating with you about the approved content and format of the General Examination.
The General Examination is one quarter in duration. During the quarter of your examination, you will complete and submit your written responses to the questions. You may decide with your committee whether you want to receive all of your general examination questions on the first day of the quarter in which you are doing the examination, or if you want to receive them at intervals during the quarter (you may not receive the final form of your questions prior to the official start of the examination on the first day of the quarter). Typically, all written responses must be submitted by the seventh week of the quarter (three weeks prior to the oral defense). Students may decide with their committee whether they will turn in their written work on each question as it is completed, or turn all written work in at one time at the end of the writing period. The completion of the written work is followed by the oral defense to your committee three weeks later.
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Getting approval of your General Examination questions is a multi-step process. Key steps are as follows: 1) Work with your Program Mentor to prepare a draft of the questions; 2) Meet with your Supervisory Committee (90 minutes) to discuss the questions and format; 3) The Supervisory Committee finalizes your questions; and 4) PhD Core Faculty approve the questions. You must allow sufficient time for this process, which takes several weeks. Start planning early enough that your meeting with your committee is no later than mid-quarter the quarter before you want to take your examination. |
Enrolling for credit during the General Examination
Students should enroll for REHAB 800 credits during the quarter that they take their General Examination. You may enroll for the needed number of credits to maintain your enrollment during the examination quarter (e.g. International students and students funded by an RA / TA must enroll for 10 credits during the academic year, but other students may enroll for fewer credits. Only 2 credits are needed for all students for summer quarter to be fully enrolled). Note that REHAB 800 credits are Dissertation credits, but may also be used for the General Examination. Additional information about REHAB 800 credits is found in the Dissertation section of PttP.