Discuss the major strengths and weaknesses of each approach. In most doctoral programs, students must take a series of written cumulative examinations on the subject of their study in the first year or two of the PhD program. The student should also bring a completed Admission to Candidacy for the Doctoral Degree (Graduate College Form 8) and a Dissertation Committee Form to the comprehensive examination. In an increasingly global security environment it is far from obvious how security should be organized. You should know what the most important books, articles, and debates are regardless of whether they were used in your classes. 2. If not, why not? Students taking the written portion of the Rhetoric & Composition Comprehensive Exam will receive their specific questions (i.e. To what extent does the transatlantic security community exist? What factors/developments are likely to determine its future? A comprehensive exam may also be required for a master's degree earned on the way to the completion of a doctoral program. In consultation with your adviser and other faculty, be sure to select a variety of classes that will give you the broad background you need for the comprehensive exam. Sign the envelope across the back flap after the exam has been printed. Different examiners may read the exams in different ways, and it is the student's responsibility to write answers that are generally accessible and appealing across the variety of GPIS faculty. Using the material in this booklet, you should write some practice exams. We do expect you to communicate effective knowledge of a broad range of subjects, and explicit and deep knowledge of a few selected areas. Virtually absent from national policy agendas since the end of the Cold War, arms control is back. You can take the exam either at a computer or by hand. Students who do not demonstrate an effective grasp of the relevant literature and empirics or who do not effectively and explicitly answer the questions as asked will not pass. The spread of nuclear weapons is often cited as a major challenge to the international community. We will try to schedule your major field for Friday and your minor field for Monday, but the order will be determined by the scheduling needs of the full set of students taking the written comprehensives on a given day. Grading. If a student’s performance on the written exam is borderline between satisfactory and unsatisfactory, the graduate committee may request that the student take an oral exam … You will do your major field on one day and your minor field on the other. Effective in-depth knowledge of a few critical issue areas or historical episodes can help you generate appropriate material for a wide variety of questions. Nonetheless, and precisely because the exam is conceptualized as an assessment of this preparedness to move on, it plays a very important role in your doctoral education. The comps most commonly come after the student has completed required coursework and before starting on the dissertation; successful passage of the comps is sometimes required for a student to be considered a "Ph.D. You should be aware of the major journals in your particular field and should be paying attention to them. The exams are spaced such that students will have at least one day between each exam. Students who do not pass the written portion of the exam on the first attempt will have to retake the exam in a subsequent semester. Describe and discuss the evolution of U.S. policies toward any country (except the USSR/Russia) or region of your choice during a 6-year period of your choice, extended from January 1981 to January 2001. [2], Graduate-level comprehensive examinations are sometimes also known as preliminary examinations ("prelims"), general examinations ("generals"), qualifying examinations ("quals"), or as major field examinations. It is rarely a good strategy to try to present a broad and superficial survey of too many things ("In this essay I will discuss the relationship of each Post-WWII American president with his respective Secretaries of State and Defense"). How you perform when nervous is not irrelevant to your career as a scholar. Nonetheless, you will also see that you are often called upon to identify a critical historical period or event. [18] A second failure normally guarantees dismissal from the graduate program, though progress on previous attempts may convince the student's program to grant a third, final attempt. You have eight hours to answer two questions. You will notice that most of the questions are a lot bigger than can be fully answered in the two-hours you will have on average during the written exam. If so, how? To what extent do you agree with this key realist assumption? You have been provided with blue examination books. Ph.D. students must take comprehensive examinations in their three historical fields of study, but not in the cognate field. This booklet will help give you a clear sense of the comprehensive examination process. You must answer two. Norfolk, VA 23529. This exam is closed to the public; only the student and Comprehensive Exam Committee may be in attendance. General Requirements for Students. Do NOT describe any of these crises, events or issues at length but single out the features and patterns that best explain why these are so closely identified, in your judgment, with this initial post-Cold War period. Attitude is important in the oral examination, just as it will be for the remainder of your career as a scholar. Most readers will be looking for a clear and direct answer to the question, evidence of familiarity and facility with the important literature, and an ability to integrate theory and empirical cases. At the end of the allotted time put your flash drive, your printed and/or handwritten answers (do not staple), any blue books or extra blue books you may have used, the signed and dated Honor Pledge, the instruction sheet and the exam questions in the envelope provided. [14], Typically, comprehensive exams consist of either a written or an oral exam, but some programs require both. With us, you can be sure you’ll get high-quality answers for top marks. The exam lasts a total of eight hours. You must pass this exam before you can advance to candidacy in the Ph.D. program. program and are then admitted to doctoral study only upon successfully defending their research proposal.[3][6]. The committee will usually, but not always, include the directors of the relevant tracks and the director and associate director of GPIS. You may take a break at any time during the examination but do not leave the building. The examiners will usually, but not necessarily, include the Director or Associate Director of GPIS and the track coordinators from the student's major and minor fields. In these programs, a student who does not pass "comps" or "prelims" on the second attempt will generally be allowed to earn a terminal master's degree but is not permitted to become a candidate for a doctoral degree. Is it strong and if so, why? Imagine that an international studies department hires you to design and teach a graduate seminar on gender and globalization. Instead, it is splitting regions within nations that are fully part of the global market from those left behind. Graduate Director Date SGS Review . PhD students will take the oral portion of the Comprehensive Exam at the end of their second year in the program, either in May or in late August. What theoretical and empirical movements within the field would your seminar emphasize? To conclude, explain the relevance of that region or country to current U.S. interests and policies. Ultimately, do these challenges represent anomalies, in the Kuhnian sense, or are they the products of normal science? It usually helps if you can be explicit about how you are managing the question ("While there are, of course, idiosyncratic elements in the complex relationship of each President to his national security team, I will focus in this short essay on the difficult relationship between Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Cyrus Vance because it effectively illuminates the problems every foreign policy team must face"). [15] In others, a written exam is taken, and depending on the grade, the student may or may not have to continue with an oral exam. Make appropriate reference to the literature and relevant scholarly debates. The examiners are likely to push against your views and expect to see you defend them effectively, but not irrationally. In some fields, such as history, the student must pass the comprehensive examinations before submitting a dissertation proposal. The full comprehensive exam consists of two (2) 4-hour written parts administered over two consecutive days. In order to schedule these exams, the student must have completed all coursework … 6. It is also critically important for embarking on the dissertation. Explain and discuss this assessment, which Kissinger made after he had served as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, with explicit references to two high level foreign policy practitioners during the two decades that followed the US intervention in World War II (1941-1961). Cite evidence from any region(s) or country (countries) with which you are familiar to illustrate your evaluation. To what extent, if at all, does interdependence decrease inter-state conflict in world politics? The exam is not designed to be a barrier. 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