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Shimer College students taking a comprehensive exam, 1966.. In higher education, a comprehensive examination (or comprehensive exam or exams), often abbreviated as "comps", is a specific type of examination [1] that must be completed by graduate students in some disciplines and courses of study, and also by undergraduate students in some institutions and departments.
Typically, PhD programs require applicants to have a bachelor's degree in a relevant field (and, in many cases in the humanities, a master's degree), reasonably high grades, several letters of recommendation, relevant academic coursework, a cogent statement of interest in the field of study, and satisfactory performance on a graduate-level exam ...
In many United States institutions the term "Prelims" is used for the preliminary examinations required before a graduate student is permitted to begin working on a doctoral dissertation. [citation needed] Depending on the institution, "prelims" may also be called "qualifying exams" ("quals") or "general exams" (sometimes abbreviated as ...
First, to obtain the status of doctoral candidates, graduate students typically pass a qualifying examination or comprehensive examination, which often includes an oral defense. Students who pass the qualifying examination are deemed capable of completing scholarly work independently and are allowed to proceed with working on a dissertation.
Requirements usually include satisfactory performance in advanced graduate courses, passing an oral qualifying exam and submitting a thesis that must represent an original and relevant contribution to existing knowledge. The thesis is examined in a final public oral exam administered by at least five faculty members, two of whom must be external.
"All but dissertation" (ABD) is a term identifying a stage in the process of obtaining a research doctorate, most commonly used in the United States.. In typical usage of the term, the ABD graduate student has completed the required preparatory coursework and passed the required preliminary, comprehensive, and doctoral qualifying examinations (or PhD candidacy examination).
The GRE was significantly overhauled in August 2011, resulting in an exam that is adaptive on a section-by-section basis, rather than question by question, so that the performance on the first verbal and math sections determines the difficulty of the second sections presented (excluding the experimental section).
As a result, the test was reworked and renamed "The Mathematics Subject Test (Rescaled)". [7] According to ETS, "Scores earned on the test after October 2001 should not be compared to scores earned prior to that date." [7] Tests generally take place three times per year, within an approximately 14-day window in each of September, October, and ...