pz

I confess. One of my strategies for surviving my oral exam was to know my interrogator's biases, and turn them against one another. If I was asked a difficult and controversial question, I could say, "According to Dr. Y, here..." and rely on Dr. X and Dr. Y to start tearing at each other for a little while.

Of course, if I stated Dr. Y's theories incorrectly, I could trust that both X & Y would publicly disembowel me. It was a scary tightrope.

KC

I take it physically threatening them, telling them they were too stupid to understand your work, and insisting that your answers were self-explanatory and needed no clarification were not valid approaches?

Cheers,

KC

[ December 09, 2002: Message edited by: KC ]</p>

pz

Dang. I didn't think of that at the time.

Maybe I should have tried my Clint Eastwood impression.

Darwin's Finch

pz, the ordeal you describe...was it something you had to go through to get into the doctoral program, or were you defending your thesis?

&lt;tries, but fails, to imagine one of the Superbrains doing something similar&gt;

pz

Neither. In most doctoral programs, you spend your first year or two doing preliminary work, and then you get what is called a preliminary exam or comprehensive exam for advancement to candidacy for the Ph.D. It's the real killer, where they weed out people who aren't likely to succeed. The format of the exam varies a lot from program to program. In my case, it was a two part exam, with one part being a detailed, written research proposal (equivalent to a grant proposal), and an oral exam on a relevant topic in biology.

If you fail the prelim (and roughly a third to half the people in the programs I've been in, on one side of the desk or the other, do fail), you wash out of the program. In some places they give you a master's degree as a consolation prize.

One bit of disillusionment I had as a grad student was that the thesis and final oral defense, although a lot of work, really don't count that much. I saw a defense given by a fellow student who was a year ahead of me, and it was awful -- sloppy, ambiguous work that was incoherently presented. Afterwards, we went back to the lab and felt terrible for her. We were sure she had bombed completely, and was going to fail to get her degree. My advisor, who was on her committee, came in a little later, and was asked in voices of dread what the decision of the committee had been, and he nonchalantly said that she'd passed, of course. We were really surprised, because that talk had been utter crap.

He explained that a student only gets to present the defense when her advisor feels the work is ready to go, and so it is pretty much a given that they will be allowed to pass; any other decision would be a strike against the faculty advisor. In this student's case, it was known ahead of time that she'd be passing, and the only question was whether she'd make herself look like an idiot in the process.

He also told us that he was the gatekeeper in his lab, and none of us were going to make that kind of incompetent presentation when it was our time.

stryder2112

Oh, oral prelim ::shudders::. I just passed mine a little over 3 months ago.

pz's experience rings true outside of biology as well. I'm in engineering and the process is more or less the same, although "terminal masters" degrees are far less common.

In the programs in engineering I'm familiar with, there is often two hurdles to cross before reaching PhD candidacy. The first is a qualifying exam that often weeds out the bulk of those who won't make it. The qualifying exam is a comprehensive exam written (usually 6-8 hrs) of material relating to your specific discipline. Qualifying exmas are rather common to many disciplines outside engineering as well.

After the qualifying exam and completion of your coursework comes the preliminary exams. Usually the major advisor acts as a gatekeeper before the preliminary exam, in my experience. A student, in theory, could force the issue, but passing a prelim under those conditions are unlikely.

Anyway, this off-topic discussion is great.

Stryder

faded_Glory

I remember taking an exam with one of my professors, and at some point I gave him a fairly long and detailed answer to one of his questions.

He looked a bit puzzled and asked: "Where did you get all that from?". I replied truthfully: "Out of your own paper".

His reply? "Get outta here, you passed!"



fG

Dr.GH

I really thought I had failed the advancement orals. For one thing, I had a dissertation committee that included a chemist, a sociologist, and an ethnographer that didn't talk to each other. The Dean required me to have a 6 person orals committee instead of the usual 5. The chairman brought a case of beer, and wouldn't let anyone speak until they had a drink in hand. The biologist asked the chemist how much of the lab work I had ready to publish- George (quite truthfully) repiled "None."

My final defense was trivial. I was kind of disapointed. It was basically a gradstudent party that I spoke at for maybe 1/2 hour. Some folks didn't show up until the drinking started.

I guess it was an OK party after all. I have known of two students that were denied degrees for poor showings at their defense, but, it seems very rare.

KC

So much for the Ivory Tower myth...

Cheers,

KC

pangloss

Unbanned, him eh?

Guess Langan and pals need all the help they can get...

Of course, now that DNAunion is no longer a creationist...