Students: Graduate Information
About Our Programs: The PhD program
Tips for the Candidacy Exam
About the Candidacy Exam
After you finish your PhD course work, you will hand in a final program of study within 6 weeks. The candidacy exam comes no later than 3 quarters after completing PhD coursework.Few moments of your grad school career are more intimidating than the candidacy exam. You’ve just come through your coursework, you’re groping in your mind for the perfect dissertation topic, maybe you’re not 100% sure who ought to be on your committee, and there’s this huge test staring you in the face within nine months. Yikes! What is the exam going to be like? What is its purpose? How can you get through it successfully, keeping the stress to a minimum?
What Is the Purpose of the Exam?
The purpose of the candidacy exam, at bottom, is to make sure the candidate has enough background knowledge of the major issues and terms in order to progress to the stage of dissertation writing. At the same time, your exam should show that you are sufficiently focused on a sub-field and dissertation project, so that you'll be ready to submit a dissertation prospectus within 6 weeks after the exam. The texts and ideas for your exam are based on the final program of study that you compile in consultation with your committee, so in a very real sense, you are making your own exam.The candidacy exam differs from the M.A. exam in that, at the M.A. level, professors are testing your knowledge of a canon of texts and your readiness to proceed to the Ph.D. level. The candidacy exam does, of course, call upon that kind of knowledge, but now you’re auditioning to become a potential producer of knowledge as well as a knower. Your knowledge of the texts of your field should be broad, of course, but at the Ph.D. level it is important to reveal your understanding of what is not known, and how the field has transformed and is transforming. What are the ongoing debates? Where are the sticky wickets? What are some methodological issues in the construction of knowledge in your field and focus areas? How have other scholars handled those problems? How might you handle them?
Think of the exam, then, not as a conventional "test" per se, but as a rite of professional passage, a discursive performance ritual that shows your readiness to participate in the knowledge-making activities of your field. One professor has said that the candidacy exam is about "making sure you know what you need to know so you can do what you want to do."
Return to top of page.Your Exam Committee
It would not be bad form at all to come right out and ask each member (or potential member) of your committee: "How do you view the candidacy exam? What generally goes through your mind when you’re evaluating a candidate? What kinds of things do you look for?" If one or more of your committee members seem reluctant to discuss this, you might want to reconsider the composition of your committee. A good committee member is ready, willing, and able to be candid with you and coach you through the rituals of the profession. Most professors are extremely busy, but still, it’s a good idea to assert your need for a little bit of their time. Look at the handbook's in-depth biographies of faculty members.What Will the Exam Be Like?
At least two weeks before your exam you will file the paperwork with the Graduate School and reserve the room for your oral exam. Usually you choose Denney 416 or 447 for the oral exam. Then you notify the committee and Graduate secretary when and where the exams will be held.The exam happens in two stages: a three-day take home written portion and a two-hour oral portion; these are within 10 days of each other.
Your exam chair will ask you to respond to one to two exam questions which relate your "focus" to your "field" of study (typically, you are given the choice to answer one or two questions from a selection of one to four). You will not know the exact questions in advance, but if you’re communicating well with your advisor, you will have significant input into the areas that will be explored. Some professors even allow you to submit your own questions in advance; in that case, your questions may appear on the exam with some revisions. But even if you have no clue, don’t worry too much: the questions on the exam will not be completely off the wall. You will not be asked to write about topics that are outside your area of expertise.
The written exam is a 3-day take-home exam with a strict word limit of 3500 words (about 14 pp.)--so strict that you need to include an exact word count at the end of your exam (word processor programs count words for you... don't do it yourself). You can't use any endnotes but you can cite authors and texts in the body of your exam. Focus on developing an argument, not on simply displaying knowledge. The written exam is the beginning of a conversation to be developed during the oral; it is not an end in itself and so does not need to include everything you know. Some simple advice: make sure you save your work regularly and keep an electronic copy of the exam as well as a paper copy. The exam is due in paper form in the grad office by 4:00 pm, approximately 72 hours after you receive the exam question/s.
Right after you hand in the written exam to the grad office, you need to deliver copies of the exam to your committee members. You also should hand-deliver to your external examiner the exam, the Program of Study, dissertation abstract, reading lists, and the official description of the exam (from the Grad Studies Office). The Grad School should have informed you by then who your external examiner will be.
The oral exam will take place with your entire committee present plus one professor from another department (your "outside examiner"). Don’t worry about the outside examiner; he or she is there primarily as your advocate, to make sure nothing unfair takes place. But he/she must be there: we suggest sending an e-mail reminder a few days in advance. It is easy for external examiners to forget ... it has happened before.
During the oral, 90 minutes must be spent discussing your "field" area, and 30 minutes discussing your "focus." Your committee will take the written exam as a starting point for further discussion. They might say, for example, "Why don’t you take a few moments to address your written exam. Is there anything you’d like to add or revise?" Or they might ask more pointed questions, such as, "I admire the stance you took here, when you said X. Can you say a little more about that?" or, "In your answer to question number two, you said X. Did you mean to imply that Y?" In any event, the oral exam offers you the opportunity to expand upon what you wrote in the written exam, explaining your position more fully in light of the questions your professors ask. You may also be asked how you might teach a given subject: "If given the opportunity to teach a class on X, what books would you choose and why?"
If you're not sure what you are being asked, simply ask for clarification, or say "If I understand you correctly, you are asking me ..." and paraphrase the question in your own words. This also gives you some time to think about your response.
You will feel nervous during both phases of the exam; everyone does. You will answer some questions better than others, both orally and in writing. Your committee may seem less friendly and supportive in the oral than they usually do; be ready for that possibility. On the other hand, they can also be more congenial and supportive than they usually are, which can also surprise you. Or they might be totally normal. Regardless of your committee’s demeanor, you may not feel as articulate as you usually do. And there will be at least one thing--one citation, one text, one idea--that will fly out of your head at just the wrong moment. Don’t worry. It happens to everyone.
After two hours of this kind of dialogue, you’re sent out of the room while the committee deliberates. You sit in the hall, waiting for them to reach a decision. They invite you back in and tell you whether or not you have passed.
If you pass, your committee hands you a signed form, which you submit as soon as possible to the graduate school. If you do not pass, you make plans with your committee to discuss what went wrong and to schedule your next attempt.
Return to top of page.How Can I Get through the Exam with a Minimum of Stress?
Do whatever you can to develop and refine your dissertation topic and research methods well before the exam study period. That will help you choose the right committee and, later on, it will help you demonstrate that you’re indeed ready to proceed to the dissertation-writing stage (which is, after all, the point of the exam). Even if your dissertation idea changes, that’s okay; it’s still worth it to develop a preliminary idea.Choose the right committee. As we said earlier, you want your committee to be made up of individuals who not only share your intellectual interests and can help with specific angles of your dissertation, but who are candid and helpful mentors.
(Although your exam committee typically serves as your dissertation committee, students are free to make changes in their dissertation committees after taking the exam in order to gather the expertise best suited to guiding that more focused project.)
Set the date of your oral exam with your committee WAY in advance. You know how academic schedules are--it’s very hard to find a time when five people can get together. Five or six months in advance is not too much. If you want to have your exam in the summer, watch out: many faculty members go away for portions of the summer. Start the scheduling process even earlier.
Once you have scheduled your exam, go to the director of graduate studies and arrange to complete the necessary paperwork. The graduate school must receive the "Doctoral Notification of Candidacy Examination" form before you begin the written portion of the exam, so they can recruit someone to serve as your outside examiner. Take care of that paperwork promptly. You also need to reserve the appropriate rooms.
While studying for the exam, communicate with your committee often and, if possible, at length. Don’t just read and study on your own; make time to come in and discuss portions of the reading with each of your committee members in turn. It can be hard to get this time from professors, but whatever you can get is gold, because the more communicating you do in advance, the more you will learn from your professors, and the more you will understand their perspectives before you walk into the examination room. You will also get a feel for what it will be like to work with them on your dissertation.
Keep notes in a systematized manner so that you can draw on them as you write your dissertation, and in your future career. Some people use large notecards for each book/article, others use word processing files. You don't want all this work to evaporate into thin air after the exam... store it up.
Write questions for yourself that relate the focus area to the field, and answer them in a timed mock exam. This is a wonderful way of synthesizing material and making connections--connections that may come into play in the real exam. If you’re superstitious about writing it out in advance, at least outline and plan responses.
Talk about your topics with as many colleagues as you can. Converse with a wide range of audiences, from the caring and supportive to the skeptical, even antagonistic. Discussing your ideas with your colleagues and listening to their responses will refine, inform, complicate, and nourish your perspectives. All of that will come in handy during the exam.
Don’t worry too much about being nervous. Everyone is nervous during the exam, particularly during the oral. Your committee has seen it a thousand times and will not be critical of you for being nervous. In the weeks leading up to the exam, do not yield to the temptation to let your health go to pot. Sticking to your regular patterns of sleep, nutrition, and exercise will help keep your stress level in check. Then, when you’re in there, remember that it’s okay to be nervous. Just be yourself.
Return to top of page.What if I Don’t Pass?
If you don’t pass, or barely pass, know this: your performance on this exam, on this day in your life has nothing to do with how smart you are, how much you have to give to the field, or how successful you will be in your career. Anyone who makes it this far in grad school is obviously extremely intelligent and has the potential to be extremely successful.Think of all the scholars you admire. Chances are a surprising percentage of them had some difficulty that seemed terrible to them at some point in their grad school careers--such as failing their exams the first time, or barely scraping by. But look at where they are today. Nobody else even remembers their exams. You are the only person who will remember--you and maybe, maybe your committee.
So if your committee doesn’t pass you, find out what happened, learn from the experience, and try again.
When you finally do pass, put the whole thing behind you and move forward into the future--a future that is just as bright as it would have been had you passed the first time.