Qualifying Exam Guidelines
 
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Qualifying Exam For Neuroscience Program Students

This document details the process for the written and oral qualifying exams for advancement to candidacy to be followed by (M.S.) Ph.D. students officially affiliated with the Neuroscience Program.  Students not officially affiliated with the Neuroscience Program will have the exam administered by the GSBS. 

Students should initiate the Qualifying Exam process prior to September 1 of their 3rd academic year of enrollment so as to complete the exam before the end of the Fall semester.  This deadline should be adhered to except for students who elect to complete an M.S. degree.  The qualifying exam will consist of written and oral components in the following process:

1)      In the summer following the second year, the student begins the process of forming an Examining Committee whose composition must be consistent with the current GSBS guidelines.  It is presumed that the student has satisfied his/her advisory committee that they are prepared to take these next steps in advancement to candidacy.  The examination committee will serve in two capacities and convene on two separate occasions.  Once to assess the student's breadth of knowledge and second to assess the student's ability to defend a written research proposal.  One member of the Departmental oversight committee must serve on each student's examining committee to provide a measure of conformity to the exam.  The current members of the oversight committee are Drs. Byrne, Mauk, Waxham and Waymire.

2)      After the examining committee is approved by the GSBS the student, in consultation with their advisor, declares 4 areas of breadth.   These 4 areas should broadly reflect the student's coursework at the GSBS but can be guided by the research direction the student has chosen.  Given the diversity of our faculty and students, large latitude will be given in the 4 areas, as long as they are reasonably distinct and general. These areas of breadth are turned into the Chair of the examining committee who is responsible for communicating these areas to the rest of the committee.  Alternatively, the student can have a brief meeting with the committee to discuss the exam format and to have an open dialogue about appropriate areas of breadth.  However, it is the committee's decision and not the student's that will guide the final choice of these areas.  If these 4 areas are deemed appropriate, the chair will solicit questions from members of the Committee that cover these 4 areas.  The Committee will prepare the questions within several days and return them to the Chair who will compile the questions and distribute them to the Examining Committee for final approval.  This should occur within a week of the student's original submission.  Once approved, the Chair of the Committee will provide the questions to the student. 

3)      The student should have a date identified for the breadth part of the exam, agreed on by the examination committee, before receiving the questions.  After the date of this exam is firm, the student is provided the questions 5 weeks in advance of this date. The student has 4 weeks to prepare an up to 5-page answer to one of the questions (of their choice) and to prepare to answer the other questions in an oral examination format. The written answer is 5 pages, single spaced and not counting references.  The student must research the literature and prepare the answer independently, without consultation with others.  The student must provide the written answer to each member of the examining committee one week before the scheduled exam.

4)      In the oral exam, the student will be tested on (i) the written answer, (ii) the other 3 questions, and (iii) other aspects of breadth.  The student is expected to have a good command of the material taught in our curriculum.  The exam is evaluated on the quality of the student's written answer and their performance in answering questions posed by the committee.  The decision is binary: pass or fail.

If the student passes the breadth exam, they qualify to schedule the oral defense of their research proposal.  It is anticipated that the proposal defense will be scheduled before the end of the Fall semester.  If the student fails the breadth exam, the committee will recommend specific remediation and the student will be re-examined within a timeframe appropriate to complete the suggested remediation.

The same committee will also be responsible for examining the student on the oral defense of their research proposal.  This will follow the same format as that in the past where a written proposal is prepared in an individual NRSA format and provided to the committee at least one week prior to the scheduled defense.  This portion of the exam will focus on questions related directly to the proposed research project and breadth as it pertains to the proposed research.  Recognize that the student must have formulated a specific aims page that is to accompany their paperwork to the GSBS for the selection of the examining committee.  This is done at the beginning of the procedure for scheduling the entire exam sequence, not after the breadth exam is completed.

At the end of this process the Examination Committee, in consultation with the student and the student's primary advisor will make the determination about officially by-passing the Master's degree.

For those students who decide or have had it decided for them that they would benefit by doing a Master's degree the pathway is different.  In consultation with the Advisory committee, the student will start the paperwork to do a Master's degree.  This will require forming a Supervisory committee which may be the same or different from their Advisory committee; in either case, the Academic Standards Committee at the GSBS must approve the committee.  There is no breadth or candidacy exam associated with the Master's degree.  The petition to the GSBS for the Master's Supervisory Committee must be accompanied by a list of the courses the student has taken, and a one-page description of the aims/hypotheses to be addressed for the Master's.  Once the Master's is completed, and the student is ready to proceed, they reform an Advisory Committee and then as rapidly as possible meet with this committee to resolve any outstanding issues before moving ahead with the scheduling of the breadth/oral defense of a Ph.D. topic.  The process then proceeds as described above.

Some areas of breadth might include:

      Neurotransmitter Biosynthesis
      Membrane Excitability
      Synaptic Plasticity
      Synaptic Transmission
      Structure/Function of Receptors and Channels   
      Second Messenger Systems
      Learning Theory
      Computational Neuroscience
      Neuronal Circuitry
      Neuroanatomy
      Hippocampal and Cerebellar Systems
      Membrane Excitability


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Last Updated March 3, 2008 10:24 AM