2.2.15 REPARACION Y CAUCION

Most PhD programs require students to take comprehensive exams, or comps, upon completion of their coursework. Sometimes called preliminary exams or prelims, these exams are meant to evaluate your knowledge of your field(s) and your readiness to move on to your dissertation. Since my own time as a graduate student, I have not found many students or faculty members who are fully satisfied with how comps are conducted or with how well they meet the stated goals.

Most students and faculty agree that the most important outcome of comps is the studying and preparation they provoke. If weekly reaction papers promote integrating across individual articles for a given week in a seminar, and seminar fi- nal exams promote integrating across multiple weeks of readings within a seminar, comps promote integrating across multiple seminars, often supplemented with ad- ditional reading outside of seminars. Comps mark the one time in the graduate program where the entire focus is on the big picture. For most faculty, the main value of comps is the way they encourage students to develop that integrated big picture view.

Most students spend too much time worrying about comps and studying for them. If you do your job during each week of each seminar, reading the material and taking notes, then you have already been studying for comps since the first week of graduate school. Studying for comps should be about organizing the ma- terial you already have and supplementing that material with a few key readings. It should not require you to reread a bunch of old material.

Most faculty say that the best answers on comps go beyond demonstrating knowledge of the literature to engaging in original critique and ideas. Most stu- dents fear presenting bold original ideas because they don’t want to be wrong. The result is that many students write fairly boring answers, based mostly on reviewing the literature, that most faculty find to be acceptable if somewhat underwhelming. This problem stems from students’ desire to minimize risk and maximize passing and from faculty’s hesitancy to properly incentivize risk-taking in comps.

Comprehensive exams take a multitude of forms across programs, and many programs change their comp format from time to time, trying to improve the ex- perience. Unless the format of the comps changes the incentives for the students, however, the format itself is unlikely to alter the outcome. That being said, some- times students take only one comprehensive exam in their major field, while other times they take comps in more than one field. Comps are typically written exams, but they may include an optional or required oral component as well. Sometimes students are given eight hours to complete a written exam, sometimes 24 hours, or sometimes longer. Students may be allowed to use notes or other resources during their comps, or not. Sometimes students get to pick their comprehensive exam committee, and other times those committees are set by the department. Students rarely know the exact questions they will be asked in advance, but many programs make copies of previous questions available to students for review.

Because the form and format of comps can vary so much, the best thing a student can do is to meet with the faculty who will be evaluating the exams to ask them directly for their advice and their expectations. Do this a few months before the exam so you have time to prepare. Your faculty want you to be successful, and they certainly do not want you to do poorly because of a misunderstanding. They will tell you what they want, and you should try to provide it.

One of the problems I see with how comps are executed in many programs is that they often discourage students from thinking about their dissertations until after they pass comps. They might spend a few months studying/preparing for comps, then sit nervously waiting while their faculty frequently take embarrass- ingly long to grade their comps, then take a month or so off to celebrate passing comps and decompress from the process. What a waste of time.

Needless to say, I was thrilled when the American politics field in my depart- ment at UNC decided to alter the format of comps. Historically, comps at UNC consisted of two back-to-back days of eight hour exams. In American politics

at least, the first day was typically devoted to common questions everyone an- swered, and the second day gave students more options to focus on their area of specialization.

We changed the second day to be a preliminary research proposal that might serve as a starting point for a dissertation proposal. Students were told this well in advance and were encouraged to start writing well before the day of the exam. They were given a page limit to avoid endless rambling. As a result, students spent a significant amount of their time before comps actually thinking and writing about possible dissertation ideas. This was a document they could then share with a potential advisor even if that person was not on the comp committee. The student and advisor could then begin or continue discussing the student’s potential project while waiting for the exam committee to do their work.

This reform works because it incentivizes students to think about their disser- tation much sooner than they would otherwise. It also forces students to lay out a plan for original research rather than just playing it safe with a literature review. The first day of the exam still pushes students to think broadly about what they had learned in their seminars, but the second day provides a much better indication of their readiness to write the dissertation.

Comps are important and useful exercises, but they should not be

over-emphasized. I have rarely seen letters of recommendation for job candidates give glowing reports regarding how the student performed on comps, and I have never seen a search committee care about that. Your primary goal with comps is to pass them. If done well, they provide a good bridge between seminars and your dissertation. They push you to think about the big picture and the big debates in your field of expertise while also demonstrating your readiness to engage in original research. Comprehensive exams are a natural extension of and conclusion for your coursework. As noted above, if you have taken your coursework seriously week in and week out, then you have already been preparing for comps.