Comprehensive exams are something most PhD students have to do in the first year or two of their studies. The form and nature of the comprehensive exam varies depending on your school and department. I am presenting my experience with the comprehensive exam in the hopes that it might help others who are looking for ways to prepare for the experience.
Throughout this post I discuss my reading list, three scoping papers and my comprehensive exam response. I am more than happy to share these with anyone who would find them helpful. Please send me an email to ask for copies.
The School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability comprehensive exam looks like this:
- The student drafts a reading list of papers that are central to their research focus.
- The student writes three or four scoping papers based on that reading list and gets feedback from the committee on those papers.
- The committee drafts a question and the student has three weeks to prepare a 10,000 word response to that question.
- The student defends the response through two rounds of oral questioning.
How I started to prepare
The central piece for the SERS comprehensive is the reading list. Everything flows from the readings on that list. This was extremely helpful for me – it meant I could limit my universe to a selection of readings. My advisor was very clear that, while general knowledge is important, the reading list is what will be most focused on in the questioning.
Below is the way that I prepared for my comprehensive. It is not perfect, but I passed, so I think it serves as a model of one way to conquer this thing. Hopefully some elements will be helpful to you.
A general tip: Be systematic about the way you review your reading list. Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega has some excellent resources on his blog.
I approached my reading list by doing three passes:
- Read the abstract, introduction and conclusion for each paper and assess for whether it fits in the reading list. Chunk the readings into categories and sub-categories. This helped with writing the scoping paper.
Relevant posts: AIC method; Conceptual synthesis Excel dump. - Read each paper/book/book chapter start to finish and take condensed notes. There are lots of ways to do this but what worked for me was constructing a synthetic paragraph, taking bulleted high-level notes and extracting at least 3 direct quotations from the paper. I put all of this in a Word document named for the authors of the paper. Each reading in my list was numbered, which makes keeping track of different notes very helpful. The key here is to make sure you take notes in a way where it is easy for you to retrieve them as you write your papers.
Relevant post: Synthesizing and writing - Since the above took so long, I found it necessary to revisit the readings to refresh my understanding. I took my condensed notes and condensed them even further by making index cards for each reading. This served to motivate me to re-read everything and really helped my recall.
Relevant post: The index card method
The point of the above was not rote memorization. The goal was to get things loaded into my mind so that it can start making connections between concepts and synthesizing the broad range of readings.
Writing the scoping papers
Scoping papers are a chance to engage with the concepts in your reading list and see how your committee engages with those concepts. Their responses and discussion of your scoping papers can highlight blind spots and improve your understanding of the concepts.
The papers themselves can be tricky to write because they are amorphous. The purpose is not necessarily to answer a specific question, but to put all of the readings into your neural blender and create a smoothie of key concepts. I found it helpful to anchor the papers in some case studies. The case studies later became helpful for my comprehensive essay.
SERS policy allows you to reuse content from the scoping papers in your comprehensive essay. I did not do this, but others might find it helpful. The reason I did not do this is that my comprehensive question required a synthesis and integration of the papers.
For writing and revision, I used a ton of tools and tips from Dr. Rachael Cayley‘s blog, Explorations of Style. Her approach makes the paragraph the fundamental unit of academic writing. The reverse outlining revision technique is particularly helpful for getting a handle on large, concept-heavy texts like these scoping papers.
If you would like to see my scoping papers as examples, please send me an email and I will happily share them.
The exam essay
Receiving the comprehensive exam question really kicks things into high gear. If you have been communicating with your committee and completed all the scoping papers, the question should not be a surprise.
The key for me was to treat this essay like any other: work on it during regular hours and take breaks to allow things to percolate. I am a firm believer in the idea that rest is as productive as work.
I started by outlining. The first two days of work were on the outline. Since this is such a large paper, I wanted to get a good sense of the overall shape. I started by writing what I call a barstool draft: Imagine you are sitting at a bar, chatting with your friend. Summarize your paper for that friend, using common language but being sure to make the argument flow well. This plain-language draft can serve as a template for the larger outline. It can help you plot out how your argument will evolve.
Throughout keep one important thing in mind:
Every single paragraph in the comprehensive essay should tie back to the question you were given.
If you have to rationalize why a paragraph is there, consider cutting it or making a more direct connection to the question.
In the final stages of revision, I took each sentence apart and asked, honestly, does this respond to the question in some way? This can help weed out digressions and tangents that weaken and dilute your argument.
If you would like to see my final essay as an example, please send me an email and I will happily share it.
The oral exam
Much of what has been discussed above has been preparation for this moment. I did this exam from home because of the pandemic. We were allowed to have notes. Every surface of my desk was covered in notes. I had concept maps, spreadsheets of my reading list, index cards, a binder full of condensed notes, copies of my scoping papers and final paper, and tabbed versions of the books on my reading list.
I looked at none of it.
If all goes well, the comprehensive exam should feel like a conversation with extremely intelligent people about a topic you are deeply interested in.
In my case, it was made clear that this was not going to be a pedantic quiz about the facts from articles in my reading list. The discussion was wide-ranging and brought in questions that I did not expect. In retrospect, I really enjoyed it.
I made a list of predicted questions based on feedback from my scoping papers and my understanding of the research areas of my committee. They asked none of the questions I predicted.
It is important not to get caught off-guard by a question, but some of the basic provisos of academic speech will help here: avoid absolutes, stick to what you know, acknowledge that there is lots to uncover through research. Most of all your committee wants to know that you are an expert in this subject, and being an expert means acknowledging that there is lots we do not yet know.
Final thoughts
The comprehensive is not like other tests. It assesses true understanding. Your committee will know if you have memorized the superficial knowledge from your reading list. Integration and synthesis, in my opinion, requires writing and rest.
People often view writing as the end result of thinking, but for me, writing is thinking. This phrase has made the rounds online and its unclear where the origins lay. Writing is a process that forces you to clarify your thoughts, make connections and synthesize ideas. These processes happen much more efficiently through writing. Don’t be afraid to write practice drafts and then throw them out and start over. The ideas will be more clear and insights will surface.
And a final thought: It’s important to listen to your own rhythms. Three weeks is a long time. I work best from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., and am more productive if I take a screen break in the evenings. It felt (irrationally) irresponsible sometimes to shut things down at 2 p.m., but it worked for me – the next morning I hit the ground running. Any strategy that works for you is a good strategy.
Tim Alamenciak 
Leave a comment