Advancement
Requirements of Advancement to Candidacy:
- Completion of 50% of credits:
- A "Pass" in the Comprehensive Examination
COMPREHENSIVE EXAMINATIONS:
Exams for the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees are administered by the Advisory Committee.
M.S.
The comprehensive examination incorporates the thesis defense and oral examination of the student's knowledge of the research area.
Ph.D.:
The examination components are a Research Proposal and an Oral Examination.
RESEARCH PROPOSAL
A research proposal, which should be for the research yet to be completed by the student, must be written by the student.
Timing
The proposal must be submitted to the Advisory Committee by the end of the student's second year in the Graduate Program.
Preparation and Content
- The proposed research must be original.
- The proposal should be written solely by the student with appropriate advice from major advisors to discourage overly ambitious projects which can not be completed in time.
- The proposal, without a budget, must be prepared according to NIH or NSF proposal guidelines which are available at the Office of Grants Administration.
- Pages of narrative, excluding figures, tables and references are limited to 20.
Evaluation
Advisory Committee members should be given at least two weeks to evaluate the written proposal before a committee meeting is convened to discuss the evaluations with the student.
In light of the intermediate stage of development of the student research skills at the time of the Comprehensive Examination, the proposal should be evaluated less rigorously than either a Ph.D. thesis or a proposal written by an established investigator.
If the committee should find the proposal unsatisfactory, the student will be given suggestions for submitting a revised proposal within two months.
A second unsatisfactory evaluation by the committee will constitute failure of the Comprehensive Examination and disqualification of the student from the graduate program.
