Home > Geology > Oral Exams

Orals exams (aka "qualifiers" or "general exams") are a rite of passage for graduate students in the sciences. Their format varies from school to school and department to department, but some things about them stay the same: they're really hard, and they (and the months leading up to them) can really suck. My goal here is to share some of my oral exam experiences (e.g. some study plans that worked, some that didn't, or how to tell your advisor you're overloaded) in the hopes that they might benefit other people who find themselves in a similar pickle.

Advice I Got (mostly from professors!)

  • It's OK to tell your research advisor "I will get to that as soon as possible, but I need to set aside some time each day just to study [and not do research]."

  • The best orals are always given by people who are current in the literature, e.g. they've read "Science" and "Nature" and "GSA Today". (Like I had time to read ANY of these -- ha! I tried to read the interesting parts of Scientific American, though.)

  • If you fail out, you can still go somewhere else. (Pessimistic, but I had to ask. It made me feel better.)

  • To save time, read only the abstract and figures of a paper. (I haven't gotten the hang of this yet. Profs always seem to ask me specific questions about the parts I skipped.)

  • You will not know the answers to many of the committee's questions. In lieu of saying "I don't know," try, "I thought about that and didn't come to a firm conclusion, but here's what I did learn..." or "I don't recall exactly, but I know that it's discussed in depth in [such-and-such article]" or "I'm not sure, but if I had to figure it out from scratch, I might try ..."

    • Advice I Would Give

  • Taking some time off is not a bad idea. I drove to Colorado for a week this summer and, in retrospect, I didn't miss anything. I wasn't being very productive at school anyway. Of course, I felt guilty for leaving and not working. If you feel that way, I officially give you permission. Take a vacation.

  • Do you have a significant other who's not a graduate student? I do, so my first thought was, "Great! He can do all the cooking and cleaning while I study!" That turned out to not be such a good assumption ... he wanted to support me, but he didn't really want to become my slave. There's some happy medium, probably different for everybody, between "I'm miserable in graduate school, why aren't you cooking me dinner?" and "I chose to go to graduate school, not you, so don't feel you have to help out extra around the house."

  • My office mates and I started going out to dinner once a week, usually on nights that we were all going to work late anyway. It was useful in several ways. Probably most importantly, we got to complain to each other. Secondly, we just got to take a break! Third, we [sometimes] talked about our research, so it was educational.

  • Find a faculty member you can confide in. Preferrably someone who's not on your committee and who won't mind if you sit down in their office in cry uncontrollably once in a while.

  • Questions of the Week: One of my advisors went on sabbatical a couple months before my exam, which meant I couldn't meet with him for several months. He asked me to send him one in-depth question a week that he promised to answer prompty (which he more or less did). I got a lot out of writing the questions and reading his answers. Perhaps some professors would be amenable to this even if they're not out of the country.

  • A lot of times I wanted to say to my advisor, "Are you crazy? I don't have time to [read that article/rewrite my entire computer program/print out the 300 page book you asked for that requires me to also install your new $20,000 copier]!" Instead, try phrasing it as such: "I've got a lot of things on my plate right now; how do you suggest I prioritize this on my to-do list?" Of course, sometimes the answer is still not very useful ("Well, you don't HAVE to do this if you don't want to pass your exam ... it's up to you ...") but it sometimes clues them in that you're a little busy.

  • I wrote my papers in LaTeX. I highly recommended it. It's worth the time to learn how to use it, especially if you're already familiar with emacs and unix or dos. Use BibTex to manage your references, and import reference information at the same time you look for stuff in the library -- it's easier than doing it later. If you don't want to use Latex, at least use EndNote to manage your references.

  • I had to read lots and lots of scientific papers, and I had trouble keeping track of them all. I ended up putting each one (even the meager four-page ones) into its own filing folder and labelling it by name (e.g. "Oswald & Wesnousky (2001)") so I could find it again later. It's worth the wasted paper and expense of manilla folders.

  • Try to get some exercise. Realistically, that won't happen in the couple weeks before the exam, but you don't have to sit around all summer, too. I felt better if I didn't feel like a sloth.

    • My Studying Philosophy

    I realized in June that I was really not prepared for my exams. Here's my sob story in a nutshell: I got my BS in Mechanical Engineering, not geology. I took a lot of geology courses during my first year, but I still wasn't caught up. Several professors let me know this by saying, "You're not going to be prepared for your oral exams."

    For most of the month of June, I studied ALL the time. Other than learning some stuff, this was a disaster. I was really depressed -- not like clinically depressed, but like I would come home and cry for an hour about every other day because I was miserable and scared of failing. After about three weeks of that, I decided that it would be better to take evenings and weekends off and risk failing, so that's what I did (I wrote about my decision in a blog entry). (Except in the last couple weeks before the exam; then, I was quite motivated to spend my weekends cramming.)

    I have trouble remembering stuff that I read, so I take extensive notes. I'm also a neat freak, so I take really pretty extensive notes. For me, taking beautiful notes helps motivate me to go back and refer to them later on; indeed, having short summaries of articles and flow charts of mineral classification at my disposal proved quite useful.

    I actually kept track of the hours I worked during the summer leading up to my exams. I printed out some calendars and kept them in the front of my binder of notes. I also used the calendar to list fun stuff and my goals for the week (which invariably got pushed back, but at least it helped me get organized). Here are my June, July, August, and September calendars.

    Some Random Final Thoughts

  • Take care of your back and your hands. (My back was often very sore after a day of studying.) I worked from home a lot, so I bought myself a new desk chair; if you do most of your work at school, I would imagine that your advisor or department should buy you a new one, or let you trade with someone else. I once started to get sore hands after days of taking notes, so I bought a Mr. Grip mechanical pencil, which I liked very much. Here's a pdf of stretches you can do at your desk.

  • People say that graduate school gets a lot better after the first year. I can't say for myself yet, but it would be nice.