PPOL Comprehensive Exam Guidelines:

Updated January, 2006.

The preferred path through the Ph.D. in Public Policy program has students initially focusing on their studies in the core curriculum, in order to proceed to the qualifying examinations as quickly as possible. Once the student passes the qualifying exams, they should delve into their policy specialty area. Upon completion of the work in the specialty, the student will be advanced to the comprehensive examination stage. Advancement to this stage is determined by the student’s advisor and comprehensive examination committee (see below), but includes a minimum of five (5) courses from the specialty. The student should plan on taking the exam after completing the last of the field courses, though in some circumstances, this student’s advisor and committee may recommend that the student be allowed to take the exam during the last semester of the field coursework.

The comprehensive examination expands on the material in the qualifying examination (i.e., on the PPOL core courses) and tests the student’s knowledge of his/her specialty field in terms of the dominant theoretical and empirical literature. Students engage in an exercise designed to determine if they are prepared for advancement to the dissertation stage by demonstrating a “comprehensive” understanding of their specialty field in preparation for the dissertation, within the context of that field’s public policy roots. As such, students would be responsible for a reading list and would be expected to keep up with the most important journals in the substantive field as well as related articles in the major disciplinary journals related to the substantive area. There is a core reading list for each of the areas in the policy program, but the core list of readings can be amended by the student’s Comprehensive Exam Committee, tailored to the student’s individual focus and interests.

The Comprehensive Examination Committee

Each student will have his/her own comprehensive examination committee. This is not necessarily the same as the dissertation committee, though it is hoped that there would be significant overlap between the two.

Initially, the student will select a professor to serve as the chair of the committee. Logically, this should in almost all cases be the student’s primary advisor, and in all likelihood will later be the dissertation chair. The chair of the comprehensive examination committee cannot be an assistant professor but must be on the Graduate Faculty of the university. Once a student has identified the choice for chair, the PPOL program director must approve the choice (in an effort to distribute the workload over the program faculty).

Once the chair is set, the student and chair will identify two more faculty members to sit on the comprehensive examination committee. These two faculty can be assistant professors or higher and are chosen from among the professors with whom the student took his/her specialty courses (and are thus familiar with the student’s career and research interests). The PPOL program director will sit as an ex-officio member of all comprehensive examination committees to facilitate consistency across each of the specialty areas, but will not be a grading member of the committee. The director remains the path of appeals on exam outcome decisions. In the eventuality that the director is chosen by a student to be a grading member of the committee, then another PPOL faculty member will be brought in as the appeal person, should such a need ever arise.

The Comprehensive Examination Structure

The structure of the exam is designed to be as flexible as possible in order to facilitate tailoring to the student’s needs and interests. Therefore, the student’s comprehensive examination committee will decide the exact nature of the exam exercise. This may take a number of forms, including the “traditional” approach used by many programs in which the student will be given a set of questions they are to answer over a certain number of days. Other exercises are also acceptable, such as requiring a high quality paper on a specific topic (related to the student’s specialty and interest). Regardless of the exact structure of the exercise required by the committee, the exam must be completed within a two-week period from the point the assignment is delivered to the student.

The exercise structure may vary by student, but the coverage will remain consistent (as insured by the presence of the PPOL director on all committees). The exam exercise will cover the theoretical traditions of the student’s field, the dominant methodological/empirical studies, and a practical applications aspect. These three elements will be integrated into the structure of each comprehensive examination.

Passing the Examination

The three grading members on the student’s examination committee will read the entirety of the student’s written work and assign a pass/fail grade to each of the three components of the student’s written work (theory, methods, and applications coverage). The standard for passing the comprehensive examination is higher than that of the qualifying exams. After the committee has read the written portion, the chair of the committee will convene the members to discuss the performance on the written portion and to schedule an oral defense. Each student will participate in an orals component of the comprehensive examination. The main purpose of the orals is to give students an opportunity to expand or elaborate on their written answers. The secondary purpose of the orals is to give students experience in preparation for an ultimate dissertation defense. The chair will meet with the student prior to the orals to help guide the student in preparation, focusing on those elements that were weak in the written portion. Grades on each section will not be discussed. In situations where the committee feels the student performed exceptionally well on the written portion, the orals may instead be a discussion of the dissertation prospectus. In a situation where the student performed very poorly on the written portion, the orals will focus on how to strengthen the performance on a retake. Regardless, the oral exam is a graded portion of the overall comprehensive examination.

At the completion of the orals, the student will be dismissed from the room so the committee can determine the final outcome of the comprehensive examination. Each grader will have assigned four total grades to the exam (the three written elements and the orals), for a total of 12 grades. To pass the exam, a student must have received a total of nine (9) passes out of the twelve. The students will be told the results immediately at the conclusion of that meeting.

If a student passes the comprehensive examination, he/she will then establish a dissertation committee (as per the Graduate School rules) and begin preparation for the dissertation proposal defense. This defense can be scheduled as soon after the comprehensive examination as the student and dissertation chair feel is warranted.

If a student fails the comprehensive examination, he/she will retake the exam in its entirety unless the committee decides otherwise. The comprehensive examination committee remains the same (barring extraordinary circumstances). The schedule for the retake should allow the student the time necessary to overcome whatever deficiencies were identified in the initial attempt. However, the re-take must occur within six months of the initial attempt. The committee will determine the structure of the second attempt. If the student passes on the second attempt, he/she progresses to the dissertation proposal stage normally. If the student fails on the second attempt, he/she is dismissed from the program.


These guidelines in a Word document
 

Reading lists for specialty areas:

Urban Regional Development
Social Policy