PhD Exams at NC State#

In general, you will encounter three major exams during your PhD program:

1. Written Preliminary Exam: Supposed to show that you are capable of conducting research in your area, usually happens around first paper draft / submission time.
2. Oral Preliminary Exam: Outline for thesis proposal. Usually happens around 2 published papers / within a year or so of planned defense
3. Final Exam (Defense): Final defense of your thesis. Usually happens with the 3rd paper being published / under serious submission.

1. Written Prelim#

Consists of:

• Written report (usually your first research paper draft / preprint, but no more than 7000 words which is shorter than the usual security paper). Supposed to be sent to committee 2 weeks before oral presentation date, but usually more flexible in real world (e.g., share overleaf or similar)
• Oral presentation (40–45 min, usually scheduled for 90 min to allow for admin and questions, announced and public to anyone).

The committee usually consists of 3 members:

1. Advisor
2. Area rep (based on our suggestions)
3. Department rep/chair selected by GDP

From CSC’s Ph.D. in Computer Science page:

The Written Preliminary Exam is the first milestone in the student’s Ph.D. program. The purpose of this exam is to measure research aptitude, preparation (including knowledge of a specialization area) and proper research methodology. It is expected that the student will have conducted an extensive literature search of a problem area, identified a research problem and obtained some preliminary research results in that area. The work for this exam must be substantially that of the student, with minor help from the advisor or others.

The exam requires both a written report and an oral presentation. The report should be approximately 7000 words and should include sufficient background information to be accessible to a non-specialist. If the report has already been submitted for publication and has multiple authors, the student must make clear that the work and the writing are mostly their own efforts. It is not acceptable to use a paper in which the writing or the work is substantially due to others, since this would not represent the student’s independent efforts. The oral presentation is open to all faculty and students in Computer Science.

The following is currently not strictly enforced (but keep in mind for timelines):

Full-time Ph.D. students who previously received an M.S. degree are expected to have passed this exam by the start of the 4th semester; Ph.D. students who did not previously receive an M.S. degree are expected to have passed the exam by the start of the 5th semester.

Process#

1. Register for CSC 890 (in the semester of, or semester before)

In the semester the exam is to be taken, the student will register for up to 6 credits of CSC 890 (Doctoral Preliminary Exam). (Alternatively, the credits may be spread over two successive semesters.)

2. Send email to GDP to get process started (at least 3 weeks before planned date range)

The student, in consultation with the advisor, must submit to the DGP:

• the name of the advisor
• the names of up to five Computer Science faculty (not including the advisor, the DGP and the Department Head) who have expertise in the topic of the exam
• the title and a preliminary abstract of the paper

The DGP will form an examination committee consisting of the advisor, one of the five faculty knowledgeable about the subject area and one other departmental faculty member (the DGP and Department Head are not eligible for this role). This information should be submitted at least 3 weeks before the proposed exam date.

• You don’t need all 5 faculty with expertise, but suggesting 1–3 is helpful for the DGP to form a committee.

Usually the DGP will respond with an email CC’ing the established committee:

3. Reach out to committee members to establish date for the presentation

• In general you can send an email with a When2Meet or similar as reply to the DGP response to all committee members from step 2 (but don’t forget to remove the DGP, Grad school email etc from the CC, they don’t like being included in theses “figuring out scheduling” emails until step 4)
• Range of ~2 weeks on the W2M are good practice
• Optionally: Check the committee members’ Google Calendars to check for big blockers / some available slots ahead of time
• Optionally: Mention state of underlying paper, e.g., “I would like to share that the paper draft is currently under submission at X”, “I currently have scheduled X more interviews for data collection, which I expect to finish by the end of X.”
• Optionally: Attach a draft of your paper (or share an overleaf link to it, or share a Google Drive link with updating PDF), not required and the final version is usually sent to the committee + DGP at least 2 weeks before the presentation (more or less in practice) as PDF.

If a committee member does not respond within 7 days or so feel free to write a reminder email or mention it to me so I can follow up.

4. Send final announcement details email to Grad office / DGP.

• If you (the student) will be remote: The student is not supposed to create the calendar invite / zoom link for remote exams (i.e., your advisor should create it)
• For rooms we can usually use the SCI suite, don’t forget to block it in the calendar (or ask your advisor to block it)

Grading#

Grading is done via 2 forms (but only Pass/Fail for the student):

Depending on the final scores:

• A student with three scores of 5 or higher passes the exam.
• A student with three scores of 3 or lower fails the exam.
• All other cases are decided by committee discussion.

Some common questions to expect during the oral (mostly testing your understanding of the work and its context):

• Why is this important?
• Why did you choose [method/algorithm] over [other method/algorithm]?
• What are the limitations of your approach?
• What are the potential real-world applications of your research?
• What are your next steps (for your next paper)

2. Oral Prelim#

3. Defense#

(Also “Final Oral Exam”)

Rooms#

Available conference rooms / presentation spaces for defenses:

• SCI Suite (2240 EB2 building): Most commonly used space, can be reserved by advisor.
• Other rooms (reserved through Linda Honeycutt):
  • EB2 - 2216 Capacity - 17
  • EB2 - 2242 Capacity - 4
  • EB2 - 2253 Capacity - 6
  • EB2 - 2295 Capacity - 9
  • EB2 - 3211 Capacity - 76
  • EB2 - 3253 Capacity - 9
  • EB2 - 3265 Capacity - 24