Exams

Current Students: Exams (revised 2010)

Overview

The comprehensive examination is made up of four parts: the core reading list major exam, a submission-ready article, an annotated bibliography, and an oral exam. The comprehensive examination process is intended to serve multiple purposes that mark the transition from coursework to the individualized research needed for the dissertation. In addition to providing this transition, it also provides a supportive environment in which students learn to write for publication. This page discusses the policies and procedures of the comprehensive exams; you can find additional information on the FAQ page.

Requirements

To qualify to take exams, students need to complete required course work, including at least 3 credits of 887 or independent study. All coursework should be complete by May of your second year.

Exam Timeline

All parts of the comprehensive exam should be completed within a year of finishing coursework and follow the timeline below:

Years 1 and 2: Study the texts on the exam reading list. Some will be covered in seminars and others you will read on your own. It’s always a good idea to establish a cohort study group early on.

Spring/Summer of Year 2: Arrange to work with your exam chair and, in consultation with them, compose your exams committee.

On or before August 7th at the end of the second year of study: You’ll receive the major exam questions and have two weeks (seven days for each of two exam responses) to complete the take-home exam

Fall of the third year of study: Ideally, the three remaining parts of the exams should be completed in the fall semester of your third year. The oral exam should ideally take place at the end of the fall semester so that you have the spring semester to work on the dissertation prospectus.

No later than May 15th before the end of the third year of study: If you don’t finish in the fall, then you should certainly plan to finish in the spring. In order to retain funding for the fourth year, your oral exam must be complete by this deadline. This means that your article and annotated bibliography must be completed, revised based on your chair's comments prior to their approval, and approved by your committee significantly earlier in order to meet the Grad School requirement of scheduling your oral exam at least two weeks out from the actual hearing date. It's important to work with your chair to develop a workable timeline for meeting these milestones and to take into account the fact that late spring is a very busy time for committee members.

Should an emergency or medical situation arise that means you need to alter your timeline, please contact the Director of Graduate Studies as soon as possible. They and the Graduate Studies Committee will work with you to address your situation.

Exam Committees

The Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) oversees the entire exam process.

The major exam is supervised by the Major Exam Committee, which is composed of CCR faculty members who have taught core seminars in the previous two years and is chaired by the DGS.  This committee develops the exam questions each year and assesses the exam answers.

The other parts of the exam are supervised by your exams chair, a reader, and an outside reader from the Major Exam committee. Your chair must be a tenure-stream CCR faculty member, as must at least one of your readers. Your chair will work closely with you on your submission-ready article/book chapter and your annotated bibliography, and they will also coordinate and chair your oral defense.

Part One: Core Reading List Major Exam

The major exam is based upon a broad sense of the historical and current issues framing the field of composition and rhetoric. The reading list consists of forty works. (Four articles/chapters are considered approximately equal to one book/work.) The reading list is developed by the faculty and is common to all students in the program. While portions of the list will be covered in core courses, it is also the responsibility of students to study the list on their own.

The major exam is conducted as a take-home exam, and questions will be distributed to the students on or before August 7 at the end of their second year of course work. The DGS and CCR Coordinator will schedule seven-day exam periods for each of the two exams for all second-year students. You will select two questions among four that the faculty develop and then write two 4000-6000-word take-home essays in response. The Major Exam Committee will assess the questions by the end of Orientation Week.

Once you pass this phase of the exam process, you’ll move on to the remaining parts of the exams. Students who do not pass the major exam are allowed one retake, which they must complete by January of the following year. Students who do not pass the second exam will no longer be considered enrolled in the program, though they will keep their assistantship/fellowship for the remainder of the academic year.

Part Two: Submission-Ready Journal Article or Submission-Ready Book Chapter

Working closely with your Exams Chair and a Reader, you will prepare an article that is suitable for publication as a journal article or book chapter. Typically, students revise a seminar paper or conference paper but under special circumstances, you may write an entirely new article. When you submit your draft to your chair (and eventually to your readers),  include a writer's memo that details which refereed journal the paper is intended for and that includes the journal's publication guidelines. If you are submitting a book chapter, you should attach the official call for papers (CFP). The submitted article or chapter must follow all the publication guidelines for the approved journal or CFP.

Part Three: Annotated Bibliography

Finally, you will complete an annotated bibliography that focuses on your proposed dissertation research area. This part of the exams provides the student with the opportunity to situate his or her own work within the discipline and serves as a segue into the dissertation. This document should begin with an introductory statement that situates the bibliography and explains why you included the works as well as how they speak to one another and to your larger project. The bibliography itself should present a comprehensive treatment of the research in your topic area and should function as an implicit argument for the relevance of the selected works. You should annotate twenty to twenty-five key works (four articles/essays equal one work) with short (one to two paragraph) annotations that detail and discuss the potential relevance of each entry to the future research project.

At least two faculty members, the chair and reader, should sign off on part two and three of the exam.

Oral exam

Within two weeks of your chair and reader signing off, you should schedule your oral exam. Talk with your chair about whether they or you will handle the scheduling. The oral exam, approximately two hours long, will cover the submission-ready article/book chapter and the annotated bibliography. It will be attended by your chair, reader, and one outside reader from the Major Exam Committee, all of whom will ask you questions about your work. You should prepare a brief introductory statement that will open the session and prepare to have an open, wide-ranging discussion with your committee about your work.