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> I even stopped doing lab work to focus on my exam preparations. This is the main drawback of the qualifier circus. PhD students waste 2-3 years preparing for
by sn41 4y ago
> I even stopped doing lab work to focus on my exam preparations.
This is the main drawback of the qualifier circus. PhD students waste 2-3 years preparing for this arbitrary and nightmarish rite of passage, time that they could have started their research.
I am glad that that particular department decided to do away with the exam. It is better to define a subset of core courses, and just use the GPA in these courses as a qualifier for formal admission into PhD candidacy. This will help the students gain the candidacy in parallel with the coursework rather than sink enormous amounts of additional time into an exam.
- tsbischof 4y agoHard disagree on dropping quals. Quals were one of the only times where we were forced challenged to reexamine our ideas from a reasonably outside perspective, both to see that we actually knew the material and that we could work outside our little niche. This also happens in the group, at conferences, etc but quals are one of the only institutional opportunities to enforce outside perspective. Part of the point of the PhD is learning how to approach problems that have no established solution, and someone who lacks breadth or depth will likely find it challenging to be a professional researcher.