Oral Qualifying Examination

A student must pass an Oral Qualifying Examination before being Advanced to Candidacy for the Ph.D. degree. Before taking the exam, the student must have: a) removed deficiencies in training; b) satisfactorily completed all course work and seminar requirements and resolved any incomplete grades; and c) maintained at least a 3.1 GPA in all course work undertaken in graduate standing.

The Oral Qualifying Examination (OQE) is conducted by a committee of four members appointed by the Graduate Division. The first two OQE members including the chairperson, must be members of the Group who are also academic senate members. Group members who do not have appointments on the UC Berkeley campus cannot serve in these first two slots. The third OQE member must be from outside of the group and also be a member of the Academic Senate. The fourth OQE member can be from inside or outside the group and need not be an academic senate member (Group members with only LBNL appointments would be able to serve in this position).

The OQE committee can not include the faculty member who is guiding the student's research. Students should ascertain the availability of the proposed committee members to serve. Students must consult with the Chair of the Graduate Advisors concerning the composition of this committee, and the Chair must sign the application to take the Oral Examination before submission to the Graduate Division. Students are expected to take the Oral Qualifying Exam by the end of their second year of graduate work. If the student fails the Qualifying Exam, the examination committee may, under special circumstances, decide to request permission from the Dean of the Graduate Division to re-examine the student at a later date.

The Oral Qualifying Examination may be conducted under one of two plans:

Plan I: The student is expected (1) to present a summary of his/her dissertation research project and (2) to defend a research proposal on a topic outside the area of the student's own area of research. The outside proposal should be concise and contain: a) sufficient background information to define the problem, b) a description of experiments designed to solve the problem, and c) a discussion of how these experiments would advance the field. Proposed topics should be discussed with the committee chairman and/or the relevant members of the orals committee before the formal preparation of the proposal begins. Both the dissertation research summary and the outside proposal should be submitted in written form to members of the committee at least two weeks before the date of the examination.

Plan II: Students may choose to follow the standard format used by the department of the research advisor. Students opting for this plan should submit their format to their Graduate Advisor before setting up their orals committee. In the oral phase of the exam, the student is expected to present a summary of his/her dissertation project.