Qualifying Exam Guidelines
CULTURAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT
The qualifying exams comprise a set of written exams covering three fields of study and an oral
exam. To be eligible to take the exams, you must have the following:
1.) Successfully completed 72 units of coursework (including any units transferred from
your M.A. program);
2.) Completed both Research Tools: All CGU students are required to take 2 Research Tools.
In the Cultural studies Department. A Research Tool is defined as either an approved
Research Methods course or passing a Language Translation Exam. PhD students must
either pass the language translation exam and take one research methods course or
substitute a second research methods course in place of the language exam. For the
Cultural Studies Department, your methods courses can count both as research tools and
as units towards your degree.
3.) You must be in good academic standing with a minimum 3.3 (B+) GPA, no more than
two B’s on your transcript and no grade lower than a B.
You have the option of taking your exams on campus or taking them at home (see Format of
Exams section below for more information on each option.)
Purpose of Examinations
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Build upon graduate course work and fill gaps in your knowledge.
Develop expertise in one particular field.
Prepare to write the dissertation.
Prepare to apply for jobs.
Before You Take Examinations
You can begin to organize your examinations committee and reading lists as early as you like.
We encourage you to start thinking about them in your second year, and to develop your reading
lists early in your third year. Do not allow the exams to become an impediment in your progress
toward the PhD. Get them out of the way as efficiently and quickly as possible.
To proceed to qualifying exams, you must complete all requirements for the MA and PhD except
the dissertation. This includes all course work and at least one research methods course.
Students admitted with conditional or provisional status must achieve full graduate standing.
Your first step is to print out the Cultural Studies Plan for Qualifying Exams Form and make an
appointment with the department chair to double check your official file to make sure all your
requirements have been completed and posted with the Registrar. Once the department chair has
confirmed that you have met all of the requirements, including minimum GPA and completion of
required courses, you should submit the form to the Arts and Humanities main office. This form
should be submitted to the office at least one month prior to your first exam. The Academic
Support Assistant will serve as the coordinator and proctor for your exams and reserve a room
and computer for your use.
The Plan for Qualifying Exams Form lists the following prerequisites for qualifying exams:
• Full Graduate Standing. Your graduate standing may not be conditional or provisional.
• 72 Units Completed. These units may include transfer hours. (Please note: the CGU
official form lists the requirement at 48 units completed; however, the Cultural Studies
department requires that you complete 72 units before taking the qualifying exams.
• Research Tools – You must have completed both Research Tools.
Examinations Committee
The exams committee consists of three professors, one of whom serves as the chair of the
committee. Consult with your department advisor to select your committee and your three
examination topics. One member of your committee may be from an institution other than CGU,
CST, and the Claremont Colleges. All members should be able to attend the oral defense. All
members must have PhDs. Since these professors will examine you on your chosen topics, they
should be selected primarily on the basis of their fields of expertise. Your department advisor
must approve your committee and hence your examination topics.
Complete this step as early as possible, and no later than the end of the fall semester of the third
year. Faculty members limit the number of exam committees on which they will serve. If you
delay, you may not get your first choice.
A student’s examinations committee does not have to be the same as his/her dissertation
committee, but it is ideal when you can keep the same members for both committees, as it helps
with continuity and will save you time. For this reason, it is important to think carefully about
your qualifying exam committee as well as the construction of your lists to make sure that your
examiners and exam fields are a fit with your dissertation topic. Make sure, when discussing a
professor’s commitment to working with you on your qualifying exams, that you also raise with
them the possibility of eventually serving on your dissertation committee so that they can plan
ahead and be aware of what they are committing to. Don’t assume that because you have asked
someone to serve on your qualifying exam committee that that professor understands that you
also want him/her to work with you on your dissertation.
Examination Topics and Reading Lists
The qualifying exams consist of three separate written exams, each based on a separate reading
list, at least two annotated bibliographies and an oral defense.
You are free to choose the specific topic of each reading list within the guidelines described
below. However, you must persuade a professor to work with you on the list, and you must
demonstrate to the chair of your committee that all three lists work well together.
1) Your first list must be “Cultural Studies” and must be conducted with one of the Cultural
Studies graduate faculty. The master list of Cultural Studies titles is posted on the
department website. Students must choose 30 titles from the list. You may substitute up
to 5 books not on the list with the permission of your examining faculty.
2) Your second or “minor field” list must be situated firmly within a traditional discipline
(e.g. anthropology, history, literature, although interdisciplinary fields such as gender
studies and ethnic studies, which have become established enough to be considered
“traditional” can also be included here). After reading this list you should understand the
research methods and rules of evidence appropriate to the discipline. This list should also
enable you to present yourself as an appropriate job candidate for a position in that
discipline. Students must have taken at least two (2) courses in the field of their second
list during their graduate study at CGU. Please check with the department chair if you
have questions about whether specific courses meet these requirements.
For students doing Media Studies or Museum Studies as their second field, there will be a
master list of titles posted on the department website that they can use (although this is
not required).
3) Your third list can be an area of your choice, although students typically define this list as
roughly the area(s) or topic of their dissertation. (This can help you get a jump start on
your core bibliography for your dissertation research.)
Typically, each reading list will consist of a core of thirty or forty books, which you will be
expected to know well. You will be required to place these readings in the context of other
scholarship in the field. The length, scope and content of each list should be determined with the
advice and approval of the professor who will examine you on that list.
In addition, for your discipline-specific or major field exams you will compile an annotated
bibliography that demonstrates your familiarity with the history and breadth of the field.
There are a number of ways you can think about the distribution of your reading lists:
• One major and two minor fields. You should be able to present yourself to prospective
employers as an expert on your major field and as capable of teaching courses in your
minor fields.
• Topic, period, genre, theory, method.
Use your reading lists to complete your graduate education, prepare to write the dissertation, and
prepare for the job market. For example, if you want to write a dissertation on contemporary
Chicana novels, you may wish to organize your lists as genre (the development of the novel—
American or comparative), theory (contemporary feminist theory), and period or topic (history of
Latino-Chicano movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries). Consider what you need
to know in order to do justice to your dissertation topic.
In addition, bear in mind that with such a dissertation you will be applying for jobs in English
departments, possibly comparative Literature departments, and in interdisciplinary departments
such as Women’s Studies and Ethnic Studies. Hence you will need to present yourself to
prospective employers as someone whose specialty may be Chicana literature, but who more
generally is an Americanist and can cover a range of American ethnic literatures (for English
departments), or as a comparatist who works in Spanish as well as English (for departments of
Comparative literature), or as an interdisciplinary scholar who can teach social movements or
contemporary theory, as well as literature (for Women’s Studies or Chicano Studies).
Similar considerations apply for dissertations based on fieldwork or performance. Work with
your academic advisor and dissertation committee to determine the accreditation required by the
disciplines in which you seek employment.
While you should not try to be all things to all people, your training should be both broad and
specific enough to enable you to emphasize one or another aspect of it and to allow you to move
in more than one scholarly direction after you leave CGU.
Preparing for your exams
The first step in preparing for your exams is to agree on your book lists with your faculty
examiners. Examiners often ask the student to submit the first draft of their book list to which
they will suggest changes or additions.
The next step is for the student to submit annotated bibliographies of each of their 3 book lists to
their faculty examiners. This is an important stage in the process which allows the faculty
examiners to see how well you have understood the readings.
The next step in the process varies greatly among faculty. It is completely up to each faculty
member how they wish to conduct the exam. Often faculty members like to come up with the
student’s exam questions together with the student in advance of the exam. Others do not wish
to let students know the questions in advance. Some examiners allow students to use their notes
and books when writing their answers. Others do not. All of these details are up to the
discretion of the faculty member. Please make sure to discuss with your faculty examiners how
they would like to proceed with this process.
As a guide, your faculty examiners will be given some examples of how to prepare their exam
questions. These are listed below:
1. The contractual option: Student works with faculty to identify broad topics within the
reading list. As the examination date approaches, the student submits five questions
based on those topics. Faculty refines the questions, gives four back to the student. The
exam is then set and there are no further conversations between student and faculty.
Faculty selects three of the four questions for the actual examination, asks the student to
answer two.
2. The mellow option: Student and faculty agree verbally upon a couple of general topics
and on the number of questions. The student arrives on the examination date to find
written questions based on those topics.
3. Any variation or combination of the above.
Although the essays produced by students vary greatly, the following are some general
guidelines to help you understand what is expected from your written exams. Please note,
however, that QUALITY (evidence of deep knowledge and understanding of the texts, depth of
engagement with the materials and a clear articulation of your own analysis, interpretation and
positioning in relation to the material) is much more important than QUANTITY (superficial
treatment or mere summary of a large number of texts):
1. For a 3-hour on-campus exam, students usually write about 1-10 double-spaced pages.
For a 24-hour take-home exam, students usually write about 14-20 pages.
2. The number of questions required in each exam will determine how long each answer
will be and how many texts your reference. In general, however, you should prepare to
discuss in-depth about 2-4 of your texts in each question. You may make reference to
other texts in order to give a sense of the chronology or scope of the field or to situate
certain ideas or texts within a broader field of scholarship, but you should focus most of
your attention on a deep analysis of a few texts. You are NOT expected to mention,
reference, or discuss every book on your list in your final exams.
3. In your oral exam, however, your examiners may ask you to expand on certain ideas in
your written exams as they relate to other books on your list that you did not mention.
Format of Examinations
If you are following a full-time schedule, take your qualifying exams in the fall semester of your
fourth year. Ideally you should submit your dissertation proposal in this semester also, so get
your exams out of the way as efficiently as possible. You have the option of taking your exams
on campus or taking them at home.
If you choose the on-campus, three-hour exam option, your exams must be scheduled during the
week designated for qualifying exams each semester (usually, February, April and October). If
you choose the 24-hour take-home option, you may schedule the exams at times other than the
designated week, but it is your responsibility to coordinate the dates of the exams with your
committee and to notify the Academic Support Assistant when you have arranged them so that
she may book a room for the oral exam. Ideally, all 3 exams would be scheduled during the
same week, but if faculty scheduling makes this impossible, students can schedule them during
different weeks. All 3 exams must be taken during the same semester.
Your faculty may allow or encourage you to participate in framing your exam questions, but in
the end the questions are entirely up to their discretion. Faculty also determine whether you may
take papers or books with you into the examination room. If you are allowed to do so, please ask
your examiner to send an email to the Academic Support Assistant with that information. If the
Assistant does not have the written permission of your examiner, she will assume that you may
not have any material with you. You are never allowed to take flash drives or media cards into
the examination room. To do so would be to violate the standards of academic integrity by
which you are expected to abide and will have grave consequences.
The On-Campus Option
On-campus exams must be scheduled during the week designated each semester for qualifying
exams. You will take three written exams, each lasting three hours. Exams are written on a
computer provided by the department. After each exam, wait to make sure that the Assistant can
save your answer on a disk and print it out. You may take a printed copy with you when you
leave.
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Students may bring the following items:
1. Pens and Pencils
2. Dictionary
3. Drinks and Snacks
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Students are NOT allowed (unless given written permission from the professor giving the
exam) to bring the following:
1. Notes
2. Book Lists
3. Notebooks
4. Bibliographies
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Arts and Humanities will provide:
1. Computer
2. Scratch Paper
The Take-Home Option
You have the option to take some or all of your exams at home, but only if the faculty
administering the relevant exams agree to that format. In that case, you have 24 hours to write
and return the examination. You may pick up the questions or make arrangements with the
secretary to have them sent to you via email or fax, and make sure she knows when and how you
will return your answers. It is your responsibility to ensure that your answers reach the
Academic Support Assistant within 24 hours of the moment she sent you the questions. The 24hour deadline is absolute. If you plan to send your answers back via email, bear in mind the
possibility of transmission problems, whether because of your server or CGU’s. Do not wait
until the last moment to email your finished exams. You must have an alternate plan in place for
transmission (e.g. fax) should your primary plan fail. In addition, if there is even the remotest
possibility that you might encounter difficulties with your personal computer or printer, plan
accordingly. Computer or transmission difficulties are not acceptable excuses for a missed
deadline. Failure to observe the deadline will be treated as failure to pass the exam.
Bear in mind that expectations for a 24-hour exam are significantly higher than for a 3-hour
exam. Faculty expects you to use all the time available to you.
Oral Examination
The written exams are followed by an oral examination. The oral is conducted by all three
members of your committee and lasts for two hours. In the oral examination, faculty members
usually ask students to expand on their written answers to questions. They may ask them to
address the questions in relation to other titles on the student’s list that they have not written
about. Often examiners ask students to discuss the perspectives and theoretical frameworks that
they have developed in their exams as they have helped to shape their upcoming doctoral
research.
If any member of your committee is not satisfied with your performance, you may be asked to do
additional work. Further research or an essay is typical of the additional work required. You
must adhere to the work requirements and time constraints set by your examiner(s). This request
may be made before or after the oral. If it is made before the oral, the oral itself may be delayed
until you have completed all further requirements.
Arranging dates for exams, written and oral can be difficult. It must be done thoroughly and
promptly to ensure a relatively peaceful process. Arrange your exam date with each examiner
well in advance, allowing him/her ample time to write your exam questions. Arrange a date for
your oral well in advance and confirm this date with all committee members. Your committee
chair will convene the oral.
Time Limitation
All three written exams and the oral defense must be completed within one semester. There
must be a two week gap between the last written exam and the oral defense. For time limitations
on individual examinations, see Format of Examinations.
Failure
For the contingency of a less than satisfactory performance, see Format of Examinations above.
If you fail one written, your committee may ask you to re-take that particular examination, or to
re-take all three. If you fail more than one written, your committee may ask you to re-take all
three exams, or recommend to the department chair that you withdraw from the program. If your
committee chooses the last option, the department chair will review its recommendation. If you
fail any examination more than once, you will no longer be able to remain in the program.
General Reminders
Faculty leaves sometimes necessitate changes in committees. Professors who know they will be
on leave in the semester when you take your exams should not be on your committee. If one of
the members of your committee takes an unexpected leave and is unable to examine you, contact
your department advisor immediately to arrange for a replacement.
Students are expected to take the initiative in maintaining reasonable contact with members of
their exams committee as they prepare for their exams. If such a contact is not maintained, or if
difficulties of any other kind arise, the student should alert his/her department advisor.
Students must also take the initiative in discussing with their committee such things as the
student’s and the committee’s expectations of content, range, and depth, the general format of
the written and oral exams, and in meeting with faculty for guidance while reading for the
exams.
Qualifying Exam Schedule Form
CULTURAL STUDIES DEPARTMENT
GUIDELINES FOR SCHEDULING QUALIFYING EXAMS
Please obtain faculty signatures and return this form to the School of Arts & Humanities office at least four weeks
prior to the time you would like to take your first exam. E-mails of assent in lieu of signatures may be attached to
the form.
Please note: Exams are given during the Fall and Spring semesters and will only be given during the summer or winter
breaks in extraordinary circumstances.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Student Name:
Student ID#
E-mail:
Concentration:
QUALIFYING EXAM ELIGIBILITY
In order to be eligible to take qualifying exams, you must have completed 72 units of coursework (including up to 24 transfer
units) and completed two Research Tools. Please attach an unofficial transcript to this form as documentation of the
following; you can obtain your unofficial transcript by logging on to your Student Portal.
Units:
Research
Tools:
GPA:
I have completed 72 units of coursework
I have completed two Research Tools
Research Tool One
Date of Completion
Research Tool Two
Date of Completion
My GPA is 3.3 or above
Student Signature
QUALIFYING EXAM COMMITTEE INFORMATION & APPROVALS
Member Name
Signature
Institution
Email
Chair:
SAH-CLST-Qual Form 7/25/2013
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QUALIFYING EXAM DETAILS
Please list your preferred dates and times for each exam. Requested dates and times are subject to
availability and must be confirmed by the Academic Support Assistant in the School of Arts & Humanities.
Major Exam
Topic:
Minor Exam 1
Topic:
Take-Home Option (24 hours)
Date:
Time:
On-Campus Option (3 hours)
Time:
On-Campus Option (3 hours)
Date:
Date:
Time:
Time:
8:45 AM – 11:45 AM
1:15 PM – 4:15 PM
Topic:
Take-Home Option (24 hours)
Date:
Minor Exam 2
Take-Home Option (24 hours)
Date:
Time:
On-Campus Option (3 hours)
Date:
Time:
8:45 AM – 11:45 AM
1:15 PM – 4:15 PM
8:45 AM – 11:45 AM
1:15 PM – 4:15 PM
Oral Exam
Please list the Oral Exam date and time if you have already arranged it
with your Committee (you are responsible for arranging the exam date Date:
Time:
and time with your committee members):
Please list any special needs you have for your oral exam (e.g. Skype access, conference call setup, etc.):
DEPARTMENT APPROVALS
Advisor Name:
Advisor
Signature:
Department
Chair Name:
Department
Chair
Signature:
Date
Date
SAH-CLST-Qual Form 7/25/2013
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