Qualifying Exam

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GENERAL SUMMARY

Goal of the Qualifying Examination: To determine whether the student is ready to be admitted to doctoral candidacy and undertake PhD dissertation research. Specific skills tested include the ability to:

• Identify and incorporate pertinent primary research literature into a plan for novel neuroscience research.
• Identify key questions/gaps in knowledge in the context of the chosen topic.
• Formulate hypotheses and develop experiments to test/support them.
• Design and describe positive and negative controls in a research plan, and the statistical evaluations necessary to interpret results from the proposed experiments.
• Describe the entire range of potential results, indicate how each type of result would be interpreted, identify key follow-up steps, and design alternative approaches should the first line of research falter.

General Procedure: The Qualifying Examination is intended to be an independent, individual examination of a student’s readiness to begin the next phase of graduate study as a doctoral candidate developing, conducting and writing dissertation research. The sum of each student’s experiences in classes, laboratories and independent reading will have contributed to the preparedness for the examination.

Given the importance of the Qualifying Examination to a student’s progression, students absolutely may not engage in any laboratory work or conference travel during the time between when the question is selected and the time the oral examination is fully concluded (including any time required for remediation). This is not a vacation and students are expected to continue to work 40 hours a week focused on their Qualifying Exam. Student advisors will be notified by the PIN of this expectation. If a student has an ongoing experiment that will require attention during that time, the advisor and the student are expected to work together to find another way of tending the experiment without the student.

Qualifying Examination Committee:

PhD Students: QE committees consist of three members plus one or both Qualifying Exam Committee Chairs. One member is the faculty whose prompt is picked by the student, one member is faculty appointed by the Chair who brings expertise to numerous aspects of the topic covered by the question and/or relevant research design, and one member is chosen from those requested by the student. The student’s mentor is ineligible as an examiner. The QE Chair does not participate by asking questions of the student. The QE Chair runs the discussion/assessment period of exam following the end of the student’s presentation and oral exam and conveys to the student the final decision of the QE committee and announces the method of remediation if any is required.

MD/PhD Students: The composition of the Examination Committee in this case follows that of the PhD candidates except that all three of the members are chosen by the Qualifying Exam Chairs (i.e., the MD/PhD student is submitting their F30/research proposal for review and not choosing a faculty-submitted question). The student’s mentor or any other faculty collaborator on the grant application are ineligible as examiners. 

Timeline for the Qualifying Exam:

PhD candidates:

In approximately the second week of May (Monday before the second Wednesday of May) in Year 2, students receive a list of Qualifying Exam prompts. Students will have one week to decide on which question to answer. Students then have four weeks to produce their response to the exam question. The oral exam takes place a minimum of one week after the written exam is due.

QE Prompts provided: Monday before the second Wednesday in May

QE Prompt choice due: Monday before the third Wednesday in May

Written Qualifying Exam due: Monday after the second Saturday in June

Oral Qualifying Exam due: Week after the third Saturday in June

Remediation due: Monday, Thursday, or Friday preceding July 4^th (latest)

MD/PhD candidates: Beginning in the summer prior to G1 and continuing in the Fall semester of G1, the candidate and research mentor will develop an F30 application to be submitted to NIH. This document also will serve as the candidate’s dissertation proposal as well as the written portion of the Qualifying Exam. The normal timeline for MD/PhD candidates is accelerated and the F30 application is usually submitted for the December or April deadlines. The MD/PhD student’s QE can be held in the Fall semester or, depending on when the proposal is submitted, can be delayed into the Spring semester, but cannot be delayed further. Exact timing of the exam depends wholly on when the proposal is submitted and when the QE faculty can be provided the proposal for review (minimum, 2 weeks of review time) followed as soon as possible by the oral defense of the proposal.

WRITTEN QUALIFYING EXAM

A student may not choose a Qualifying Examination prompt that is submitted by their dissertation mentor or a question that is closely related to the student’s dissertation research. The QE Chair will make this determination in consultation with the PIN Executive Committee if necessary. Once a Qualifying Examination prompt is chosen and the choice is submitted to the PIN Office and/or QE Chair, it is to be worked on by each student with no help from others, including other students, faculty, post-docs or outside contacts. No use of artificial intelligence (e.g., ChatGPT) is allowed.

Format for the Written Qualifying Exam:

PhD candidates: The Qualifying Examination response is written following a typical NIH small grant proposal style. It should be no more than 7 pages long (1 page Specific Aims + 6 pages Research Strategy). It should be single spaced, 11 point Arial, 0.5 inch margins. It should also include a Literature Cited section (any standard format is acceptable) that does not count towards the 7-page limit. The Research Strategy section should include sections on 1) Significance, 2) Innovation, and 3) Approach.

MD/PhD candidates: The candidate will submit select sections of their F30 application [Specific Aims (1 page), Research Strategy (6 pages), Literature Cited], prepared according to NIH guidelines.

ORAL QUALIFYING EXAM

During the oral portion of the exam, the student briefly presents their written proposal and then fields questions from the QE Committee. Allowing another colleague (student, faculty, etc.) to read the written proposal or to rehearse the student for the oral exam is NOT PERMITTED. The QE Committee will be considering whether a student can reason through problems, is cognizant of potential problems that may arise, is well informed as to the methods employed in the research proposal and has a reasonable level of understanding of the neuroscience underlying the research.

Format for the Oral Qualifying Exam: Students deliver a 10-15 minute concise overview presentation of the research proposal presented as their Written QE. At the conclusion of the presentation, QE committee members ask questions about the experiments proposed and the fundamental neuroscience. Students should anticipate that such questions can include basic neuroscience knowledge upon which the proposal is based, statistical analysis, etc. It is expected that a typical oral exam will last 60-90 minutes.

OUTCOMES OF THE QUALIFYING EXAM

Three outcomes are possible for the Qualifying Examination:

1. Pass: No further steps are needed. Within a week of the oral exam, students will receive a short synopsis of strengths and weaknesses that the exam committee noted for their own information and for their official file.
2. Remediate: Students may be asked to rewrite part or the entire proposal, or to take a second oral exam, or both. All additional steps needed to "pass" must be completed within 7 days of the initial oral exam. Students will receive a written summary of the requested changes from the QE Chair on the same day as your oral exam.
3. Fail: If the exam committee does not believe that the student can remedy the problems identified during the oral exam within 7 days, the student will fail the Qualifying Examination. It is important to note that students who are otherwise in good academic standing, will NOT be terminated from the Program for not passing the Qualifying Examination on the first try. If a student does not pass the Qualifying Examination, the Program Director, in consultation with the Examination Committee and the Executive Committee, will determine what steps must be taken before the student will be permitted to take the Qualifying Examination again and will set the date of a second exam. Retaking the Qualifying Examination, however, must occur before the end of the third year in the Program.