Ask Doctoral Advising

This is the last week before the summer quarter begins, so many of my advising colleagues and I have been talking to learners who are about to take their comprehensive exams.

Once again, I am hearing some of the myths that circulate among the learners about to take those dreaded comps. Some insist that they heard these myths from faculty at colloquia. Others admit they heard these myths from other learners. No matter who or what is the source of the myths, I try to do my part to give the learners correct information.

One of the current myths is that comps learners must write exactly 50 pages in response to the three questions or they will fail comps. Writing only 49 or 48 or 47 pages will result in the learner failing comps. No one can show me in the comps manual precisely where that 50-page requirement is stated (see the first doctoral commandment: Know thy resources). Certainly, comps learners do have 50 pages to utilize as they answer the three questions. Some learners are quite stressed out over hitting 50 pages exactly and are much relieved to find out that the 50-page requirement is just a myth. Some insist that they know learners who wrote only 47 or even 49 pages and failed. What the learners who failed probably do not share is that they did not answer the questions, they did not adequately use the literature, they did not write well, and they did not meet the other rubric requirements. Or some of those who failed wrote only 15 or 20 pages, which is simply not going to be enough to answer three complex questions.

Even after I try to dispel the myths, I know that some learners are going to choose to believe that 50-page requirement. I just hope they do not focus so much on hitting exactly 50 pages that they do not spend enough time focusing on the quality of those 50 pages.