As of August 2009, new requirements to advance to candidacy in S&E:

Reading lists for oral exams:

 Reading lists for oral doctoral exams must be approved 4 months in advance of the exam date (or estimated exam date)

Oral exam committee members and the student’s major professor/chair of guiding committee will sign.

To facilitate administration of this new guideline, and to enable students and their professors to plan, four dates will be set each year as deadlines for exams to take place at least four months hence.

The dates are:  Sept 15, Dec. 15, April 15, and July 15.

 [If these dates fall on a saturday or sunday or holiday, the friday before that weekend will be the default deadline date. ]

 Signatures can be made electronically. 

The student is responsible for having all reading lists ready at this date and the relevant field examiner’s signature on their parts of the reading list; the guiding professor or chair of the dissertation committee will sign off on the completed set. 

Oral exam timing:

ESPM rule: Students can not take there orals in the first year as grad students at UCB – to protect a student from a professor pushing to do so because they do not want to pay international or out of state fees.  In a special case, the student can request permission from the GPC/GPC chair.

The guidelines for timing of exams:

In general, we noted that the “norm” for exam dates for S&E students is the 5^th or 6^th semester of study. Longer periods may be needed for students pursuing interdisciplinary expertise across the social/humanities and biological/physical sciences.

1^st year exams:  need permission

2^nd year exams : possible for people who come into S&E with masters degrees in the area they are going to do research in for their doctoral work

3^rd year exams for people with masters degrees in a different area or with a bachelors’ degree.

Note: Oral exams are not a means of reducing tuition for international students.  We agreed on this emphatically.  Using them to this end is unfair to the students and unfair to us as a collective program.

Research proposal assessment / Prospectus Approval:

In order to advance to candidacy (in addition to passing the oral examination and fulfilling other requirements for advancement to candidacy), PhD candidates must also obtain written approval of their dissertation research proposal from each member of their anticipated dissertation committee.  This approval must be secured within a short period of time after the oral exam, normally at a meeting of the dissertation committee, within four weeks of that exam.  At the very least, the Chair of the dissertation committee and one other committee member must be present at the meeting to discuss the dissertation proposal. It is therefore advised that candidates set up this meeting of dissertation committee members at roughly the same time they set the date for their oral exam.