●Objective
-To assess if the student has identified a research opportunity and is able to place in context the opportunity with respect to the state-of-the-art. The following are expected for the exam:
■The student delineates the challenges and a viable approach to meet the challenges presented.
■The student provides preliminary evidence the bolsters the approach
■The student provides a timeline for the final defense
●The OPE will be in-person; all committee members and the student have to be present in-person.
The following requirements must be met with GSSP before the PhD Preliminary Oral Examination can be authorized:
1. You must hold active status at the time of the examination.
2. Your Graduate Degree Plan form (if you started your program before Fall 2020) or GPAS Planner (if you started your program after Fall 2020) must be approved and on file with GSSP.
Note: minors must be declared and approved prior to the PhD Preliminary Oral Exam.
3. The results of your Prelim Written Exam (PWE) (reported by our program to GSSP) must be on file with GSSP.
The main purpose for the Preliminary Oral Exam (POE) is to ascertain that the student has identified the main thrust of the PhD thesis. The POE exam committee will ascertain via the student presentation whether the following are delineated clearly (1) Motivation and Opportunity Identification of the thesis research thrust (2) Related literature review and unresolved challenges that the thesis research will address (3) Preliminary results (4) Future Plan of research and related timeline.
Below are the steps to completing the Preliminary Oral Exam. These steps can also be found here.
Complete at least one semester prior to exam at: http://z.umn.edu/examcommittees
Schedule your exam at least one week in advance.
Schedule your exam directly with your committee and program staff. Remember to follow all of your program’s scheduling requirements.
When you have completed all of the eligibility requirements for the preliminary oral exam, you will receive an email from GSSP. This email will include a link to initiate your Preliminary Oral Exam Report for Doctoral Students form. A copy of this email will be in your Communication Center in MyU.
At least one day prior to your preliminary oral exam, initiate the form to review your examining committee for accuracy and send the form to your committee chair.
Committee chair submits the result of your exam through the Preliminary Oral Exam Report for Doctoral Students form.
Additional Information:
Voting Requirements for the PhD preliminary oral examination:
At the end of the closed examination, the candidate is excused from the room and an independent, non-binding vote is taken before discussion of the examination begins. This initial non-binding vote is intended to represent the independent assessment of each committee member of the student’s performance free from undue influence of other committee members. Following discussion, a final vote is taken and is recorded on the examination form.
The outcome of the preliminary oral examination is recorded in one of three ways: pass, pass with reservations, or fail.
*The outcome is recorded as “pass with reservations” in situations where to achieve the minimum number of votes to reach a verdict of pass, any vote of pass with reservations is included. For example, on a four-person committee, if there is one “pass with reservations” vote and three pass votes, the result is pass. If there is one “pass with reservations” vote, one fail, and two pass votes, the result is pass with reservations.
Students who do not earn the minimum number of passing votes fail the examination. A vote to pass the student with reservations still constitutes a passing vote.
Voting Proportions Necessary to Pass Exam
# Committee Members Minimum # of votes needed to pass
Four Three
Five Four
Six Four
Seven Five
NOTE- You can start taking EE 8888 thesis credits once you pass the OPE. If you are currently registered for EE 8666 pre thesis credits, you can now convert those over to EE 8888 the same semester you pass the OPE. Please make sure you are completing all thesis credits in two semesters, either by register for 12/12 or 14/10 credits if you need to take a class.
Expectations for all presentations - the PWE, OPE and Final Defense have to be in person
Student needs to be in person for the oral parts of the exam
The total number of required committee members for each oral presentation need to attend in person for the oral part of the exam. If you have additional members, if needed, they can attend remotely.
Exceptions are only for extenuating circumstances.