EPIC Guide

Candidacy exam

The candidacy exam is your last requirement for the first year.

About the exam

Don’t freak out about the candidacy exam, but take it seriously and make sure you spend enough time on it. The main reason for dropouts is still the depth course. A small fraction of students do however fail their first attempt, 10% from 2013-2016. If you are one of them, take the evaluation of your advisor seriously, but don’t get too distressed either. All people who chose to try again in the years from 2013-2016 passed at the second attempt, because they managed to show their ability to improve.

Planning the exam

Dealing with your exam committee can turn out to be just as difficult as the exam itself. The following points should hopefully make it a bit easier:

1. Contact the committee as soon as possible, since they are super busy and it can be hard to find a date that suits everyone. You can start doing that even before your final choice of papers!
2. Define with your advisor a couple of dates that work for both of you; then send a doodle to your committee.
3. If your committee does not respond quickly to your doodle, ask your advisor to remind them.
4. Send the final date to your committee and include the topic of your candidacy and the papers you will be covering.

If you can choose your committee, which depends on the advisor, discuss with other students about their experiences: each advisor has their own way of evaluating students.

Mastering your exam

Finally, these points should help you reduce your stress level before / during your exam:

• Have dry runs with your colleagues / friends / family / pets / toys / … All PhD students agree that they are extremely helpful.
• Make sure to know everything that is on the slides, and don’t hesitate to put extra information in backup slides.
• Start your report sufficiently early so that you have a few days to re-read and edit it before the submission deadline. Use a spell-checker and have people read your report. Your advisor is not allowed to, but your colleagues are, so why not ask them!
• Don’t hesitate to ask your advisor what they expect from you during the exam.
• Show depth: Don’t just be familiar with what’s in the 3 papers that you’re presenting, but also the theory and prior work upon which they are built. Expect a few tough questions in this direction.
• Show critical thinking: Be aware of limitations and flaws of the papers you are presenting, and be ready to talk about them.
• Last but not least: invite friends to the first part of your candidacy exam. Like that you will have at least a few friendly faces in the audience.

One EDIC professor has added this useful piece of advice:

If I wanted to avoid distractions during the presentation, I’d start out with “Thank you for coming to my candidacy exam talk. I prepared slides for ~X minutes of presentation, leaving us ample time for questions at the end. I will be happy to take clarifying questions during the talk, if needed, but please hold the more elaborate questions for afterwards. This will make sure we keep the schedule on track.”

Conversely, if I did want the questions during the talk, I’d say “… I’ll be happy to take any questions you have during the talk. If things get too protracted and we risk derailing the schedule, I may defer some questions till after the talk, so please don’t feel offended.”

If a candidate said that (though I’ve never seen it in candidacy exams), I’d be truly impressed by their presence of mind and control of the presentation :-)