UC Davis CS Qualifying Examination

As I note on my page about my grad student work, the Davis CS qualifying examination is a grueling process that took me a long time to navigate. Considering this, I've put this page together to share what I learned for my fellow students. Of course my experiences will be unique to the Computer Science Department at UC Davis -- obviously, other departments and universities are very different. For those that aren't aware, the qualification exam is the big thing in CS at Davis: the prelims (or comps) are usually waived, and there's no dissertation defense, so it all comes down to the quals.

• You'll hear it from others and I'll reinforce it: your committee is here to help you -- when getting questioned by the committee there's a tendency to feel like they're attacking you, especially when they're nit-picking your research that you've spent years on so far. You have to keep in mind that their goal is to ensure that you finish your dissertation and that it meets everyone's expectations.
• My qualification examination was easily the most stressful thing I've ever done, and I haven't lived a sheltered life. I don't have any bald blood relatives. My maternal grandfather died with a full, thick head of hair, and I'm not even thirty and started distinctly thinning.
• The paperwork you receive from Davis states that you will either pass, not pass, or fail the examination. What it doesn't prepare you for is what happened to me and many others I know: the "conditional pass" where the committee says, "you didn't not pass, and won't have to retake the exam, but we want to see some revisions to your proposal before we pass you." So while it's best to pass that day, just don't be surprised if that happens to you.
• My committee told me that the survey portion of my work was excellent, however they found my proposal lacking. Take a look at it yourself (on the page linked above) for a guideline of what not to do:
  • They thought it was too broad and that any one of the questions I wanted to address should probably be dealt with in enough depth to be a dissertation in and of itself.
  • They wanted to see more formalism, like methodologies and frameworks that my findings would fit into, such that the answers I found could be applied or adapted to a variety of environments.
  • Some said they would have liked to have seen some proofs of concept to demonstrate that my approach had merit (although I find this mentality in research of, "we'll only approve or fund your research once you show it works," to be aggravating and counterintuitive -- further it discourages the publication of negative results forcing others down the same dead-end path).
  I now realize that this discontinuity in my paper stems from the fact that I've read many good survey papers and know what a good survey paper should look like. Prior to committing my TeX to lpr, I had only seen the draft of one other dissertation proposal, so I didn't know what a good one looked like. Talk to your advisor and other students and get your hands on a couple so you have something to use as a guide.
• One of the mistakes that I made was rushing to finish my proposal so that I could take the exam by the end of the school year, instead of waiting for fall. This leads to two recommendations:
  1. Make sure your advisor is 100% on board and happy with your proposal before even scheduling your exam.
  2. Make sure all your committee members have three weeks before the exam to read your proposal (granted, there will always be some profs who won't, but I think most will given enough time).
  In retrospect, I wished I would have spent the summer perfecting my proposal and taken the exam in the fall (although I understand that given the time limits to advance to candidacy, this isn't an option for some, but that wasn't a concern for me).
• One of my committee members didn't show because his flight back from a conference the previous day was delayed, which leads to my next recommendation: Don't just schedule for a day that all your committee members can be there, but make sure that they will be in town at least 24 hours in advance.
• One of my committee members was from another University. While he had been to Davis before for conferences and the like, figuring out where to park near Kemper (nee EUII) proved trying (as it was for me first time I came to campus): if you are fortunate enough to be graced by a visiting committee member, make sure they have a campus map, know where to park and where Kemper is.
• My understanding is that the committee can ask you anything in your major or even minor area of study. I did not get a single question that was not related to my proposal. Now maybe this is just because that gave them enough fodder, however I suspect it is fairly typical.
• You will be sent out of the room once at the beginning for the committee to talk about you, and again at the end for them to confer over your proposal. If your quals are in 1131, this might mean you're left standing in the hall for up to a half hour, with no place to sit (and I didn't want to sit on the floor dressed to the T's): you might want to stash one of the chairs from 1131 out in the hall before you start (I don't know what the facilities people will say about that, but I suspect they'll understand).