Rules for Doctoral Comprehensive Exams

• Students will begin the comprehensive exams no later than six months after the last day of class of their 45 hours of course work. The course work the student registers for are the Communication Studies conference courses (180E, 280E, 380E, and/or 480E) on a Cr/NCr basis in a combination to equal the number of hours the student wishes to have. The purpose of graduate students registering for hours following completion of the work program course work is to prepare for the comprehensive exam and to stay continually enrolled as required by the UT Graduate School.

• The Graduate Coordinator or the Student’s Advisor will administer the comprehensive exam questions. The student is responsible for arranging for dates of the exam question delivery, informing the Administrator of those dates, and for the exam questions to be sent to the Administrator. The exam questions will be sent from the examining committee to the Administrator via email. The Administrator will send the questions to the student being examined via email on the dates arranged with the examining committee. The administrator monitors the dates of beginning and completing each exam question.

• When the student being examined has completed a question, it will be emailed to the Administrator. It is the student's responsibility to see that the committee has copies of the exam questions two weeks prior to the exam defense. The email dates of correspondence with the Administrator will be the official record of the examination period.

• The total length of the examination period for the comprehensive exams will be not more than 60 days from the start of question one. The total number of questions will be not be less than three and not more than four. (The number of sub-sets of questions for any single exam question will be decided at the discretion of the examining professor.) The length of time to complete any single question will be set by the examining professor and will not require more than 15 days from the date the student receives the question. Unless extenuating circumstances are documented, a student who fails to complete the comprehensive exam questions and turn them in to the Graduate Coordinator in the 60-day period will be cause for dismissal from the Graduate Program.

• Because scheduling the oral defense covering the written comprehensive questions requires aligning faculty availability, the student will schedule the meeting as soon as possible following the written exams. When a firm date is set, the student is responsible for reserving a room for the meeting, usually the Communication Studies conference room (CMA 7.114C) or the College of Communication Burson conference room (CMA 4.128) through CMS staff.