Expect to go out on your own to explore the various resources available at Carnegie Mellon and elsewhere, and put them together to meet your own educational needs. The qualifying exams occur at the end of a student s third semester. They include a Part A research paper and a Part B take home exam. The Part A paper is developed, written and submitted by the student, followed by an oral presentation and subsequent question and answer session with the faculty. Questions can relate directly to the analysis presented in the paper or to more general disciplinary knowledge and skills.
All students receive the same problem.
The student may not move on to their thesis proposal until both the Part A and Part B exams have been passed at the Ph.D. level. One or both of the exams is failed. Students have the chance to take the failed exam a second time, however, the student can neither move on to the thesis defense nor receive an MS degree unless the second exam is passed at the corresponding level. Students in this situation are at times advised to leave the program. The success rate of our students on qualifying exams in recent years has been very high.