The class taking the exam may agree among themselves to choose a common group of texts to allow for group study. Committee members receive a copy of the student's list in April, so that they have the summer to review books they have not read recently or at all. The student will probably want to meet individually with the three committee members to discuss expectations for the exam, possible lines of questioning, and so forth. And the committee members will probably want to confer in advance of the exam regarding their approach to the list. Examiners should ask questions of a sort that any colleague or student might ask a professor, and thus the examination is an index both of the student's scholarly command of the history of literature in English and also of his or her capacity as teacher and critic.
All examinations take place on a single day, the day after Labor Day.
These are oral exams lasting two hours and graded Pass or Fail. In addition to the grade, the chair of each committee fills out a brief evaluation form, characterizing the specific strengths and weaknesses of the candidate's performance, and submits this to the Graduate Chair immediately after the exam.