This essay is intended as a guide to help faculty members who have been assigned to serve on a committee that administers an oral qualifying exam. However, you should be aware that there are secondary reasons for such exams. This guide helps.
Faculty can keep it handy during the exam and use the questions as needed.
In addition to the operator precedence, ask the student to recite major class hierarchies. If by some freak chance, a theory student actually knows the entire Greek alphabet and can write both the upper and lower case versions, move on to recursive function theory. There is no such list, but the student will not know that. They will instead be completely intimidated by the empahsis on understanding the publication order. At some time during the exam, you may need a general-purpose systems question that has a valid answer.