I failed these exams the first time around. Graduate schools usually give you two chances. I was a B student from a small liberal arts college. I had to work hard to pass those exams. To me, it only proves the point that you don't have to be brilliant to get where I am.
Hard work counts too.
Please tell us about the project you are working on now. The collaboration consists of no more than 30 experimenters including all the students, postdocs and professors. The experiment is designed to produce and detect billions of a particular kind of particle and their anti-particle. Then we sift through them using computers, looking for a special sort of deviant behavior that indicates this CP violation. The effect is expected to be small, and we may not have the statistics to see it all . . .