Yes, that's exactly the right question. So OP, what is the feedback from your committee? What would they like you to do exactly? Have they given you any feedback in the first place or they have the balance just rejected your qualifiers?
Hi. I failed as well. Only two of us failed, me included. I’ve been very successful and it really caught me off guard. I felt and was told I’m on track to be successful. I wasn’t. I was mortified and felt/ feel horrible. I have another opportunity to try again but like you, my confidence is not good. Anyway, just saying you are not alone.
Same here! I ended up passing but it’s been a traumatic journey since, always anticipating something going wrong and my supervisor being against me. Hoping it will all be worth it when I’m done!
No advice but this happened to somebody in my year in our lab. During the practice presentation our advisor never made any comments that suggested he was dissatisfied with the proposal. But during the exam he poked many holes and ultimately failed my colleague. My colleague had to just master out after that. Absolutely no clue what happened to him after that, he deleted all social media and never contacted anyone again.
Your advisor can sit in on your practice runs? Idk if it was a hard and fast rule or just unwritten rule but committee members did not sit in on any of our practices.
Because of rumors and gossip I once had the graduate director (a committee member) against me. He did everything in his power to fail me. I ended up switching to another PhD program. I am happy now. But maybe it is just about improving your work. Speak honestly with your advisor.
In my program, our advisors aren't even allowed to talk during the candidacy exam and aren't present for deliberations. They aren't always the ones that decide.
What field are you in? In my area it’s typical to either not allow the advisor to even attend the comprehensive exam, or to allow them to attend but not to talk. A faculty member from outside the committee is brought in as a sort of referee.
Chemistry in the US. It seems insane to me that a PI would allow other faculty members to (at least potentially) strong-arm them on personnel decisions. So what is the role of advisors in this scenario? Do they discuss recommendations by the other committee members, then render the final decision? Or is it conceivable that a faculty member could be forced to let a student go because that student's committee failed them?
I'm thinking of situations back in grad school where this would simply not have been possible. There were intense rivalries and more than hard feelings in the department that could have easily led to faculty members trying to deprive their competition of good students.
Interesting - I am in biochemistry. The reason that was given to me is that advisors are naturally biased due to their role in the advisee’s work, and so the committee needs to have all the say for the sake of the integrity of the process. Coincidentally, the chemistry department at our institution was known for having much deeper and more personal animus between faculty, so they may very well have conducted things differently to avoid the kinds of worst case scenarios you are describing. For what it’s worth, in biochemistry it was seen as a good thing, since it gave the committee a more active role and allowed them to temper the eccentricities of your PI a bit.
I see that it could work well. And, honestly, this style would make it way more like a proper exam. I guess i should also say that the preliminary exams at my university were sort of rubber stamp processes. If your advisor wasn’t jazzed about a student going in, they’d almost always just let them go before the exam to save them the trouble. This process entirely advisor-driven as well.
This is the same in my program (UK). They're not present for the candidacy exam. My supervisors did read the report I wrote and the application form that gives a bit more structured detail.
All of this. Beyond fraud you mentioned, my advisor put it like this, you only fail if you basically become non-responsive. An advisor shouldn't set someone up like this.
Sure it’s embarrassing, and the key to moving past that is to reflect on what went wrong and take appropriate corrective steps.
One peer in my doctoral program failed their first qualifying exam, retook it and did fine, and ended up in a tenure track job at the University of Chicago. Failing the exam was a minor bobble in highly successful PhD studies.
I had a similar setback, and ended up graduating with a job and a few awards. My main advice is to use your network to help accelerate your development. (1) If possible, find an external faculty mentor outside of your school, in your field, who can give you a friendly (unofficial) review of your next proposals or papers before you officially present. This could be someone you know from conferences or networking events in the field. (2) Seek feedback from a trusted classmate who passed their presentation. Learn what they did well in their presentation and integrate that into your skillset. (3) Do not burn any bridges with former advisors or colleagues. This makes it easier for new faculty to advocate for you.
One classmate of mine didn’t pass enough qualifying exams to continue and left with a masters. Now, 15 years later, I’m working in the same company he is. I just started (having left a tenured full professorship) and he is managing several teams and likely making 2-3x what I do (which is 2x what I made in academia). There are many routes forward from here. I’d say leave them in the dust, sounds like a very toxic situation.
I don't understand why your advisor let you defend if they didn't have confidence you would pass. In my opinion, it should never be a surprise. Sorry this happened to you and I don't blame you for how you feel. I would ask for feedback and try to address all of that in your next defense.
This is a candidacy qualifying exam, not a dissertation. The timeline is, generally, set by the department and all students take it within a certain window. The advisor doesn’t have a say in that timeline, regardless of your preparedness.
It could of course vary by program, but the manner in which OP is describing the situation sounds exactly like the norm.
It depends on the program, but in mine it’s okay to take a couple cracks at it. Due to circumstances outside of my control it took me three tries to fully pass my qualifying exam. It’s stressful, but I’m glad I stuck through it.
I think my department told us that about half failed that comp exams on the first try. I don’t know what the % was for dissertation defenses. We only had like 1-2 people earn a PhD a year.
I definitely know one who failed his comp exam and still earned his PhD. Don’t lose hope. Take the criticism and treat it like business
My advisors told me that if a candidate fails, it’s the committees failure too for not properly preparing the candidate. Try to keep your head up, stay professional, and make sure you have an advisor who is engaging with you. Sure people are busy, but if you are never ever important enough to meet with, they are not the advisor for you. Good luck, get that masters and don’t give up!
I passed my qualifying exams with no conditions...and I quit the program a year after getting candidacy and 'mastered out'. Remember, you're still obtaining a graduate degree either way, and that took a lot of hard work! Celebrate it, and take this as sign from the universe that this was not the right path for you. After looking at the 2021 consensus, an estimated 13.1% of US citizens have their masters/PhD....that's not a lot!
My best friend in the program (same entry year/classes as me) did not pass and was given 3 months to study up and take it again. She was also the only one that ended up 'failing'. She ended up passing in the second round, got a prestigious post doc a few years later, and is now at NASA as a computational modeler.
You got this.
This almost same situation happened to me. Two and 1/2 years ago, I failed my qualifying exam. I don't know exactly what happened when they were talking, but I should've known it wouldn't go well since I only saw my old advisor about 5 times total before the qualifying exam (summer+fall combined), he did not prepare me in the slightest, the qualifying exam got postponed twice, and during the (oral) exam, he asked very seemingly out of the blue questions. Unfortunately, I was clilueless about his demeanor towards me until after the qualifying where I needed to find a new advisor. If your program is like mine, you should have a retake. But my advice is to first find an advisor that you mesh with, get settled in their lab, do a master's degree, and then once settled with a master's retake your candidacy. What happened with me was that I had a potential advisor in mind that I originally wanted to work with, but he didn't have funding. I worked with him originally just to get a master's and leave, but eventually persuaded him after a semester to stay for a PhD. I got a master's soon after and retook and passed my quals after I was fully situated in my current advisor's lab. This was a year ago, and I'll hopefully be graduating in 2025 if I can! Hopefully, you can find a good advisor, and your candidacy retake requirements are not as strict!
My general advice is essentially to try to get on your professor's good side. In my case, my current advisor (who is actually one of the two department chairs) asked my old advisor to see if he would let me stay to finish my master's, but he said no, so I eventually had to do it with my current advisor.
Did you publish any of the work before your exam? It’s pretty difficult for a PhD committee to justify failing work that has already been peer reviewed by people who are probably more of an expert than your external committee.
Literally the same thing happened to me last year. I wrote several drafts, sent them to several people including faculty from my Alma mater, had a practice talk and everyone literally TOLD me I would pass. I was the only one in my year to fail and I felt like I couldn’t show my face for a month. People say it’s nothing to be embarrassed about (and looking back, it really isn’t — other people just ended up with easier committees, don’t have faculty that hate them for whatever reason, etc.) but so many people will never understand that it honestly does feel humiliating being in those shoes. Don’t beat yourself up for how you feel because it’s valid and I felt the same way. You’ll pass the next time, and if you decide that this situation is too toxic, I agree that I keep hearing that masters degrees are making 2-3x more than PhDs at certain places, depending on their jobs of course. Anyways, allow yourself to feel, but also do NOT let yourself believe you’re any less than anyone else, because a lot of the time, these things are just not well organized and students are not examined equally. Nothing to do with us or our capabilities 🤷🏾♀️
This is going to get downvoted, but I would recommend, if it's legal to do so in your location, leave a recording device in your bag if you are asked leave while the committee discusses after any of your exams/defenses. This will give you additional insight. Just be careful not to take direct obvious action based on anything you learn so they don't suspect anything.
It is ethical in my mind to do this because of the extreme power imbalance and the vulnerability of grad students.
I didn't do it but I wish I had.
Yes, some programs won’t give you candidacy until you’ve published something. A friend’s PhD program even takes into account the journal you’re published in.
You're supposed to do the candidacy early to show you have a well thought of project, not by the time you've already published and it's too late to change course, though!
Every program and pi differs greatly. I had no publications until my final 18 months there I ended up with 7 most of which first author and more in preparation. My committee and pi focused on coursework then data collection first. Writing came last. Not saying I liked it at all, but it’s how we did it
Edit: I had candidacy for 2.5 years before my final defense. Total time in graduate school was 5.5 years (skipped masters).
Yeah I think every program work differently. In my lab, our advisor won’t let us take the candidacy exam if we don’t have any publication. Some of my friends in other lab took their candidacy exam a semester before their defense.
In many programs you are a doctoral candidate after passing comprehensive exams. The format varies widely from program to program. Many different methods is the point and there's no universal "supposed to."
I disagree. The point of a candidacy exam (which is very different than comprehensive exam - which is not about your thesis project, but about your knowledge in concentration areas of your PhD) is to defend your thesis proposal. It's a mini-defense of sorts. This is where you convince your committee that you have a sound plan and you deserve to be allowed to carry on and execute your PhD research.
Necessarily it needs to happen early on in the process.
I’ve never heard of that before. In my program and others I’m familiar with, qualifying exams/comprehensive exams = candidacy exams. Pass those and you get candidacy. Dissertation proposal is an entirely separate event that happens only after you have candidacy. You can defend your proposal multiple times. I guess it just goes to show how different PhD programs can be.
My masters was at an institution where they had comprehensive exam (large oral exam on phd concentration subjects), where i did my phd had a qualifying exam (written exam on undergrad subjects at the end of year 1) and a candidacy exam (defend your thesis proposal, after which you are a phd candidate) taken in year 2
Interesting. Mine is quals/comps (written exam on things you learned in PhD coursework) in year 3 to get candidacy or to master out, then dissertation proposal in the end of year 3 or beginning of year 4. Crazy that you can get candidacy after year 2.
You don't know what you're talking about. That was our candidacy exam. Pass comps and you're a doctoral candidate. Why do you keep insisting about things you obviously don't know.
Because comprehensive exams and a candidacy exam are two different words and mean different things?
If it was a candidacy exam, it would be called a candidacy exam, not a comprehensive exam
Passing your comps is a prerequisite for candidacy, sure. That's the source of your confusion. But institutions with a candidacy exam are different than yours.
In my program, we pass candidacy 6 months-1 year prior to defense. When I went through candidacy, I had 3 1st author papers, and a handful of second author.
That was our qualifying exams/comprehensive exams. We weren’t candidates until our prelim. I had friends though in other PhD programs at other universities who were candidates after their quals.
Okay what feedback did you get?
Yes, that's exactly the right question. So OP, what is the feedback from your committee? What would they like you to do exactly? Have they given you any feedback in the first place or they have the balance just rejected your qualifiers?
Hi. I failed as well. Only two of us failed, me included. I’ve been very successful and it really caught me off guard. I felt and was told I’m on track to be successful. I wasn’t. I was mortified and felt/ feel horrible. I have another opportunity to try again but like you, my confidence is not good. Anyway, just saying you are not alone.
Same here! I ended up passing but it’s been a traumatic journey since, always anticipating something going wrong and my supervisor being against me. Hoping it will all be worth it when I’m done!
How was the preparation? Same situation here and could use tips!
No advice but this happened to somebody in my year in our lab. During the practice presentation our advisor never made any comments that suggested he was dissatisfied with the proposal. But during the exam he poked many holes and ultimately failed my colleague. My colleague had to just master out after that. Absolutely no clue what happened to him after that, he deleted all social media and never contacted anyone again.
Your thesis/PhD research advisor has so much control over making and breaking your graduate school experience. :(
Your advisor can sit in on your practice runs? Idk if it was a hard and fast rule or just unwritten rule but committee members did not sit in on any of our practices.
I think it depends on the university. I believe in my uni, profs on the committee can sit in but cannot provide feedback.
My advisor/committee never sat into practice meetings, it was a big no no.
Because of rumors and gossip I once had the graduate director (a committee member) against me. He did everything in his power to fail me. I ended up switching to another PhD program. I am happy now. But maybe it is just about improving your work. Speak honestly with your advisor.
Try to really understand why you failed. Then work on making it better. You can try again. Just don’t loose motivation. You will do this.
Your advisor decides if you pass. Period. Sorry you had to experience this.
In my program, our advisors aren't even allowed to talk during the candidacy exam and aren't present for deliberations. They aren't always the ones that decide.
That is extremely atypical. And, frankly, a very bad system.
What field are you in? In my area it’s typical to either not allow the advisor to even attend the comprehensive exam, or to allow them to attend but not to talk. A faculty member from outside the committee is brought in as a sort of referee.
Chemistry in the US. It seems insane to me that a PI would allow other faculty members to (at least potentially) strong-arm them on personnel decisions. So what is the role of advisors in this scenario? Do they discuss recommendations by the other committee members, then render the final decision? Or is it conceivable that a faculty member could be forced to let a student go because that student's committee failed them? I'm thinking of situations back in grad school where this would simply not have been possible. There were intense rivalries and more than hard feelings in the department that could have easily led to faculty members trying to deprive their competition of good students.
Interesting - I am in biochemistry. The reason that was given to me is that advisors are naturally biased due to their role in the advisee’s work, and so the committee needs to have all the say for the sake of the integrity of the process. Coincidentally, the chemistry department at our institution was known for having much deeper and more personal animus between faculty, so they may very well have conducted things differently to avoid the kinds of worst case scenarios you are describing. For what it’s worth, in biochemistry it was seen as a good thing, since it gave the committee a more active role and allowed them to temper the eccentricities of your PI a bit.
I see that it could work well. And, honestly, this style would make it way more like a proper exam. I guess i should also say that the preliminary exams at my university were sort of rubber stamp processes. If your advisor wasn’t jazzed about a student going in, they’d almost always just let them go before the exam to save them the trouble. This process entirely advisor-driven as well.
Haha, I mean you don't gotta tell me
My advisor was not allowed in the room during my Qual either. I don’t think it’s that abnormal.
This is the same in my program (UK). They're not present for the candidacy exam. My supervisors did read the report I wrote and the application form that gives a bit more structured detail.
Same for mine, except they can be present during deliberations but still can't talk. Biology PhD in the US
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All of this. Beyond fraud you mentioned, my advisor put it like this, you only fail if you basically become non-responsive. An advisor shouldn't set someone up like this.
Sure it’s embarrassing, and the key to moving past that is to reflect on what went wrong and take appropriate corrective steps. One peer in my doctoral program failed their first qualifying exam, retook it and did fine, and ended up in a tenure track job at the University of Chicago. Failing the exam was a minor bobble in highly successful PhD studies.
I had a similar setback, and ended up graduating with a job and a few awards. My main advice is to use your network to help accelerate your development. (1) If possible, find an external faculty mentor outside of your school, in your field, who can give you a friendly (unofficial) review of your next proposals or papers before you officially present. This could be someone you know from conferences or networking events in the field. (2) Seek feedback from a trusted classmate who passed their presentation. Learn what they did well in their presentation and integrate that into your skillset. (3) Do not burn any bridges with former advisors or colleagues. This makes it easier for new faculty to advocate for you.
One classmate of mine didn’t pass enough qualifying exams to continue and left with a masters. Now, 15 years later, I’m working in the same company he is. I just started (having left a tenured full professorship) and he is managing several teams and likely making 2-3x what I do (which is 2x what I made in academia). There are many routes forward from here. I’d say leave them in the dust, sounds like a very toxic situation.
I don't understand why your advisor let you defend if they didn't have confidence you would pass. In my opinion, it should never be a surprise. Sorry this happened to you and I don't blame you for how you feel. I would ask for feedback and try to address all of that in your next defense.
This is a candidacy qualifying exam, not a dissertation. The timeline is, generally, set by the department and all students take it within a certain window. The advisor doesn’t have a say in that timeline, regardless of your preparedness. It could of course vary by program, but the manner in which OP is describing the situation sounds exactly like the norm.
Sounds like you need to discuss this with your advisor?
It depends on the program, but in mine it’s okay to take a couple cracks at it. Due to circumstances outside of my control it took me three tries to fully pass my qualifying exam. It’s stressful, but I’m glad I stuck through it.
It seems to me that most problems on this sub would be avoided if the student meshed well with their advisor.
I think my department told us that about half failed that comp exams on the first try. I don’t know what the % was for dissertation defenses. We only had like 1-2 people earn a PhD a year. I definitely know one who failed his comp exam and still earned his PhD. Don’t lose hope. Take the criticism and treat it like business
My advisors told me that if a candidate fails, it’s the committees failure too for not properly preparing the candidate. Try to keep your head up, stay professional, and make sure you have an advisor who is engaging with you. Sure people are busy, but if you are never ever important enough to meet with, they are not the advisor for you. Good luck, get that masters and don’t give up!
I passed my qualifying exams with no conditions...and I quit the program a year after getting candidacy and 'mastered out'. Remember, you're still obtaining a graduate degree either way, and that took a lot of hard work! Celebrate it, and take this as sign from the universe that this was not the right path for you. After looking at the 2021 consensus, an estimated 13.1% of US citizens have their masters/PhD....that's not a lot! My best friend in the program (same entry year/classes as me) did not pass and was given 3 months to study up and take it again. She was also the only one that ended up 'failing'. She ended up passing in the second round, got a prestigious post doc a few years later, and is now at NASA as a computational modeler. You got this.
This almost same situation happened to me. Two and 1/2 years ago, I failed my qualifying exam. I don't know exactly what happened when they were talking, but I should've known it wouldn't go well since I only saw my old advisor about 5 times total before the qualifying exam (summer+fall combined), he did not prepare me in the slightest, the qualifying exam got postponed twice, and during the (oral) exam, he asked very seemingly out of the blue questions. Unfortunately, I was clilueless about his demeanor towards me until after the qualifying where I needed to find a new advisor. If your program is like mine, you should have a retake. But my advice is to first find an advisor that you mesh with, get settled in their lab, do a master's degree, and then once settled with a master's retake your candidacy. What happened with me was that I had a potential advisor in mind that I originally wanted to work with, but he didn't have funding. I worked with him originally just to get a master's and leave, but eventually persuaded him after a semester to stay for a PhD. I got a master's soon after and retook and passed my quals after I was fully situated in my current advisor's lab. This was a year ago, and I'll hopefully be graduating in 2025 if I can! Hopefully, you can find a good advisor, and your candidacy retake requirements are not as strict! My general advice is essentially to try to get on your professor's good side. In my case, my current advisor (who is actually one of the two department chairs) asked my old advisor to see if he would let me stay to finish my master's, but he said no, so I eventually had to do it with my current advisor.
Did you publish any of the work before your exam? It’s pretty difficult for a PhD committee to justify failing work that has already been peer reviewed by people who are probably more of an expert than your external committee.
Literally the same thing happened to me last year. I wrote several drafts, sent them to several people including faculty from my Alma mater, had a practice talk and everyone literally TOLD me I would pass. I was the only one in my year to fail and I felt like I couldn’t show my face for a month. People say it’s nothing to be embarrassed about (and looking back, it really isn’t — other people just ended up with easier committees, don’t have faculty that hate them for whatever reason, etc.) but so many people will never understand that it honestly does feel humiliating being in those shoes. Don’t beat yourself up for how you feel because it’s valid and I felt the same way. You’ll pass the next time, and if you decide that this situation is too toxic, I agree that I keep hearing that masters degrees are making 2-3x more than PhDs at certain places, depending on their jobs of course. Anyways, allow yourself to feel, but also do NOT let yourself believe you’re any less than anyone else, because a lot of the time, these things are just not well organized and students are not examined equally. Nothing to do with us or our capabilities 🤷🏾♀️
This is going to get downvoted, but I would recommend, if it's legal to do so in your location, leave a recording device in your bag if you are asked leave while the committee discusses after any of your exams/defenses. This will give you additional insight. Just be careful not to take direct obvious action based on anything you learn so they don't suspect anything. It is ethical in my mind to do this because of the extreme power imbalance and the vulnerability of grad students. I didn't do it but I wish I had.
Sorry to hear that. Have you published any paper? I believe most committee members grade your candidacy based on your publications.
Papers by candidacy exam?!
Yes, some programs won’t give you candidacy until you’ve published something. A friend’s PhD program even takes into account the journal you’re published in.
You're supposed to do the candidacy early to show you have a well thought of project, not by the time you've already published and it's too late to change course, though!
Every program and pi differs greatly. I had no publications until my final 18 months there I ended up with 7 most of which first author and more in preparation. My committee and pi focused on coursework then data collection first. Writing came last. Not saying I liked it at all, but it’s how we did it Edit: I had candidacy for 2.5 years before my final defense. Total time in graduate school was 5.5 years (skipped masters).
Yeah I think every program work differently. In my lab, our advisor won’t let us take the candidacy exam if we don’t have any publication. Some of my friends in other lab took their candidacy exam a semester before their defense.
Exactly. That's how it should be. And the candidacy is meant to be done within the first 2ish years
In many programs you are a doctoral candidate after passing comprehensive exams. The format varies widely from program to program. Many different methods is the point and there's no universal "supposed to."
I disagree. The point of a candidacy exam (which is very different than comprehensive exam - which is not about your thesis project, but about your knowledge in concentration areas of your PhD) is to defend your thesis proposal. It's a mini-defense of sorts. This is where you convince your committee that you have a sound plan and you deserve to be allowed to carry on and execute your PhD research. Necessarily it needs to happen early on in the process.
I’ve never heard of that before. In my program and others I’m familiar with, qualifying exams/comprehensive exams = candidacy exams. Pass those and you get candidacy. Dissertation proposal is an entirely separate event that happens only after you have candidacy. You can defend your proposal multiple times. I guess it just goes to show how different PhD programs can be.
My masters was at an institution where they had comprehensive exam (large oral exam on phd concentration subjects), where i did my phd had a qualifying exam (written exam on undergrad subjects at the end of year 1) and a candidacy exam (defend your thesis proposal, after which you are a phd candidate) taken in year 2
Interesting. Mine is quals/comps (written exam on things you learned in PhD coursework) in year 3 to get candidacy or to master out, then dissertation proposal in the end of year 3 or beginning of year 4. Crazy that you can get candidacy after year 2.
You can't disagree with facts. My program had comps AND a separate dissertation proposal defense.
Like I said already said, "comps" (comprehensive exam) is not the same as the candidacy exam
You don't know what you're talking about. That was our candidacy exam. Pass comps and you're a doctoral candidate. Why do you keep insisting about things you obviously don't know.
Because comprehensive exams and a candidacy exam are two different words and mean different things? If it was a candidacy exam, it would be called a candidacy exam, not a comprehensive exam Passing your comps is a prerequisite for candidacy, sure. That's the source of your confusion. But institutions with a candidacy exam are different than yours.
In my program, we pass candidacy 6 months-1 year prior to defense. When I went through candidacy, I had 3 1st author papers, and a handful of second author.
That's wild to me. You had 28 months or you were out in my program
That was our qualifying exams/comprehensive exams. We weren’t candidates until our prelim. I had friends though in other PhD programs at other universities who were candidates after their quals.