Like all faculty, I have served on a host of committees charged with administering qualifying examinations for Ph.D. students. (These are not to be confused with an oral thesis defense, which is theater of a different sort.) The vagaries of the examination format vary across departments and institutions, and even vary within departments over time, often recycling previous approaches. Sometimes the exams are oral, sometimes written, sometimes both. Whatever the format, they determine a student's suitability to pursue a Ph.D. As such, they are highly stressful.
While in computer science at Illinois, I remember a young faculty member objecting to the department's examination approach, arguing for the one used by their own graduate institution. One of the older and wiser faculty members then remarked wryly, "We had that policy two iterations ago. Wait a few years and it will return." I should note – it did, several years later when I was department head.
The problem is simple, but the process is not. There is no precise and fully predictive way to determine which students have the acumen, skill, determination, and intellectual taste to conduct research. The ennui felt by both faculty and students rests with the nature of this assessment, which is qualitative and subjective rather than quantitative and precise. The decisions are often difficult, and at times, the faculty pathos for struggling students can be gut wrenching.
To start an oral examination, one of my colleagues once asked a warmup, softball question: "If you were designing a laptop microprocessor, what logic family would you choose?" The answer, for those of you playing the game at home, is low power CMOS, the $100 answer in Jeopardy! The student responded, ECL, a high power technology, which is roughly equivalent to suggesting a steam powered, wood fired airplane, possible but not practical. I winced inwardly. Without missing a beat, the professor simply noted, "Might be a bit hot," and moved on to the next question. Sadly, it did not get much better after that, even though I was confident the student could have drawn circuits with both technologies and even estimated their power consumption. The student was simply paralyzed by the stress of the process.
Think First, Calculate Second
By the time science and engineering students reach graduate school, they have proven extraordinarily adept at solving well-defined problems using known techniques. Years of testing have both winnowed the pool and sharpened their skills. Apply the right hand rule; integrate by parts; use Newton's second law; exploit depth first search; or any of thousands of other theorems or (where necessary) rules of thumb. For such problems, there is almost always a single, correct answer. These problem solving skills are all necessary, for they demonstrate technical expertise, but they are not sufficient. One must think first, then calculate.
I'm not exempt from this, think first guidance. During my first semester of graduate school, I very quickly and pointedly learned the distinction between research thinking and problem solving. I enrolled in a course taught by a respected professor known for his rigor and high research expectations. Feeling well prepared, I walked into the course's first examination. To my surprise, it consisted of just four problems; all drew on the course content, but each was open ended and none were amenable to a "plug and crank" methodology. I sat there, exhilarated and terrified, considering possible solutions to what were both interesting and challenging problems, none of which I had ever considered before. I wrote what I hoped were cogent answers, then walked out, thinking I had either done extraordinarily poorly or exceedingly well, but equally unsure which.
The professor opened the next class by noting, rather sardonically, "The early returns are poor," and then expressed concern for students whose scores were in the single digits. With no further ado, he commenced the class. This, of course, reinforced all of my worst imposter syndrome fears of inadequacy, for I had come from a much smaller, less prestigious school. When the exams were finally returned, I learned I had done well, to my great relief. Perhaps I had the right stuff to play this game after all. I knew, though, that I would never subject my own students to that kind of unnecessary stress.
Choosing Wisely
What does all this mean? Research, unlike problem solving, is about the unknown. There are no answers in the back of the textbook, for there is no textbook. The old aphorism, sometimes attributed to Einstein, is true: research is what you do when you don't know what you are doing. Research problems are complex and ill-defined. Thus, the first and biggest challenge is in choosing and defining the research problem. (In the words of the old knight from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, "You have chosen … wisely." Conversely, if "You have chosen poorly," the consequences can be grave.) . Potential is not fully predictive.
One must make Intellectual choices, choose problems and directions wisely and define them appropriately. Taste does matter – successful researchers have good intuition about which problems are more interesting and which directions are most likely to yield success. Knowing what to ask is almost always as important, if not more important, than how to answer.
What that backdrop, I have had many students ask me what to expect in an oral qualifying examination. I have sometimes said, tongue in cheek but also with some candor, "We're trying to make sure you won't embarrass us if we give you a Ph.D." By that, I meant the student would be our ambassador, carrying our brand to the world. Thus, we expected him or her to uphold the international reputation of the department and exemplify its standards of excellence. I often then elaborated by explaining that the goal of a qualifying examination was to pose a set of ill-defined questions and see if the student could demonstrate plausible approaches to their solution – could they think creatively, given the tools and knowledge at their disposal.
Put another way, if faced with a new research question, could the student demonstrate reasonable and thoughtful approaches to possible solution, based on their knowledge of the field and its state of the art. These need not be the best or even the correct solutions, merely reasonable ones that talented and successful researchers would themselves employ. Simply put, it's about thinking creatively and thoughtfully when presented with the new and perhaps unexpected.
In that sense, research is a formalized approach to life. Choose wisely, indeed.
Recent Comments