Department of Physics & Astronomy

Coursework

Satisfactory completion of the courses listed below. Each course must be passed with a grade of B- or better and the student must maintain an average for all courses of B or better.

Comprehensive Examination

Ph.D. students must pass a comprehensive exam.  The exam will have two parts administered in the summer of the first year.  The first part will consist of an oral report on the research undertaken during the two graded research classes (PHYS 297).  The oral report will focus on the background, motivation, and methods of the research study.  (By comparison, the Candidacy Exam will focus more on preliminary results and plans for future work that will lead to a thesis, as described below.)  The second part of the comprehensive exam will be a written test on topics in Astronomy related to the Core courses listed below.
 
Based on the student’s overall performance on the comprehensive exams, the department will recommend a pass at the Ph.D. level, a pass at the M.A./M.S. level, or a fail.  The oral and written parts of the exam may each be repeated once by the end of the fall quarter of the second year if the initial performance was unsatisfactory.

Core Courses:

Elective Courses:

Qualifying Oral Examination

Ph.D. students must complete an oral qualifying exam in the general area of the student's proposed dissertation research.  The oral presentation should provide background and motivation for the dissertation research, preliminary results from this research, and a clear plan for completion of the thesis including a timeline for the acquisition of data (if relevant), analysis, other key milestones, and papers to be submitted to journals. The exam committee will be composed of the student’s research advisor, at least two other departmental faculty, and one faculty member from outside the department.  The exam must be taken before the end of the student’s third year in the program.  At the discretion of the committee, a student may be permitted to take it a second time.
 
After passing this exam and advancing to candidacy, students will provide yearly updates on their progress to the thesis committee.  The thesis committee will be comprised of the student’s research advisor and at least two other departmental faculty, typically those who have served on the student’s candidacy committee.

Doctoral Thesis

Doctoral candidates must complete a satisfactory written thesis that presents a review of existing knowledge relevant to the candidate's original research, an outline of specific problems addressed by the candidate’s work, and a detailed description of the strategies, analysis techniques and results of the candidate's original research.  The research must be of sufficiently high quality to constitute a contribution to knowledge in the subject area.  

Final Oral Examination

Doctoral candidates must perform satisfactorily in a final oral defense of their thesis before the candidate's thesis committee.