Do you feel a sense of impending challenge coming at you? If you do, the comprehensive exams must be closing in. If you've arrived here, you are about to endure the first significant hoop to jump through in the final Doctoral process. You might be thinking: "Dr.G, you have no idea what I've been through; how can you say THIS is the first major hoop?" That is a fair point, dear reader. You have undergone a lot to get to this point and should feel an immense sense of accomplishment, but this process is literally where the academe separates the candidates (or ABDs) from the Doctors.
What is an ABD?
This acronym was a term I was familiar with before my journey, but the full scope of the implications was a new discovery. ABD is a term applied to Doctoral Candidates when they have completed "All But the Dissertation."
When you are still working towards the degree, this term becomes a marker of progress, but if this is where you fall out, it becomes an indicator that, for whatever reason, you didn't make it. From the behaviors and impressions I've seen, this is not a term of endearment nor an accolade when in an incomplete-and-no-longer-pursuing scenario. The larger whole of academia (though individual exceptions are undoubtedly present) does not value the work unless the individual makes it 'all the way,' which can add pressure to perform. Maybe that's the point? Honestly, I have no idea.
Having explained that, please do not think there is NO value in the work you've done and the experience you've had getting to this point. What you accomplished by completing all the coursework is the necessary preparation and skill-building required to face the final hurdles, and that in and of itself is valuable. Other industries may also find these skills of value in different roles, so you're only pigeonholed if you're looking to enter specific academic positions. At any rate, back to comps.
A found image of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbs as he panic exams. We’ve all felt this, right?
What are the Comprehensive Exams (Comps)?
Does it mean Compression Learning? How about Comparable Research Methods? Composure training? Is it a sickness? No to all the above (though TBF, you may feel sick during the process if stress management is not a thing for you or you struggle with High-Performance Anxiety).
Comprehensive Exams or more commonly referred to as Comps is a course designed to assess the soundness of your research abilities and knowledge concerning your chosen discipline.
According to Tara Kuther, Ph.D., Comps cover a broad array of materials and topics within your years in the program and often vary by degree, level of mastery, and discipline. More simply explained, Comps can come in all shapes and sizes.
At the Doctoral level, exams often take the response format of research and writing within a limited or compressed (I guess 'compression' is a variable here, after all) timeframe. Comps can involve responding to a specific question as a writing and research prompt or can be used to further the research work on the dissertation home front again, pending the design of your chosen degree. Turnaround time can be as long as two weeks or as short as eight hours, with the length requirements usually increasing with additional time.
The other aspect of Comps is the on-your-own-ness nature of the challenge. Your professor or course proctor will likely meet with you the first week to explain what you will be facing and the deadlines and present the questions either progressively throughout the course or all at once.
Then, you are left to do the work. Feedback is given once the exams are over by design, leaving you to your devices to produce quality work quickly. The experience requires both critical thinking and project management skills. As such, we'll discuss project management skills and tools for Doctoral students in the next post. (Stay tuned)
In my Comps experience with our now very small-but-mighty cohort, we had two questions to respond to and a final knowledge assessment. We had about four weeks to respond to the first prompt and two weeks to respond to the second prompt. The first prompt asked us to discuss the background information that informs our research problem and provide a cogent rationale for the study, including the facets that would come to be our Chapter 1. The second prompt concerned the factors and processes of our proposed study's methodological design or the foundations for what would become Chapter 3.
Did you notice we skipped a chapter there? If so, well done! The reality is you need to have done the extensive legwork of writing your Chapter 2 to have a well-composed, research-backed Chapter 1. In theory, it might be more advantageous to start by writing your Chapter 2 entirely and backtracking to write the first chapter, but your professors and program will make that call.
Another aspect of this adventure is we're no longer grading on a letter-based or numerical scoring system. At this point, there are two possibilities, you either pass or you fail. Ouch! Pass/fail will be the grading system from here on in, so there's no grey (or gray) zone here. You are 'all in' with every hand (if this were a high-stakes poker game). Exciting, huh?
Note: If you fail, programs usually allow you to retake comps once. If you fail a second time, this means you stop here. You need to either find another program and start over or discuss options (if there are any) with your academic advisor and department head. No matter how you slice it, it's not a great place to be, so let's discuss how you can avoid this situation.
Tips for Improving Your Odds
Many hedging methods to improve your odds come from work you should have been doing before arriving in Comps. Check out past posts for those tips but be advised, this includes addressing the feedback given to you in the preparatory course (or courses) concerning your research topic and the work you have done up to this point.
A thing a great professor wants to say to candidates that argue every step of the way.
It seems incredibly simple, right? This quote was one I heard from a fantastic professor that was explaining repeating pain points experienced from cohort to cohort. Remember, in most cases, professors try their darndest (technical term) to help you succeed, but candidates may choose to argue nuances with their profs. rather than make the suggested changes or address feedback given to them.
TBF, I see this in students as well and get it. You might push back to understand a point made by your prof. further, you may avoid rework or extra work, or it may be based on your convictions or experience. There is always a time and a place for discourse, but when you're in a make-or-break situation, taking the feedback given to you by the one that determines your fate might be the best course of action.
This scenario may be your first 'go' at this level, but this is NOT the first rodeo (per se) for your professor. They know what to look for, have been in your shoes, and earned their "Dr.". With that in mind, you better have some compelling research or a poignant point of consideration to push against the notes they're giving you before comps. More so, they might be explicitly LOOKING to see that you addressed the notes they gave you, which will not bode well if you choose not to include it without good reason.
You have one of two options:
Make the recommended changes and learn about the AOIs you have going forward
Keep doing what you want and roll the dice
I recommend swallowing your pride and doing the work. Once you've passed comps, if you notice discrepancies, inconsistencies, or conflicts in the feedback from your committee or you can address it at that time.
This juncture leads up to the next tip:
Sound advice from an incredible artist.
You have a very short time to produce quality work. While this should be second nature by this point, adding heightened time pressure in these circumstances may cause us to forget those good habits in favor of the 'getting-it-done' mindset (no judgment; I've fallen prey to this as well); ensure that part of that time is dedicated to sweeping your writing (or copy) for spelling, grammar, name checks, and unintentional plagiarism. I picked up one life-saving copy-sweeping method from working as an intern in a Creative Advertising department (in La La Land); the Three-pass Copy Scan Method. Here's how it works:
Scan for writing continuity: spelling, grammar, syntax, tone, and style
Check and confirm all names are spelled correctly (especially for high-profile celebs. or software names)
Check again for 1 and 2
Why does sound copy matter?
Aside from the expectations in your program, writing quality demonstrates proficiency or competency, at least on a subliminal level. If readers are focused on making sense of what you're telling them, they're not focused on the merits of your research. In advertising or marketing-adjacent fields, copy errors are not just annoying but also expensive.
I'll give you a quick example: Let's say you find a copy error on a movie poster (called a one-sheet in the industry). If you catch it before the print run, you may have to pay for a resubmit or deal with the costs to expedite production to make up lost time. While bad, this is NOT the worst-case scenario.
What happens if you don't catch a mistake until after the prints have been run and are being readied for distribution? Then you need to pay for an emergency response measure which includes:
New print run costs
Expedited printing costs
Expedited packaging costs
Expedited shipping costs
The cost of the original print run (which will now need to be destroyed to protect the brand, so you must either pay an intern to shred for a day or pay a service to take care of it)
These costs can quickly rack up to thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Yikes!
With that said, is the three-pass method time-consuming? Yes. Helpful?
Heck yes! Cheaper? Well, given the example above, my vote is: absolutely! This approach helped me reduce about 80% of my writing errors. Is my writing perfect? Absolutely not, but improvement is an improvement, and the Pareto principle may be applicable here.
Once you've used this method, run the copy through an editing software such as Grammarly or the editor in MS Word. (There is NO excuse nowadays; everything, including the Adobe Suite, has a spell-check feature.) Then, get a second or a fresh pair of eyes on it. After working on the same project for a while, you grow less critical or observant of the contents. This phenomenological bias is why having another party check your work becomes valuable. They may see a missed error since this is new. If your institution has a writing resource center or club, use it.
Planning for Comps Success:
Creating an outline before you start researching/writing is a great technique, and I'll reaffirm it here. For formal writing, at least, go in with a plan. As the great Benjamin Franklin said,
A true thing Benjamin Franklin once said.
Build the skeleton before adding the research 'muscle' or the writing aesthetics. Ensure you have also included every requirement in the response prompt. Doing so accomplishes a few things:
You'll know what to research and write to hit the points you need
You'll ensure you have included all of the requirements
You can focus on the trees (sections) instead of the, at times, paralyzing view of the forest of work (chapters)
You gain a better sense of the amount of time you'll need to spend to complete the undertaking
Another Flavor of Comps
The process I described is merely one flavor of the Comps experience. According to Jason Karp, Ph.D., some flavors can also involve an oral exam which resembles an intensive interviewing process. Questions concern topics covered throughout the entire 2-3 years of study within your chosen program. Karp notes his oral defense lasted about two hours and, once finished, was left waiting outside the conference room for his committee to render their decision. Agonizing!
The next post will discuss project management tips for doctoral students, followed by the next significant element of a dissertation, selecting your dissertation committee. Til' next time!