Exam Committee

Exam Signup for Students

Please send an email to nm8247@vt.edu by 12/7 to sign up for the exam. In the email,

• Please include "[Qualifier_Spring_2021]" in the email title.
• In the content, please describe (1) your enrollment year, (2) your research area, and (3) your advisor.

   Notice that if a student is not from the Software Engineering research area, we will not provide the qualifier exam to the student.
If a student does not register for an exam by 12/7, we will not take any additional registration after that.

Exam Requirements

Every student will take an oral exam to introduce his/her research achievements in CS@VT so far and the research plan for the upcoming years before graduation. For instance, a student can introduce one major research project he/she has finished or has been working on, and then briefly discuss about two major research ideas to investigate as the future work for the PhD dissertation.

The exam will last for about one hour, including 45-minute oral presentation and 15-minute Q&A. The committee may ask questions during the presentation or ask more questions in the Q&A session. All students are welcome to listen to the talk and ask questions.

Evaluation

Students are expected to well explain

• the research background and motivation,
• the related work or existing literature on the same research topic,
• their own new approaches that advance the state-of-the-art techniques, or new methods to conduct empirical studies for a particular topic,
• their evaluation of approaches or empirical findings, and
• their plans for the future work.

The grading policy is as below:

• 0 point if the oral presentation is confusing or the research achievement is little,
• 1 point if the research achievement is sufficient, but the presentation is unsatifactory (e.g., poor content organization, hard-to-understand explaination, failure to answer questions)
• 2 points if both the research achievement and presentation are satisfactory, but the future plan is not well prepared (e.g., unconvincing, inconsistent with the work already achieved)
• 3 points if everything is good (i.e., sufficient research progress, clear presentation, and a feasible future plan)

After the exam, the committee will discuss about the result and give students comments, feedback, and suggestions. Finally, the chair will send emails to both students and GPC about the score.

Important Timelines

11/19/2020 - 12/7/2020: Exam Signup

12/8/2020 - 1/5/2021: Exam Time/Location Scheduling

1/6/2021 - 2/10/2021: Oral Exams

Registration Withdrawal Policy

During 12/8 - 1/5, if a student with registration does not settle down the exam time/location, the exam will be automatically withdrawn.