Committee

Timeline

  • Registration: Jan 6-12, 2025
  • Waiver decision: Jan 13-20, 2025
  • Exam period: Jan 20 - Mar 1st, 2025
  • Results released to students: Mar 20, 2025

Starting this year, in addition to the regular exam, which involves reading selected papers and answering related questions, we are introducing a waiver option for students who have demonstrated exceptional research achievements.

If you plan to request a waiver, please indicate this in your registration email and briefly explain the reason (e.g., a summary of your research accomplishments and CV). Additional materials might be requested later for the committee to evaluate waiver requests. Detailed procedures for waiver applications will be announced soon - please check back for updates.

If your name is not listed below and you plan to take the qualification exam in the systems area, it means you have not yet registered.

  • Tanuj Rao
  • Li Shaoyu
  • Inho Song
  • Changqi Sun
  • Munshi Ala Muid
  • Jin Heng
  • Hayden Estes
  • Ed Amanor
  • Minh Tran
  • Shoaib Asif Qazi
  • Evar Jones

Early Withdrawal Policy

Once students have notified the Computer Science Department of their intention to take the Systems and Networking Ph.D. Qualifier Exam, they may withdraw from taking the exam at any point prior to the public release of the exam questions. Once the exam questions are released, the exam is considered "in progress" and withdrawal is prohibited. Students with questions about this policy should contact the exam chair directly.

Academic Integrity

Discussions among students of the papers identified for the System's Qualifier are reasonable up until the date the exam is released publicly. Once the exam questions are released, we expect all such discussions will cease as students are required to conduct their own work entirely to answer the qualifier questions. This examination is conducted under the University's Graduate Honor System Code. Students are encouraged to draw from other papers than those listed in the exam to the extent that this strengthens their arguments. However, the answers submitted must represent the sole and complete work of the student submitting the answers. Material substantially derived from other works, whether published in print or found on the web, must be explicitly and fully cited. Note that your grade will be more strongly influenced by arguments you make rather than arguments you quote or cite.

Updates

  • [01/20/2025] Exam questions available, check here
  • [01/03/2025] Reading list available
  • [12/23/2024] The website is up

Reading List


Waiver

In cases where a student has demonstrated exceptional research prowess, such as through first-author publications in premier conferences within their area, the faculty committee will consider waiving the traditional qualifying examination requirements. We are currently implementing the guidelines for waiving the exam. Please indicate your intention to request a waiver by emailing the exam chair. Detailed procedures will be announced soon and please check back for updates. Even if a waiver is granted, students may still opt to follow the standard examination procedure to take advantage of the opportunity to directly engage with potential advisory committee members.

Written Exam

Each year, the Systems, Networking, and Cybersecurity faculty publishes a reading list of papers by the end of the fall semester and a list of integrative research questions to answer. The deadline for students to provide written answers to the research questions is usually within first few weeks of the spring semester. The goal of the written exam is to evaluate the student’s ability to creatively integrate content from the constituent systems research areas.


Please email your solutions document (in PDF format prepared in LaTeX) to Dr. Huaicheng Li (@huaicheng) by 3/1/2025.

Oral Exam

The written exam will be followed by an oral exam, where the student is expected to defend his/her solutions. Unless specifically requested, the student is not expected to make a formal presentation. In the oral exams, faculty may ask questions about any paper in the reading list to assess the student’s understanding of the subject. Oral exams will be scheduled individually for each student.

Assessment

After the oral examination, the examining faculty will determine the student's score for the examination process. The score is between 0 – 3 points, depending on the student's performance on both the written and oral components. These points may be applied toward the total score of 6 points necessary to qualify for the Ph.D. The assessment criteria, as defined by GPC, are as follows:
  • 3: Excellent performance, beyond that normally expected or required for a PhD student.
  • 2: Performance appropriate for PhD-level work. Prime factors for assessment include being able to distinguish good work from poor work, and explain why; being able to synthesize the body of work into an assessment of the state-of-the-art on a problem (as indicated by the collection of papers); being able to identify open problems and suggest future work.
  • 1: While the student adequately understands the content of the work, the student is deficient in one or more of the factors listed for assessment under score value of 2. A score of 1 is the minimum necessary for an MS-level pass.
  • 0: Student's performance is such that the committee considers the student unable to do PhD-level work in Computer Science.

Past Exams