Systems and Networking Ph.D. Qualifier Exam

Spring 2012

Examining Faculty

Examination Format

Registering with qualifiers Chair

Please send an email to Dr. Back at gback (at) cs vt edu before the release of the exam to indicate your desire to take the exam. Note that this is in addition to any notification of intent to the CS department. The set of currently registered students is listed at the bottom of this page.

Early Withdrawal Policy

Once students have notified the Computer Science Department of their intention to sit for the Systems and Networking Ph.D. Qualifier Exam, they may withdrawal 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. For more information on proper citation of sources, we strongly recommend that you study the guidelines and examples given in Appendix IIIa of the Constitution of the Graduate Honor System. Note that your grade will be more strongly influenced by arguments you make rather than arguments you quote or cite.

Exam Schedule

Written Questions

Each year, the Systems & Networking faculty publishes a reading list of papers by the end of the fall semester and a list of integrative research questions to answer within a 10-14 day period. 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.

See Past Exams and Sample Solutions.

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.

Blacksburg students are required to be physically present during the oral exam. Oral exams will not be conducted via teleconferencing, except for NRC or VT Mena students.

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:

Reading List

Registered Students

Past Exams and Sample Solutions