What I need to know to be officially in the Ph.D. program.

The year after obtaining a masters or the second year of a Ph.D. program, a prospective doctoral candidate has two chances to pass what is known as a "Preliminary Written Exam." With this exam, you are officially part of the Ph.D. program. Your basic knowledge of your field is expansive enough and detailed enough to be all doctory and shit.

I had kind of forgotten about this. Then I received an email about the last exam for this year. It included this link: PhD Written Preliminary Reading List. So I printed it off... The topics are:

• Computer architecture
• Magnetics
• Computer Aided Design
• Software
• Optics
• Fields and Transmission Lines
• Power Systems and Power Electronics
• Communications
• Signal Processing
• Controls
• Analog and Digital Electronics
• Semiconductor Materials
• Semiconductor Devices

So basically, EVERY CLASS I'VE EVER TAKEN IN THE EE DEPARTMENT IS RELEVANT AND COULD BE ON THE EXAM!!

So, you have 4 hours, 14 questions, department supplied scientific, non-graphing, non TI-89 calculators. Questions are graded by the faculty that wrote the question. You must turn in the answers for three questions. Four questions may be turned in as well (top three scores will be taken into account).
3 pass, 0 fail = pass
2 pass, 1 fail = careful scrutinizing, possible failure.
everything else = automatic failure

Two chances. November and April.

I think I know how my summer is going to be spent!! Reading my old textbooks and taking old exams. That, of course, is assuming I pass my classes this semester :-p. Scary shit, man.