Candidacy

The questions and answers below are a summary of a Q&A with several post-candidacy graduate students, and Kris Dunlap (dunlap.151@osu.edu). Keep in mind the candidacy process can vary between students and advisors – the answers from students below reflect their experience, but you are strongly encouraged to talk with your advisor to set expectations.

For information about the candidacy procedure, check the information on the department website here.

• What is the candidacy process like, what should we expect? Information from Kris:
  • Detailed timeline at https://physics.osu.edu/candidacy-exam-info
  • Above all, candidacy is an oral exam. The presentation is to organize your thoughts, but the focus of the exam is questions from your committee.
  • Your candidacy panel wants you to succeed! It’s ok to take a step back and say you need to think about a question.
  • Make sure to do a practice presentation with your peers, especially peers from other research areas.
  • Application for candidacy form must be filed at least 16 days before the exam date (see link above).

• If you were to do candidacy again, what would you do differently?
  • Take better notes throughout the process.
  • Make sure paper is a broad introduction for those not familiar with your field.
• What do I need to schedule beforehand?
  • The candidacy exam lasts six weeks, but the only part of the process that requires coordination between all committee members is the oral exam date. This should be scheduled early in or before the candidacy process, and you should remind your committee members of the date a couple weeks in advance.
  • Some people have conferences in the middle of candidacy, sometimes this is not included as part of your 6 weeks and you are instructed to not focus on candidacy work during that time.
• Can I take the candidacy exam from outside of the United States?
  • Yes. As long as your committee all agrees to the format and time, you can have a virtual candidacy exam regardless of your location.
• What level should the candidacy paper be at? Will your advisor give questions to focus the scope?
  • The paper should be written on a level that another graduate student could read and understand it.
  • Advisors have individual views on how hands-on or hands-off they are in the process, you may just be given a topic without clarifying questions.
  • The candidacy letter should specify how available the committee members are for questions through the process.
  • Your advisor should consult with the other committee members when selecting the topic, and make sure the topic isn’t too broad.
• What is something you did during the candidacy process that helped you stay productive?
  • It was difficult to stay focused during the first half of the exam because the deadline seemed far away, but as the end approached it took up more time.
  • Setting a consistent schedule and coming into the office instead of working from home helped.
  • Making an outline early on that specified what topics to read up on, and when to start writing about them.
  • Finding a friend who is also working on candidacy to work with, for accountability. It helped to meet up with them at places outside the PRB (like libraries) to read papers together.
• While working on candidacy, how much normal research work were you expected to do?
  • Depends on your advisor, but many people do not work on regular research at all during candidacy. Some advisors actively discourage students from participating in regular lab work during the exam.
• What was your work schedule like during schedule? Were you working eight hour days Monday-Friday, or were your hours more irregular?
  • Depended on the day. Some days I didn’t work too much on candidacy, some days I worked longer hours. A typical working day was about 9AM – 4PM, maybe off-and-on, nothing really strict.
• What is a good timeline for candidacy? When should you be starting your paper and presentation during the candidacy period?
  • Depends on how confident you are writing scientific papers, if you are new to scientific writing keep in mind that you may go through several drafts.
  • Writing the paper, making the presentation, and reading all go together. Writing a draft is almost like taking notes, so you should be working on it pretty early on.
  • Starting the paper early is good because it forces you to organize your thoughts and recognize how much you know and don’t know about your topic.
  • I chose to avoid writing for the first two weeks, and focus on reading and narrowing down my topic. Make sure you iron out any uncertainties in your topic before you get too involved with writing.
  • If you have uncertainties about your topic or the format you should be writing in, consider talking to your advisor.
  • I didn’t even start thinking about the presentation until after I turned in the paper. The paper is the organization of all the information you are presenting on, after that it is just organizing a powerpoint and preparing your talk.
• How many of the questions in the oral exam were about the introduction and overview, and how many were about finer details?
  • I had questions about experimental details on most of my slides – one and a half hours in I was not even halfway through my presentation.
  • I tended to get more questions on intro slides than later on, since those are good places to ask general physics questions. The committee cared more about my understanding of the experimental design and background than the results.
  • The questions were either very basic or on very minute details, like how an error bar was calculated.