The author is absolutely correct that the ability to pass the PhD qualifying exam should not define them as a person or their self worth. A PhD is just a different career choice not very dissimilar to becoming a musician.<p>But the qualifying exam sounded like it did its job the way it was supposed to! The author was given multiple opportunities to pass a fairly clear bar of academic competence to hold the highest and thus the most difficult to attain qualification in the world, and they failed every time. From how it’s written I see no indication of prejudice due to their gender or ethnicity, or of any wrong doing. They were just not good enough at doing what was expected of them at this stage.<p>Arguments such as “they asked questions outside of my topic” sound moot because that’s the expectation here! You’re supposed to have a reasonable breadth of knowledge in your field! And now if someone asked a question you had never thought about, that’s unfair? For a PhD qualifying exam?<p>I’m not blaming the author for any of this though, the pattern and idea that a PhD should be achievable by anyone regardless of their intellectual abilities has been taking root for a long time coming. The professors don’t want to fight it because this is the only way they get free cheap labor, except when they lament about in the drop in abilities in the new generation.<p>I also don’t completely buy into the narrative that educated families make a difference in your PhD performance. The only corollary is succeeding in a PhD typically correlated with how _stable_ your personal life is. Privilege in socioeconomic terms that provides safety nets and support systems absolutely do make a large difference and should be afforded to all the candidates. But even if your dad had a PhD, unless it’s in the exact same topic, nobody’s getting help practicing for their quals.<p>it’s saddening but was inevitable that institutions would just do away with important requirements than fight with such appeals but given my general disdain for present day academia, I’m excited to see where the whole system goes as more such nails are driven into its coffin.
I passed Ph.D. qualifying exams in mathematics after failing them the first time. Almost everyone in my family has a college degree and this fact helped me not one bit since none of them can understand graduate level mathematics. Being a first generation college student is not an excuse for doing poorly on Ph.D. qualifying exams. You know the material or you don’t and it’s highly unlikely people in your family will relate to that specific set of knowledge.<p>Sounds to me like the author doesn’t know the material well enough. Take the hint and change careers.
I don't understand how "Black Lives Matter" and "BlackInTheIvory" is related to the content of this all. Why is this in there?<p>This reads like it was generated by ChatGPT with "Write a sad story about PhD qualifying exams but sprinkle in references to social movements about racial inequality"
I got my PhD from a department with a strict qualifying exam (less than 50% pass rate). It was a tragic system that served no purpose.<p>There were dozens of students who were clearly able to do research. Who had publications in top tier conferences and journals. But they had difficulties passing the qualifying exam (exams were based on courses which changed all the time, it was easy to be extremely good at say computer architecture but get a few oddball questions out in left field about some minutia you've never seen before).<p>The real consequence of the system was that it discriminated against people who didn't understand it. You had to know to pick the right classes, to time it for the right year (where enough senior faculty had students who needed to pass it ASAP so that it would be easier). And of course, senior faculty with connections pulled strings to get their students past the exam.<p>At my university now we thankfully don't do this insanity. Qualifying for the PhD is what it is supposed to be: can you publish? Ok, then show us a publication and defend it. Now let's talk about what you'll be doing for the rest of your PhD.
The comments here are too harsh. The emotional journey of failing high stakes exams and the helplessness of the closest people around you not knowing what it feels like is such an emotional roller-coaster. I mean, I failed too many technical interviews last year, and I am still heavily drained by that.<p>Let's have more empathy to the author. 99% of us could all have bad streaks of exams/interviewing/fundraising rounds at some point in our life. Let's not let these setbacks define us.
> I even stopped doing lab work to focus on my exam preparations.<p>This is the main drawback of the qualifier circus. PhD students waste 2-3 years preparing for this arbitrary and nightmarish rite of passage, time that they could have started their research.<p>I am glad that that particular department decided to do away with the exam. It is better to define a subset of core courses, and just use the GPA in these courses as a qualifier for formal admission into PhD candidacy. This will help the students gain the candidacy in parallel with the coursework rather than sink enormous amounts of additional time into an exam.
What was the point of this article?<p>To save everyone a click, the author failed the qualifying exam for the PhD program thrice and got kicked out. Article ends with her advisor petitioning for her to be reinstated to the program.
I found myself thinking it was strange that a domain named science.org would have so many ads, as if it were some sacred place where only learning is allowed to happen. I realized that wasn't a realistic expectation.<p>I feel like this is an appropriate time to humbly present my easily auditable Chrome plugin that only toggles javascript (globally / every tab), and nothing more. It literally has one job, and that may not work for everyone. If you're in the habit of leaving unsaved work in background tabs then this extension probably isn't for you. It really will disable javascript on every tab. For browsing random javascript heavy sites though, I find it to be very useful.<p><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/js-toggle/bnhjfamolmolljikdopibpabimjfellc" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/js-toggle/bnhjfamo...</a>
Remarkably content-free article written by a thrice-rejected newly accepted PhD candidate at Northeastern University. What does this article seek to do? Does it Persuade? About what? Inform? That the author is a 'first-generation Afro-Latinx'? Check. That the bar was the same as every other one of the hundreds of grad schools in the nation, and then it was removed, so she can now proceed to research and the final defense? Check.<p>It is of course not true in general, but I feel that it is now de rigueur for authors to inject race and hyphenated identities into practically everything they write, sadly reducing them to caricatures. It is difficult to take such writing seriously.
Indeed, failing quals doesn't define her - as you can see from her resume and works like this, it's far more important she is "an Afro-Latinx first-generation college graduate". I'm sure she will go on to enjoy immense professional success.
First the unrelated concepts argument. It's generally hard to know if a concept is related to your research without understanding it or knowing about it. Then there's the dunning kruger effect where we overestimate our own abilities. It's likely that there was a tangential link and the author failed to see it. Ironically her failure to see the relation possibly led to a poor impression.<p>The argument of not having family members to talk about research is absurd because you always have some colleagues talking shop.<p>The language argument fails because every year many immigrant students with English as a second language take the same exams and do well.
To add insult to injury, the job market for humanities PhDs has cratered.<p>See <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/what-should-we-do-about-undergrads-who-want-pursue-humanities-doctorate" rel="nofollow">https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/what-sh...</a>
I am really curious what the person writing this article thinks people will take away from it is. You failed three oral exams but were let through anyway because meritocracy has gone of out of fashion. Ok. I guess the article is just a slice of life piece for this magazine but its almost like it was generated by a right-wing ragebait factory to drum up racial tensions and anti-academic sentiment.