Admission Requirements Application Forms Financial Aid Master's Degree Program Doctoral Degree Program Foreign Language Requirement Qualifying Exam and Candidacy Final Oral Examination UF Graduate School General Information Courses Offered UF Graduate Degrees and Programs

Qualifying Examination and Doctoral Candidacy

There is no Ph.D. reading list. As the test for admission to Ph.D. candidacy the Qualifying Examination forms the penultimate stage in the progress of a student toward the Ph.D. It reflects the expectation of the Department that doctoral students both increase and deepen their broad knowledge of German literary history and also begin defining an area of specialized research as soon as possible in their post M.A. work.

A student wishing to take the Qualifying Examination is required, no later than three months before the proposed date of that test, to submit to her/his supervisory committee a portfolio of research papers written for courses taken subsequent to the M.A. degree. Where the committee is not satisfied as to the breadth of general knowledge of German literature and culture, a candidate may be required to submit further written work before being allowed to proceed to the Qualifying Examination proper.

Once a candidate is deemed to possess adequate knowledge of the subject s/he submits to her/his committee a bibliography of her/his research area and a dissertation prospectus of cat 10 pages. From this material the supervisory committee members develop a set of questions, one of which the candidate selects. The candidate has one week to write a paper of not more than 25 pages (including scholarly apparatus), which is read by the entire committee. Members of the committee provide the candidate with written comments before the oral examination, if the candidate is allowed to proceed.

The oral examination (of two hours) is the final test in the process of determining a student's ability to embark on the dissertation project. While the major focus of the examination is on the paper and the dissertation prospectus, it may also rightly include related questions of a more general nature where members of the committee feel that the context of the dissertation needs improvement.

Provided the student is in good standing at the end of the semester, in which the Qualifying Examination is successfully completed, he or she will be a candidate for the doctoral degree. Admission to candidacy signifies that the student is judged to be properly prepared to undertake work on the dissertation. The dissertation is a scholarly contribution to knowledge in the student's areaof specialization. By researching and writing a dissertation, the student is expected to demonstrate a high level of knowledge and the ability to function as an independent scholar. The candidate will meet with her/his Supervisory Committee in order to reach an understanding about dissertation content, research methods, and submission procedures.

A draft of a dissertation unit (or of the entire dissertation) may not be distributed to a candidate's supervisory committee without the permission of the chair of the committee. Members of the supervisory committee must be given at least four weeks before the draft-approval deadline to read and comment on a dissertation chapter or complete draft. All members of the committee must present to the candidate an oral and/or written evaluation of a dissertation chapter or complete draft within two weeks of its receipt. Exceptions to the above are permissible only by unanimous agreement between the Supervisory Committee and the candidate.

>> top