Overview

This repository contains all my materials associated with my orals exams as a requirement of my PhD in the Department of Sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. My orals covered three topics: (1) Urban Sociology with Greg Smithsimon, (2) Inequality with Leslie McCall, and (3) Quantitative Methods with Jeremy Porter. Jeremy was my chair, which doesn't really mean anything other than they help organize the oral exam and make sure all the members sign the official paper saying you passed. I felt it was good for me to have a chair with whom I felt comfortable and who I felt was organized.

Contents

• Valdiation of the Orals Committee is the form needed to form the orals committee and must be submitted before the orals exam
• Orals Exam Completion is the form each committee member needs to sign upon completion of a successful orals exam

Each folder contains the following:

• an admin sub-folder that has my lists, all photocopied lists from the departments records I thought was relevant, and a BibTex file that serves a bibliography. The .Rmd file can be knit together to create a pdf of my orals list.
• a literature sub-folder (not included on GitHub because of size constraints) has pdf copies of everything I read. See Dropbox link below for a copy.
• a writeup sub-folder up has my write-ups of the each of the sections as well as practice questions from each section and my bulleted answers
• some contain a book review sub-folder that contains book reviews I found useful. See Dropbox link below for a copy.

General thoughts

I found it very useful to read one section at a time and then summarize the main topics from each reading. I broke each topic into sections, read everything, and then came up with some broad questions. I then spoke with of my committee members (Leslie, Greg, and Jeremy) separately before the exam to go over the list of topics/questions I had prepared in advance. Each professor will have their own way of prepping for the orals exam, but you should have at least one meeting with each of them before the exam so you can get a sense of what you can expect. I found it helped me to prepare a list of questions for that pre-meeting. Some stuck close to those questions on the day of the exam while others asked me different questions, although no one really deviated much from what we had discussed.

I found my approach to be helpful in organizing my thoughts and then giving myself something to read to jog my memory later. Ideally, you could use these writeups as a literature review or in your dissertation.

There are lots of different ways to approach your orals exams; another approach might be more suited to your learning style. I know a few other in my department posed a few overarching questions for each section and then used the readings to answer them. In retrospect, this might have been a better approach for me, but I had already set my lists when I realized this.

Happy to talk more about this, just email me: [email protected].

Dropbox link to literature sub-folders.