All students in the PHS PhD program are required to complete a comprehensive exam. The exam will include written and oral components.
The qualifying written exam is an open-book examination approximately three hours in duration.
The qualifying oral exam is: a 15-minute presentation by the candidate on a prespecified topic article, follow by questions from the examiners; and a second 15-minute presentation of a proposal to move knowledge on that topic forward, followed by questions from the examiners.
Both written and oral exams are designed to assess the candidate's knowledge of broad public-health research methods and, for the Epidemiology Specialization student, an in-depth understanding of epidemiologic concepts and methods. Student's competence in the core areas related to the research (epidemiology, public health, or other) will be assessed with questions chosen specifically for the individual student, by their supervisor(s) and the examining committee.