Help has finally arrived for the world's 12.5 million graduate students who live in fear of what is considered a rite of passage: the oral exam.
Lee Foote, a wetland ecologist at the University of Alberta, published Oral Exams: preparing for and passing candidacy, qualifying and graduate defenses to demystify the process and help students prepare.
MSc students must pass one oral exam, their thesis defense, while PhD students must pass two oral exams: either a qualifying or candidacy exam, and a thesis defense.
The book, published by well-known academic publisher Elsevier, provides graduate students with solid advice on everything related to oral exams, from managing supervisory committees to overcoming nervousness, exam-day preparations, how to handle yourself and 'manage' the exam, and even visualization exercises. There's also a chapter for supervisors.
"The most important thing students will get out of the book is an understanding of the exams, a reduction of the uncertainty," said Foote. He added the book gives students a certain level of confidence and tools to help them manage their fear. It also discusses how to hear questions and answer them effectively and provides some actual content of the exam preparation.
In fact, there's an appendix in the book with a list of about 500 questions, organized by topics, many of which are often used during oral exams that Foote has accumulated over the years from sitting on various committees and talking with colleagues.
The catalyst for writing the book came when one of Foote's students, whom he considered a tremendous asset to science, almost failed her candidacy exam.
"And then I started seeing middle of the pack grad students that glowed during their oral exams. What is wrong with this picture?" wondered Foote.
He went online and visited libraries and to his surprise, didn't find anything to help graduate students prepare for their required oral exams. He then talked to graduate students.
"The aura that came about is it's a rite of passage, there's a cloak of secrecy, they don't tell you the stuff deliberately, there was all sorts of sense of subterfuge," he said.
Foote added the information he had gathered to the notes he had accumulated after 10 years of teaching a graduate organization class and prepared a handout for his students, which proved so effective, he decided to use it as the outline for the book.
And the student who triggered it all? She recovered from the near-miss, earned her PhD and published four papers. She now works as a successful ecological analyst.
The book is available through Indigo/Chapters, Amazon.ca and Elsevier Press.
Lee Foote, a wetland ecologist at the University of Alberta, published Oral Exams: preparing for and passing candidacy, qualifying and graduate defenses to demystify the process and help students prepare.
MSc students must pass one oral exam, their thesis defense, while PhD students must pass two oral exams: either a qualifying or candidacy exam, and a thesis defense.
The book, published by well-known academic publisher Elsevier, provides graduate students with solid advice on everything related to oral exams, from managing supervisory committees to overcoming nervousness, exam-day preparations, how to handle yourself and 'manage' the exam, and even visualization exercises. There's also a chapter for supervisors.
"The most important thing students will get out of the book is an understanding of the exams, a reduction of the uncertainty," said Foote. He added the book gives students a certain level of confidence and tools to help them manage their fear. It also discusses how to hear questions and answer them effectively and provides some actual content of the exam preparation.
In fact, there's an appendix in the book with a list of about 500 questions, organized by topics, many of which are often used during oral exams that Foote has accumulated over the years from sitting on various committees and talking with colleagues.
The catalyst for writing the book came when one of Foote's students, whom he considered a tremendous asset to science, almost failed her candidacy exam.
"And then I started seeing middle of the pack grad students that glowed during their oral exams. What is wrong with this picture?" wondered Foote.
He went online and visited libraries and to his surprise, didn't find anything to help graduate students prepare for their required oral exams. He then talked to graduate students.
"The aura that came about is it's a rite of passage, there's a cloak of secrecy, they don't tell you the stuff deliberately, there was all sorts of sense of subterfuge," he said.
Foote added the information he had gathered to the notes he had accumulated after 10 years of teaching a graduate organization class and prepared a handout for his students, which proved so effective, he decided to use it as the outline for the book.
And the student who triggered it all? She recovered from the near-miss, earned her PhD and published four papers. She now works as a successful ecological analyst.
The book is available through Indigo/Chapters, Amazon.ca and Elsevier Press.