Taking my Comprehensive Exam at UWA

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by cdhale, Apr 26, 2007.

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  1. cdhale

    cdhale Member

    Tomorrow morning I take my Comprehensive Exam from UWA. I must admit that I am a little anxious about it. Normally, tests don't cause me much sweat, but this one will cover material from classes I took as far back as the summer of 05. I will have to choose to answer questions taken from my 8 English courses over that time period.

    As long as I can avoid a couple of them, I should be OK.

    I'll follow up on this tomorrow afternoon, to let everyone know how it went.

    clint
     
  2. PhD2B

    PhD2B Dazed and Confused

    Good luck!

    What degree are you going for?

    I remember taking the comps for my MS. Not a fun time. I'm sure you will do well.
     
  3. edowave

    edowave Active Member

    Best of luck. I took mine last summer. Not a fun time. Let us know how it went.
     
  4. Mighty_Tiki

    Mighty_Tiki Member

    Good luck!! Let us know how it went!



     
  5. bing

    bing New Member

    Best of luck to you on this test. I'm sending moral support your way via mental telepathy.........

    Bing
     
  6. cdhale

    cdhale Member

    I am working on the MAT w/o certification with my emphasis in English.

    I was hoping some of you would tell me how easy your comps were. :D

    Alas, I will just accept your memories of the difficulty of it all. I have always done very well on tests, but not over material this distant.

    I have tried to cram as much as possible, but my brain was starting to feel like jelly...

    I leave to do the deed in about 30 minutes...

    clint
     
  7. Shawn Ambrose

    Shawn Ambrose New Member

    GOOD LUCK!

    Shawn
     
  8. cdhale

    cdhale Member

    Well, I am back...

    I took the test. I think it was OK. Had to answer 4 questions chosen from amongst a bunch of others. Format was like this: 1. Choose from one of the following questions to answer, followed by 3 or 4 choices., 2. Choose from the following questions, etc.

    All in all, I think I did OK.Two of the questions were over subjects that I feel I have a complete mastery over. One was a bit less than mastery, but still know enough about. The final question was a tough one. Choice was between two poetry questions about Romantics/Victorians and one about Gothic Heroes. I couldn't remember anything about Gothic heroes, so chose the poetry question that I thought my limited knowledge could best satisfy.

    We shall see.
     
  9. PhD2B

    PhD2B Dazed and Confused

    Sounds like you did well. How long were you given to answer the questions?

    My comp was a little different. My comp consisted of 4 one-hour exams made up by the professors I had for each of the 4 the corresponding courses. My advisor was the one who chose which 4 courses I was tested on. It was painful to say the least.
     
  10. cdhale

    cdhale Member

    We were given a time limit of 4 hours to complete the exam, though my advisor said that it was OK to go over on that time limit a bit, if the monitor didn't care.

    It didn't matter, I finished in a little over 2 and a half hours. That was pretty long for me.ha

    Each answer was to be between 2 or 3 double spaced typed pages, which all of mine were. Some might have been a bit longer. All told, my answers were about 11 pages added together.

    man, I am glad they didn't just pick the questions for me. Had they chosen some of the Teaching Composition questions, I would have been dead. Not only has it been two years since the class, but we moved back to the US from overseas since then and none of that material, including text books made the move with us.

    clint
     
  11. John Bear

    John Bear Senior Member

    In the philosophy department at Vanderbilt, here is what my wife faced for each of her 4 comps (a month or so apart).

    On a Monday morning, she was given a list of six questions, to prepare for.

    On the following Friday at noon, she went into the department office for the rolling of the ceremonial die. She rolled the die, and thereupon had 36 hours to write a formal academic paper on the question of that number.

    The finished paper was to be slid under the department chairman's office door by midnight Saturday.

    There had been rampant speculation for years about whether the chairman was actually sitting there in the dark at midnight, and what would happen if one was late. But no one was ever late.
     
  12. archaeo729

    archaeo729 New Member

    Hope it turns out well for you. I will be taking my comps at UWA next spring for an MAT in history.

    I had taken comps and oral exams/thesis defense for my MA in anthrpology back in 1994 at Univ. of AL. Each were about 2 hrs long.

    Where did you take the test? I will probably try a library since I live outside of Livingston.
     
  13. cdhale

    cdhale Member

    I got the principal of the local Catholic school to monitor it for me. I had met her a few months ago (one of the members of our church teaches at the Catholic school). It wasn't a big deal. Whoever agrees to monitor just has to make contact with the appropriate folks at UWA and then receive the test via email attachment, download it onto a disc, print it out, etc. They wanted both electronic and hard copies. The school provided me a computer to work from, so I just sat and typed away until I ran out of things to say.

    She then printed out my answers, saved them to the disc, emailed a copy to the advisor at UWA and then mailed the hard copies to them.

    My advisor emailed on Friday and said not to expect any answer for a week. So I am pretending not to be nervous until then.

    clint
     
  14. Jodokk

    Jodokk Member

    I'm with you dude!

    I take mine at UWA in a couple of months for my psych program. Good luck man!
     
  15. cdhale

    cdhale Member

    I received an email yesterday telling me that I passed my Comps. I don't know EXACTLY how I did, but apparently good enough.

    What a relief. Now I just have to finish the course I am currently taking (Lit Criticism) to finish the degree. Whoohoo!

    clint
     
  16. Shawn Ambrose

    Shawn Ambrose New Member

    Congrats on your success!

    Shawn
     
  17. eric.brown

    eric.brown New Member

    Congratulations on passing Comps!
     

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