Princeton General Exam Advice

This document gives some advice on how to prepare for the Princeton Generals Exam. It is by no means complete and will be in flux throughout its existence. Please contact me if you have questions or comments.

General General Exam Advice

• Very few have great research to present by the time generals comes around. In fact, in hindsight, most people think their own was rather mediocre
• If your advisors want you to pass then you will - so have a good sense of what they think you need to do to "get over the hurdle"
• Remember the golden rule if you are attending others' talks: "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Administrative Matters

• Choose your reading list carefully because you are responsible for all the content
  • 1-2 books, 3-4 seminal papers, 2-4 papers in your specific area, and 2-4 on your specific topic
• Choose your committee members carefully
  • Ask other students about committee members you are considering (i.e. get the cliché personality profile)
  • Meet with your committee members (probably individually) beforehand so that they know essentially what you've been doing - these are busy people who may not have the time to read over and/or fully understand your abstract, and you don't want them to show up and ask totally random and unanticipated questions
• It is your responsibility to coordinate the schedules of your committee members and choose a presentation date
  • It is to your advantage to secure a presentation date as soon as possible, because slots and schedules get filled quickly
  • There is little to gain from being the first person to present: later presentations gain the advantage of observing others' and learning what types of questions were asked
  • However, keep in mind that if you are teaching a course then this can and will take up time towards the end of the semester. Scheduling your presentation shortly following an exam in the course you are TA'ing is a terrible choice because you'll have to be do grading during the final few days before your presentation

General Presentation Advice

• Practice your presentation in front of peers and by yourself
• Be sure to carefully motivate your chosen topic
• And how it fits into the bigger scheme of "state of the art" research in your field
• This shows that you're up-to-date and have an understanding of your area, which is very important
• It's also important to know the salient points you wish to make for every slide
• Time yourself ahead of time
• The presentation itself should last about 30 minutes (I think?) with 15 minutes left for questions for all attendees

Q&A Session

• After the 15 minute Q&A session open to everyone attending your talk, you are asked to leave the room as your committee members huddle to plan their attack on you for the subsequent closed door Q&A
• To be able to answer all questions it is important that you get enough sleep beforehand!
• Try to anticipate (perhaps with the help of others) the questions you may be asked
  • That doesn't mean you should bring them up yourself!
• Empirical evidence indicates that the difficulty of questions posed by professors often follows a roughly binary search strategy where you will get both easy and hard questions: most people are unable to perfectly answer all questions
• Most professors tend to ask questions from either your presentation or the more specific papers on your reading list, but other professors are known to ask "general knowledge" questions from your books

2007/02/28 Haakon Ringberg