For the comps schedule click here.

Grading of the exams is done by the professors based upon their own rubrics.  However, the grades are reported on a 100 point scale where 90-100 is A, 80-90 is B, 70-80 is C, 60-70 is D, and less than 60 is an F.  This gives us six grades.  The MFT is two, one-hour exams.  The ways  the data is reported gives many different options to look at the data.  However, we figured out a method which has both decent correlation and consistent results to our other exams.  We take the “combined scaled score” and divide it by two to get it on a scale of 0 - 100.  That becomes the two scores for the two hours of exams.  Therefore, going into the oral, we have eight hours of grades which are averaged to the scale we have above.  We also give a grade for the oral to give nine hours of grades.  We then average the nine grades.  A’s get “distinction.”  B’s, C’s, and D’s get “pass.”  And F’s get “fail.”

The grading rubric for the oral exam can be found here
. The grade for the oral exam will be the sum of the scores with the first score counted twice for a maximum score of 25, then the sum is multiplied by 4 to get a final grade between 0 and 100.  The committees’ grades will be averaged with a weighted average where Economics professors have a weight of 1.5 and others have weights of 1.  This average grade will be averaged with the grades for the eight written comps.  (The oral exam is 1/9th of the overall grade.)  Over 90% is distinction and below 60% is failure.  The rest are passing.  Borderline cases will be determined by the committee on a case by case basis.

The process of the oral will be as follows:  You will be asked to do a current event as you did in Senior Seminar.  However, there is no grade for originality, only a grade for accuracy.  Then you will be asked to tell us what you think you did poorly on for the written comps.  Then we will ask you more about the written comps.  Assuming there is time, we will ask you about your Senior Project.

Tips on studying for comprehensive exams:

Here is some addition advice from me:

This page was created by Wilf and last edited on 2018/8/23.
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