The successful passage of qualifying examinations is one of the main departmental degree program requirements for students seeking the Ph.D Degree. Students who are studying for the M.A. or M.Ed. degrees are not required to pass qualifying exams.

Ph.D. students are required to pass three qualifying examinations before the beginning of their third year. At least two of the examinations must be passed before the beginning of the second year of study. For the Applied Mathematics Option, the areas are Analysis, Numerical Analysis, and Partial Differential Equations. Exceptions have been made to substitute by exams in other qualifying exam subjects upon approval.

The examinations are offered approximately 10 days before the beginning of the fall semester and at the end of the spring semester each academic year. Basic one-year sequences in each subject are offered annually to help prepare the student for the examinations.

Important to know: entering Ph.D. students may take any of the examinations before they enroll without penalty. If an examination is passed the student is exempt from the subsequent course. If a pre-entrance examination is failed, the student still has more opportunities to pass the examination in the next two years.

Also important to know: the purpose of the qualifying examinations is to assure that the students are adequately trained in basic mathematics subjects, mathematical thinking and problem solving skills. The department and its faculty are committed to help the students to prepare for the exams and passing them successfully after the earlier years of the graduate study. Such measures include: faculty mentors are assigned to guide the study of new students and review sessions often hold before the exams. In addition, qualifying exam problems from previous years are available at our Web page, along with a selection of problems from the basic first-year sequences. It is also helpful to look at the outlines of the basic first-year courses on which the qualifying examinations are based.