Preliminary Examinations -- Should I Be Scared?

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I have been looking at prelim exam requirements at Penn, and I am a little...scared isn't the right word, but curious.

Can one of the senior members of the forum put my mind at ease? What are prelim exams like? Does the committee grill you? Is it horrible?

 

[Neuronix]

It kinda depends on grad group and committee. Few people I've talked to about it in Biophysics or Bioengineering straight up pass their prelim examinations. I think a lot of PIs use it as a hazing exercize. From there they often have you write a few more pages or change your mock grant. But few people straight up fail it either. So it's just another hurdle.

In my case I don't think anyone even read my mock grant (which went on to be funded) past perhaps the aims. They just brought me in to give an oral defense on the aims and random topics related to the field I was in, which was kind of blindsiding. I had one particular pre-lim examiner who gave me a really hard time. It was good because I knew not to put him on my thesis committee 😀