Your Qualifying Exam

You must take and pass a qualifying examination covering planning theory, research methods and design, and a substantive area of planning research and teaching. The exam includes separate sets of questions in these three areas and draws on your completed coursework. It evaluates your preparedness to undertake dissertation research and to teach undergraduate and master's level courses in Urban and Regional Planning in a Planning Accreditation Board approved program. You must take the exam at the end of the semester in which you complete your required coursework or within one month thereafter.

The qualifying exam committee must include your advisor and other faculty members who in combination are knowledgeable about planning theory, the research methods of interest, and your area of specialization. Faculty members from other departments may be included on the committee, but the majority must be Planning faculty. The composition of the qualifying exam committee often is different from that of the committees for the preliminary and final dissertation examinations.

The content of these exams and the courses you take to prepare for them depend on the type of research you intend to pursue. Prepared by members of your qualifying exam committee, the questions are integrated, sequenced, or otherwise edited by the chair of the committee with the review and consent of the other committee members. You have one week to complete written responses to the questions. Most students do one set of questions each day, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, picking up the questions at 8 AM and e-mailing their answers by 5 PM. An oral defense of those responses before the exam committee must occur not more than 10 days after completion of the written exam.

Committee members may take one of three actions on the exam: they may pass the student, fail the student, or require a re-examination. Any disagreement must be discussed by the committee members and a single result agreed upon. If the committee decides there is sufficient promise to allow a student a re-examination attempt, it may do so only once and must either pass or fail the student on the second attempt. Any reexamination must occur within five semesters of the student’s initial enrollment in the program.