The dates for the January 2006 sitting of the Comprehensive Examination have been set:

Pickup: Tuesday, January 10, 2006 @ 4:00 PM
Return: Friday, January 13, 2006 @ 4:00 PM

Remember: You must register for the exam by November 11, 2006 using the form at the back of the PhD Manual;

PDF versions of the forms will be available soon..

Students who have failed one or more sections of the comp must re-take the failed section(s) at the NEXT sitting of the examination. So if you failed a section of the June 2005 exam you MUST re-take those sections at the January 2006 sitting.

Professor Karl Rethemeyer
PAD 705

1) Attend the remaining lectures for 705 – we meet in Richardson 290 from 4 – 7 PM on Mondays

2) Go to the course web site - http://www.albany.edu/faculty/kretheme/PAD705/overview.html. I have created 17 (so far) “handouts” on topics covered in 705. The handouts are in the “Support Materials” section of the web site. I usually add one or two a week regarding topics we are covering in the course. Study these first.

3) On the same web site are (so far) five problem sets on topics in 705. Try the problems. If you want to see the answers, talk to someone taking the course currently – we go over the answers for each in class and I offer feedback on what the correct answer is to anyone who submits a problem set. I will be

4) Also in the Support Materials section of the web site is a link to “Exam Review Materials.” This is a list of problems from the Pindyck and Rubinfeld textbook that are relevant to the course with suggested answers.

5) Review the past exams. Be sure to look at the Spring 1998 exam, which focused on analyzing and summarizing findings from an article.

J. Ramon Gil-Garcia
Entered Program: Fall 2001
Comps date: June 2002

Before:
- Organize all your readings and make something like an index or table of content for each course.
- Identify the principal ideas of each course and write some paragraphs about them (you can use these paragraphs for your comps).
- Identify and write some important quotations from each article, book, report, author, etc.
- Read again all your term papers. They can be very useful to get good ideas and some phrases to be incorporated to your comps.

During:
- Find a place where you feel confortable. I worked in one of the study rooms of the Science Library.
- Be very organized with your time. You can rank the different courses according to their difficulty for you and assign specific time periods for each of them.
- Work the whole day, but remember to eat and sleep well. I worked from 8:00am to 11:00pm every day.
- Reserve some time to check your final versions before submiting them. Pay extra attention to avoid problems with grammar, clarity of the idea, and writing style.

Amy Smith
Entered Program: Fall 2001
Comps date: June 2002

1) Get physically organized before the comps. Know where every journal article, book, paper, homework, study guide, etc. for every course is. For some, it was helpful to have some floor space where they could make organized piles of everything they might need for each course. Some folks,
like to put everything into binders where they can label each item and flip to it easily.

2) Get mentally organized before the comps. You probably won't have time to read or reread any of the literature from your coursework. Its helpful to have a summary of what each article/book was about and what the main issues were in the article. Being able to compare and contrast the
assertions of articles/books quickly when you sit down to write your comp answers is crucial.

3) Answer old comp exams. Prior to taking the comps, spend time answering old comp questions. They are a pretty good indication of what themes are important in each class and of how much time it might take you to do a comp question.

4) Use your homeworks and papers. There is always a possibility that material you have written in your homeworks or papers may be applicable to your comp answers. If parts of your homeworks and papers are applicable to your comp answer, using them is easier than re-writing the same ideas.

5) Write out your references before the test. Since there are many potential references, my cohort split up all the readings for each course and everyone was in charge of putting together references for a part of the readings. Then we combined the lists. We used bibliographic software (Endnote) and found it helpful, but a word processing program would probably work just as well.

6) If you work well with study groups, get one. Study groups don't have to be about splitting up reading or splitting up summaries (while they are useful for that if it works). Study groups have other advantages such as putting you on a study schedule, discussing old homeworks, and discussing
old comp answers. Meeting once a week with a study group can put you on a study schedule. Its easy to procrastinate after the semester ends. If you need a schedule to get motivated, a study group is a good way to do it. Even if you answer old comp questions on your own, having the chance to discuss your answers with other folks is a useful way to reinforce what you know and learn things you don't.

7) Relax. You will have time to do all six questions. Don't forget to eat and sleep. Its hard to write comp answers if your running on empty.