Steve Tippins Ph.D.Helping doctoral students get their dissertation accepted, succeed in their careers, & change the world | Academic Career Advisor | Dissertation Chair & Founder, Beyond PhD Coaching | 35 + years of experience.

Are You Ready for Your Comprehensive Exam?

5 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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In this introductory segment, Steve Tippins Ph.D. explains the role of comprehensive exams in graduate programs, describing them as the final hurdle before the dissertation phase. He defines a comprehensive exam as an assessment of a student's retained knowledge and familiarity with the core literature after completing coursework. Tippins notes that the nature of these exams has evolved over the past century and varies across institutions. He highlights common obstacles—fear, lack of preparation, and other personal factors—that cause students to stall at this stage, emphasizing the need for proactive preparation to clear the exam efficiently and move swiftly into dissertation work.

Chapters

You've made it through all of your coursework. You just have one more hurdle to clear before you get to your dissertation, and that's comprehensive exams. Not every school has these, but if you have them, you are aware of them, and you need to prepare and understand what's coming. The truth is many people get to here and then stall out, either through fear or not being prepared or a number of other reasons. But your comprehensive exams are just a hurdle. We want you to be prepared, and we want you to clear the hurdle running fast so that you're ready for your dissertation phase. Let's start out first with, you know, what is a comprehensive exam? And that's kind of a moving target because what used to be 100 years ago is different now at many schools. In theory, a comprehensive exam is— you've made it through your coursework, how much have you retained? Do you have a good knowledge of the body of literature needed in order to move forward? How we assess whether you're ready has changed over time.