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.

Don't Skip This Tip Before Your Comp Exam

16 Aug 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment, Steve Tippins Ph.D. shares practical strategies for preparing for comprehensive exams and dissertations. He recommends visual learning tools such as concept maps that illustrate relationships between ideas, and suggests creating outlines that quickly incorporate key authors to avoid forgetting citations later. He also promotes joining his dissertation help group for additional support and guidance during exam preparation.

Chapters

Some people in their preparation like to create models with concept links and all kinds of links showing how these interact with each other. And many people are visual learners, so if you can do that, that can be very helpful for you. I've also seen people come up with an outline and then very quickly write in 7 authors so that they don't have to go back and say, what was it? Oh, I'm working on this one. It's going to be Jones. It's going to be Smith. It's going to be— and just very quickly write them in and then maybe outline other questions and then come back and say, make sure that you're going to include Jones and Smith and everything else. I've also worked with a number of people to prepare for their comprehensive exams. If you're interested, become a member of our dissertation help group.