Exam Scheduling FAQ

Duration
You should reserve a two hour time slot (including a confirmed room reservation if in-person), and should plan your oral presentation to be 45 minutes. Presentations often take longer than planned due to questions both during and after the exam. The committee will also have a private committee discussion after the presentation (and often beforehand as well). The reason for a two-hour slot when your talk should only be 45 minutes is to accommodate the questions and the committee discussion.

Finding a time slot
Please contact your committee members months in advance to find out everyone's general availability for a two hour time slot. When will committee members be out of town? What days/times is each member generally available or unavailable due to classes, meetings, etc.? Some students use Doodle polls to find a time slot for the exam; please only do this after you find out everyone's general scheduling parameters, in order to choose reasonable options for the poll. A dozen options may seem like a lot, but if they all conflict with a committee member's schedule or a conference, the poll will fail.

Modality
Please see the modality section on this page, as the rules about modality for each type of exam may continue to evolve.

Scheduling a room
For in-person exams, after you have a list of possible time slots, the Graduate Coordinator can help schedule a room in PFBH. Alternatively, your lab or lab's home department may be able to schedule a room in their building. The Second Year Qualifying Exam and the Advancement to Candidacy exam normally require only a small room for the student and committee, while a Thesis Defense requires a larger room for an audience.

After the schedule is determined (including a confirmed room reservation for in-person exams), please email your entire committee and the Graduate Coordinator to inform them of the schedule and location (or that it will be on Zoom). Also send reminders close to the exam date, e.g., a week in advance and again the day beforehand, or in conjunction with sending the report or slides. Promptly alert all committee members and the Graduate Coordinator about any schedule changes.

For thesis defenses, please also send a public announcement to the program's mailing lists about 7-10 days in advance using this email template, and a reminder the day beforehand.

I can't find a schedule that works for everyone on the committee.
It is expected that there will be synchronous participation by all committee members in the scheduled exam. If an unavoidable situation arises that affects a committee member’s ability to participate synchronously, the committee chair (or co-chairs) may decide how to proceed. There must be sufficient expertise among present members to examine the student. If a committee member must be absent for the scheduled exam, it is permissible for one absent committee member to examine the candidate on a separate date. The committee chair, or one co-chair, must participate synchronously in the scheduled exam.
 

If the exam is required to be in-person, can a committee member participate remotely?

• Second Year Qual Exam: The exam must be fully in-person or fully remote (assuming these are currently allowed modalities; check the Modality section). Hybrid is not permitted.
• Advancement to Candidacy and Thesis Defense: Check the Modality section for currently allowed options. For an in-person exam, if absolutely necessary, the committee chair may approve ONE committee member participating synchronously remotely. Please be cognizant of all the issues in the "Technical issues" section. Any other hybrid or remote scenario requires program approval (not just committee chair approval), and we strongly suggest requesting fully remote rather than hybrid; see the Modality section for info.

Formatting issues:

• Please use page numbers on written reports and slides. This facilitates giving feedback.
• For citations in slides, please give a full version of each citation at least once, either in-place or abbreviated in-place with a full citation in a list of references at the end. Abbreviate repeat citations using author, year, journal/conference.
• For slides, do not give citations using endnotes (superscripts 1,2,3 or a,b,c or *,**) or LaTeX-style citation numbers ([1], [2]), in which the marker/number is one slide but the reference is on another slide at the end, as this style is impossible to follow during a slide presentation.

Distributing your exam materials to the committee:

• Your thesis should be sent to your committee at least four weeks before your defense. Written reports for Qualification Exams and Advancement to Candidacy Exams should be sent at least one week in advance. Any additional supporting materials, such as publications, must also be sent by these deadlines. Please send these by email to all of your committee members and the Graduate Coordinator. If they give you any feedback in advance, please incorporate it.
• It is also recommended to send slides in advance.
• The committee members need time to read your materials before the meeting. If you are not ready to distribute these by the advance deadlines, you may need to reschedule the exam.
• It is recommended to get feedback on your written report, slides, and oral presentation from your advisor, committee members, lab mates, other students, practice talks (such as in BNFO 283 or in your lab meetings), etc. In some cases this may occur after you submit your materials but before the exam.
• If you update your thesis / report / slides before your talk, please send the committee your updated version as soon as possible; in the worst case, several hours beforehand. Do not wait until the last minute; the members may need to print it out or load it on their computer, which may not be feasible at the last minute.
• You may also be asked to revise the materials after your talk.

Remote and hybrid presentations:

• Please exchange phone/email and Zoom/Skype/... account info in advance. You are strongly encouraged to test out the connection in advance on the actual computers that will be used, in order to avoid delays during the exam due to technical issues.
• Please be alert to signs that the connection has been lost, and reconnect if needed.
• In hybrid exams, it is often difficult for the remote committee member to follow the presentation. If a remote committee member is unable to follow your presentation, you will have to give them a separate presentation (whether remotely or in-person when they return), which will delay completion of the exam.
• Slides and documents may be illegible or difficult to follow on a webcam; Zoom screen sharing the slides is preferred over a webcam view of the projection screen. If a remote committee member determines that they need to follow the slides separately on their own computer, then be sure to help them keep pace with the slides by announcing what page/slide number you're on.

Remote audience:

• If there is an audience (typical for defenses, but not qual or advancement exams), please follow campus guidance on Zoom security settings. This includes creating a unique meeting ID (instead of your personal Zoom ID), and a meeting password only distributed by email (not posted on a public website).

Committee discussion:

• Part of the exam is a discussion among committee members, without the student or other attendees. If the student is the Zoom meeting host, they will need to transfer Zoom hosting responsibilities to one of the committee members, who can then put the student in the Zoom waiting room. After the committee discussion, the student will be brought back into the meeting.
• The Graduate Coordinator will send the committee members instructions on how to report the exam results, including paperwork (usually online paperwork, even for in-person exams). The decision and paperwork is typically completed during the committee discussion (or circulated for approvals afterwards), but if a committee member gives the student a separate exam, they will need to discuss the evaluation and decision with the rest of the committee, typically by email. For the BISB Qualifying Exam, the evaluation form will be filled out by the Committee Chair, in consultation with other committee members.

During emergency remote instruction from Spring 2020 through the end of Summer 2022 (Sep 2, 2022), all exams were remote. See the separate tab about emergency remote instruction.

For Fall 2022 (Sep 5, 2022) through Summer 2024 (subject to change):

Exam modalities

Modalities:

• In-person means the student and all committee members are physically present in the same room.
• Hybrid means some committee members are physically present in the same room as the student, and others are remote. We strongly recommend fully in-person or fully remote (if permitted), and recommend against hybrid, as it can be difficult for the remote committee member to follow along and participate to the same extent as the committee members in the room.
• Other audience members, if any, are not considered in this; e.g., a Thesis Defense required to be in-person could still have remote audience members, as long as the student and committee are together in-person.

Requesting exceptions:

• If an exam is required to be in-person then the student must get permission for hybrid or fully remote. Please include a justification and a technical plan.
  • Who to ask for permission:
    • ONE remote committee member on an Advancement to Candidacy Exam or Thesis Defense (but not on the Second Year Qual): Send requests to the committee chair.
    • All other scenarios: Send requests to the BISB Graduate Coordinator and the BISB Program Director.
  • Justifications: E.g.:
    • Medical reasons preventing in-person participation.
    • Family obligations.
    • Scheduling difficulties (after a concerted effort to try to resolve them).
  • Technical plan: E.g.:
    • "Fully remote on Zoom, screen sharing the slides."
    • "Hybrid. In-room projector for in-person attendees, and Zoom screen sharing slides for remote member."
    • If you are using other teleconferencing software, or a webcam view of the room and projection screen, etc., then please elaborate.
• Regardless of modality, it is expected that all committee members will participate synchronously in the scheduled exam. If an unavoidable situation arises that affects a committee member’s ability to participate synchronously, the committee chair (or co-chairs) may decide how to proceed. There must be sufficient expertise among present members to examine the student. If a committee member must be absent for the scheduled exam, it is permissible for one absent committee member to examine the candidate on a separate date. The committee chair, or one co-chair, must participate synchronously in the scheduled exam.
• Note: Exam names and formats vary by department. In the UCSD-wide policy, the “doctoral qualifying exam” corresponds to BISB's “Advancement to Candidacy Exam,” not to BISB's “Second Year Qualifying Examination.”

We are temporarily keeping this section for reference. This section was for exams during emergency remote instruction, Spring 2020 through Summer 2022 (Sep 2, 2022 and earlier). For exams Fall 2022 and later, see the separate section "Modality starting Fall 2022."

During emergency remote instruction, the Qualifying Exam, Advancement to Ph.D. Candidacy Exam, and Dissertation Defense will be conducted through Zoom or other teleconferencing software, instead of in-person.

• The rule limiting at most one committee member to participate remotely is waived during emergency remote instruction; everyone will participate remotely. (This is a temporary exception; see the "Graduate Examinations" section here.) However, the exam should still be scheduled at a time when all committee members are available.
• After the schedule is determined, please email your entire committee and the Graduate Coordinator to inform them of the schedule, and also notify them promptly if the schedule changes.
• Part of the exam is a discussion among committee members, without the student or other attendees. If the student is the Zoom meeting host, they will need to transfer Zoom hosting responsibilities to one of the committee members, who can then put the student in the Zoom waiting room. After the committee discussion, the student is brought back into the meeting.
• Please be alert to connectivity problems with the student or committee members.
• If there is an audience (typical for defenses, but not qual or advancement exams), please follow campus guidance on Zoom security settings. This includes creating a unique meeting ID (instead of your personal Zoom ID), and a meeting password only distributed by email (not posted on a public website).
• Exam paperwork is usually done on paper and signed by all committee members in-person. During emergency remote instruction, the Graduate Coordinator will send the committee members instructions by email on how to report the exam results. Procedures are being developed by Graduate Division. For the BISB Qualifying Exam, the evaluation form will be filled out by the Committee Chair, in consultation with other committee members.
• These procedures may change as we receive further guidance or run into problems.