20 Criteria for Assessing the Quality of Ph.D. Preliminary Exams
- High Pass: Provides a direct response to the question which clearly pursues a reasoned path, may uncover additional questions or complications.
- Pass: Provides a direct response to the question but misses obvious opportunities to develop or complicate the response.
- Low Pass: Responds to the question, but lacks clear connection or cohesion of ideas.
- Fail: Absence of a reasoned or sustained response to the question.
Accuracy, Breadth, and Depth of Knowledge
- High Pass: Demonstrates mastery of the area by discussing primary and secondary literature accurately and with an appreciation for complexity.
- Pass: Demonstrates strong knowledge of primary works, perhaps with minor inaccuracies, but has few references to secondary scholarship.
- Low Pass: Demonstrates general knowledge of primary works with some inaccuracies and oversimplifications. Does not reference any secondary literature
- Fail: Does not demonstrate adequate knowledge of primary works.
Ability to Establish a Critical Position
- High Pass: Shows independent thinking through critical evaluations of primary and/or secondary literature.
- Pass: Provides some limited discussion of independent perspectives on primary and/or secondary works.
- Low Pass: Exhibits elements of independent thinking with regard to primary and/or secondary texts but without development or sustained discussion.
- Fail: Response is limited to showing knowledge of primary works without any critical evaluation of primary and/or secondary works.
Writing Quality
- High Pass: Well-organized and fluid, with no sentence-level errors, and a minimum of typographical errors.
- Pass: Organized and less fluid, with few abrupt transitions and sentence-level errors, and a minimum of typographical errors.
- Low Pass: Passably organized, but with some abrupt transitions and sentence-level and/or typographical errors.
- Fail: Poorly organized or replete with intrusive sentence-level and typographical errors.
