General Exam and Dissertation

 

General Exam Format

For students in the Standard Program, the Logic & Philosophy of Science Track, or the Interdepartmental Program in Political Philosophy

October General Exam Schedule (General Exam in October of the Third Year):

  • Provide the name of your General Exam adviser to the DGS by March 15th of your second year of regular enrollment. Once your General Exam adviser is approved, the DGS will set up your General Exam committee.
  • Submit all papers, take all exams, complete all distribution requirements and units by May 31st of your second year of regular enrollment*. This includes your first and second oral units.
  • Your second oral unit, which is the survey unit and will normally be your 10th unit, will be considered Part 1 of your General Exam.
    • At the latest, two weeks before the oral exam, students will have received the approval of two examiners for an examination proposal, which must include a description of the unit’s field of study, six to ten sample questions, and a bibliography. This document, after approval by the examiners, must be forwarded to the DGS. The written part of the unit can be a paper or a 48-hour take-home exam on questions formulated by the examiners. Both written and oral parts of the exam must combine a survey of the field with creative philosophical work.
  • Your undergraduate lecture, observed and confirmed in writing by a Princeton PHI faculty member, must be completed by May 31st of your second year of regular enrollment.
  • Part 2 of the General Exam is the qualifying exam (the oral portion; preceded a few days before by submission of a draft chapter of your dissertation). This due date is based on the University academic calendar for October General Exams. (See below for a complete description of the qualifying exam.)
  • Teaching in your second year at Princeton is optional.

January General Exam Schedule (General Exam in January of the Third Year):

  • Provide the name of your General Exam adviser to the DGS by March 15th of your second year of regular enrollment.Once your General Exam adviser is approved, the DGS will set up your General Exam committee.
  • Submit all papers, take all exams, complete all distribution requirements and units (including your first oral unit) by May 31st of your second year of regular enrollment*.
  • Your second oral unit (the survey unit, which will normally be your 10th unit) will be considered Part 1 of your General Exam.This unit is due by May 31st of your second year of regular enrollment.
    • At the latest, two weeks before the oral exam, students will have received the approval of two examiners for an examination proposal, which must include a description of the unit’s field of study, six to ten sample questions, and a bibliography. This document, after approval by the examiners, must be forwarded to the DGS. The written part of the unit can be a paper or a 48-hour take-home exam on questions formulated by the examiners. Both written and oral parts of the exam must combine a survey of the field with creative philosophical work.
  • Your undergraduate lecture, observed and confirmed in writing by a Princeton PHI faculty member, must be completed by December 15th of your third year of regular enrollment.
  • Part 2 of your General Exam is the qualifying exam (the oral portion; preceded a few days before by submission of a draft chapter of your dissertation). This due date is based on the University academic calendar for January General Exams. (See below for a complete description of the qualifying exam.)
  • Teaching in your second year at Princeton is optional.

*Failure to meet this deadline results in loss of entitlement to staying enrolled in the program and in the deferral of the department’s re-enrollment recommendation. In that case, a new timeline for completion of the ten units is agreed upon with the student by June 15, and continued enrollment is conditional on implementation of the new timeline.

If any of the above dates occur on a weekend or during recess, the due date will be on the following Monday.

For Students in the Classical Philosophy Program

  • Provide the name of your General Exam adviser to the DGS by March 15th of your second year of regular enrollment.Once your General Exam adviser is approved, the DGS will set up your General Exam committee.
  • Submit all papers, take all exams, complete all distribution requirements and units (other than the 4 special units, which must be completed during regular enrollment) by May 31st of your second year of regular enrollment. This includes your first and second oral units. (Your second oral unit, which is the survey unit and will normally be your 10th unit, will be considered Part 1 of your General Exam).
    • At the latest, two weeks before the oral exam, students will have received the approval of two examiners for an examination proposal, which must include a description of the unit’s field of study, six to ten sample questions, and a bibliography. The written part of the unit can be a paper or a 48-hour take-home exam on questions formulated by the examiners. Both written and oral parts of the exam must combine a survey of the field with creative philosophical work.
  • Your undergraduate lecture, observed and confirmed in writing by a Princeton PHI faculty member, must be completed anytime prior to your General Exam.
  • Part 2 of your General Exam is the qualifying exam (the oral portion; preceded a few days before by submission of a draft chapter of your dissertation). This can be completed in October, January, or as late as May of your third year of regular enrollment, following the schedule based on the University academic calendar. (See below for a complete description of the qualifying exam.)
  • Teaching in your second year at Princeton is optional.

If any of the above dates occur on a weekend or during recess, the due date will be on the following Monday.

The Qualifying Exam

Part 2 of the General Exam is the qualifying exam.  The written part of this exam is constituted by (1) a draft dissertation chapter of between 7500 – 8500 words, and (2) a dissertation prospectus of 2 – 4 pages. If you feel the need to exceed these limits (with quotations, for example), consult with the DGS. The oral part of the exam is conducted by the student’s General Exam committee, which is composed of four faculty members, under the direction of the exam committee chair. It is preferred that students enrolled in the regular program take this oral exam in the General Exam period in October of their third year of enrollment. However, students may also take the exam in the January exam period of their third year of enrollment. 

All students who are allowed to retake their General Examination after a failed attempt are required to do so by following the format of the qualifying exam (Part 2 of the new General Exam format).

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Qualifications to Write A Dissertation In A Given Area

If you can complete pre-Generals requirements and pass Generals, then we take it that you are able to write some dissertation or other, but not necessarily the dissertation of your choice. To do justice to some topics, you may need preparation and qualifications that go beyond those required of everyone as part of our pre-Generals requirements, and beyond what you could reasonably expect to pick up while working on the dissertation. You might need to know a considerable amount of logic, or linguistics, or physics, or history, or econometrics, or something else. In par­ticular, you might need a level of proficiency in some foreign language which is substantially higher than that needed to pass the language requirement. That might be because there are impor­tant untranslated scholarly works relevant to your topic. Or it might be because your topic requires you to figure out what someone meant by something written in a foreign language. Note the department's requirement that "if a student's dissertation is devoted to any considerable extent to an author, the student must be able to read the author's works in the original language." (But note also the delicate, yet real, distinction between writing about an author and writing about philo­sophical ideas that come from that author.) Don't take chances. The standards that apply are the generally accepted standards of sound scholarship, not the standards of doing the best you can with what preparation you have. If you can't do sound scholarship on a topic because you aren't good enough at a language (or something) that doesn't excuse or justify bad scholarship – it means that you should have chosen a different topic.

If in doubt about what qualifications are needed for a topic, and whether you have them, seek advice! Your adviser cannot determine by an exercise of authority what standards of scholarship will suffice – the adviser is only an adviser, there is no such authority – but the adviser can give you good advice on what will be needed to meet generally accepted standards of scholarship, and the adviser (with your help) can try to measure your level of proficiency. If you can't do a topic justice, you'd rather find out now than after you've submitted a dissertation.

Choose a Reasonably-Sized Project

In choosing a dissertation topic and General Examination field, beware of overambition. Students sometimes attempt enormous projects which later have to be abandoned, others are completed many years later. Either way is a disaster for the student's academic career. It is hard to write a dis­sertation while starting to teach, hard to remain employed without the Ph.D., hard to publish arti­cles that would support promotion to tenure while still struggling with the dissertation. It is extremely advantageous to finish the Ph.D. before leaving Princeton. Your dissertation does not need to be a magnum opus; it does not need to contain every thought you have about the topic; the end of the dissertation need not be the end of your research and writing on the topic. Choose a project you can soon finish!

Dissertations Consisting of Several Essays

Some dissertations consist of several significant philosophical essays on different topics. Each essay in such a dissertation must be a substantial full-length philosophical article, not just a dis­cussion note.

Title

Your dissertation should have a useful title that gives some indication of the philosophical content of the dissertation. Specifically ruled out are titles like "Philosophical Essays" or "Three Philo­sophical Essays."

Length

Although a good dissertation might be significantly shorter or longer, the department recom­mends a target length of 30,000-50,000 words. Besides this recommendation, we also have established a length limit. Dissertations will normally be limited to 100,000 words (about 400 standard pages); exceptions must be approved by the Graduate Committee.

Submission

The following links will provide information on preparing your dissertation for submission:

FPO Checklist

Mudd Library

Graduate School – Dissertation and FPO

Graduate School - Advanced Degree Application Process

 

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