The Comprehensive Exam
This page covers the exam’s day-of format, notes policy, study resources, grading process, and waiver application steps.
For the full requirement – deadline, minimum pass levels, and what a Placement-level pass exempts – see The Comprehensive Exam in the PhD Degree page.
Format and Notes Policy
The exam is offered over four days, during the week before the start of classes in August and January, and covers classical mechanics (CM), relativity, electricity and magnetism (EM), quantum mechanics (QM), and statistical mechanics and thermodynamics (SM). An effort will be made to test each area separately; however, a strict separation between areas need not be maintained. All students should register for the comprehensive exam.
The exam’s technical level is comparable to the midterm and final exams in the core courses, though its scope is comprehensive. As with any Stony Brook exam, the usual university-wide guidelines on academic integrity, religious observances, and disabilities apply.
Formula Sheet. Students may bring one handwritten page of notes (both sides) per subject.
Study Resources and Past Exams
There is a considerable amount of study material for the comprehensive exam. The first resource should be the lecture notes of both your graduate and undergraduate classes in each of the subjects. There are many standard textbooks for each of the subjects, for example Goldstein for Classical Mechanics, Jackson for Electrodynamics, Sakurai for Quantum Mechanics and Huang for Statistical Mechanics. Also useful as study material are the lecture notes by Prof. Likharev as well as the lecture notes of our recent courses in these subjects. Mastery of the undergraduate material in the core subjects is essential and should be the starting point for studying for the exam.
A useful list of topics can be found here, but it should be interpreted broadly – in general, the material is broadly aligned with the content of the core graduate courses and the breadth of material common to a first- or second-year undergraduate physics curriculum.
The PGSA has also developed a page with advice and resources for preparing for the comps. There is also a PGSA GitHub with resources for preparing for the comps.
There is also an archived page of comprehensive exams.
Grading and Regrades
The Comprehensive Exam is prepared by the Graduate Examinations Committee, which also recommends that year’s passing standards. About one week after each exam, the Department’s full faculty meets to discuss the results – debating and setting the final passing levels based on the Committee’s recommendations and historical norms. After that meeting, the answer books are available in the Department office for inspection by the students for grading errors, or for removal by the appropriate student. No grade changes are allowed to an exam book after it has left the office. It is a student’s responsibility to ask a professor to regrade a particular question, and this must be done in the office. A large number of small grade changes is not an acceptable way to make a significant change in a total score. Unclaimed books may be discarded after four weeks.
Waivers
A transfer student who has been admitted into the Ph.D. program in Physics at Stony Brook and who has passed a written comprehensive examination as a matriculated student in the doctoral program of the physics or astronomy department at another university may request a waiver of the written comprehensive examination. To request such a waiver a student should:
- First, discuss the situation with the Graduate Program Director.
- Submit to the Graduate Examination Committee a copy (in English or in the original language with an English translation) of the examination which the student passed.
- Supply a signed statement by the Chair or Graduate Program Director of the student’s previous university certifying the maximum possible grade on the examination, the minimum grade for a pass at the Ph.D. level, and the grade obtained by the student.
The Graduate Examinations Committee will consider both the level of the test and the quality of the student’s performance in deciding whether to recommend to the faculty that the student be exempted from taking the written comprehensive exam at Stony Brook.