Department of

BIOSTATISTICS

Qualifying Exam

Students pursuing either the M.S. degree or the Ph.D. degree must pass a qualifying examination administered during the summer after the first year. The examination is an "in class", closed-book exam given over a period of two days and covers material from the following first year courses:

• Part A: Applied (four hour exam) covers BIOS 553, 554, 571 and 572.
• Part B: Theoretical (four hour exam) covers BIOS 513, 514 and 546. Each part of the exam is graded with a pass/fail. A student who fails a part of the exam must retake that part of the qualifying exam. Such a student may petition the Examination Committee of the Department of Biostatistics for a winter administration of the Qualifying Exam. While it is possible to take the parts of the Qualifying Exam in different years, this may delay graduation.

Comprehensive Exam

Students pursuing the Ph.D. degree who have passed the Qualifying Exam must pass a Comprehensive Exam consisting of two parts.

• Part A: Written Comprehensive Exam
  This comprehensive exam gives the student an opportunity to demonstrate that he/she has mastered the application of theory to various statistical methods. Topics from three areas of statistical methods (Multivariate, Categorical and Survival) as well as Advanced Inference will be included in this exam. A list containing a general synthesis of important topics in estimation, hypothesis testing, inference, etc. will be distributed to students who will take the exam. Methods will be applied to continuous, multivariate, categorical and time-to-response (censored) data.
   
  The exam will consist of a variety of questions. Students will be given choices among questions and will be required to answer at least half of the questions. Students will have an 8-hour period in which to compete the closed-book exam. An average score of 70% or higher will constitute a passing grade.
  
  The exam will be developed from questions submitted by the faculty. Faculty members will submit questions along with proposed solutions. The Exam Committee will only consider questions with solutions. The Exam Committee will synthesize and edit the questions in order to make the exam relevant and tractable; prepare an answer key prior to the administration of the exam; and assign at least two faculty members to grade each question.

Part B: Data/Analytic/Consulting Exam
This exam tests for problem solving abilities and draws from material presented in BIOS 516, 625, 631 and/or other advanced elective courses. Students will complete a statistical analysis of a data set, submit a written report describing the analysis and present an oral report defending the analysis. The exam will be written and evaluated by the Ph.D. student's dissertation committee.

The Data/Analytic/Consulting Exam is taken only after the successful completion of the Part A Exam. The student's dissertation committee selects a data set to be analyzed in order to answer a set of questions a biomedical researcher has posed. This committee submits the data set and questions to the Exam Committee for approval. The Exam Committee delivers an approved copy of the exam to the student. The student may only ask questions of clarification of the dissertation committee members. A full-time student has two weeks to complete the analysis and submit a written report to the Thesis Committee. The dissertation committee decides whether the student passes Part B (pass/fail) based upon the oral presentation/defense and the written report.

The oral presentation must be completed in a timely manner, as arranged between the student and his/her dissertation committee. The recommendation is for Part B to be completed within six weeks of passing Part A, but it must completed within three months of passing Part A. Note: since the dissertation committee must be in place prior to the administration of the Part B exam, it is strongly recommended that students begin the process of forming their committees well before the end of the third year of courses.