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The Computer Science Ph.D. program seeks to provide students with:
Applicants should apply through the Graduate School at the University of Texas at El Paso and must meet the requirements set forth by the Graduate School. In addition, the Admissions Committee, consisting of the Graduate Advisor of the Computer Science Department and three other members of the graduate faculty, will evaluate all student applications, and make decisions concerning the admittance of students to the program. The Admissions Committee will assess graduate applications and the following materials to make admission recommendations to the Graduate School:
Applicants must have completed a bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science or a closely related discipline. Exceptional students with non-computer science backgrounds may be conditionally admitted to the program. The Admissions Committee will review the records of such applicants, determine preparation deficiencies, and make specific recommendations for leveling courses. Leveling courses cannot be applied toward the degree requirements. The Ph.D. program requires a minimum of 48 semester-credit hours of coursework beyond a Bachelor's degree and 24 semester-credit hours of research and dissertation. Coursework includes a set of core courses and general, technical, and interdisciplinary electives. If a student enters the program with a Master's degree in Computer Science, he or she will be required to take a minimum of 27 semester-credit hours of coursework. In order to ensure that the student is able to apply principles and techniques of computer science to software development, clearly communicate technical ideas in writing, and synthesize, organize, and communicate technical material to an audience, he or she must meet programming, written communication, seminar, and teaching requirements. The table summarizes the degree requirements. The descriptions follow.
The Qualifying Examination is designed to ensure that students have graduate-level mastery of the basic Computer Science undergraduate material. Although the only knowledge required is that learned in undergraduate courses, the examination tests the ability to synthesize, integrate, and apply that knowledge at an advanced level. As such, students are expected not only to know the basic material, but to be able to use it in complex problems. Although the only knowledge required will be that learned in undergraduate courses, the examinations will test the ability to synthesize, integrate, and apply that knowledge at an advanced level. Thus a basic understanding of the textbook material, or completion of the undergraduate courses, may not be adequate preparation for the qualifying examinations. In particular, the entry-level graduate courses will be helpful for acquiring the ability to work with these concepts at the required level of sophistication. Students entering with a Masters in CS must pass the qualifying exam by the second calendar year after entry to the Ph.D. program; others must pass by the third calendar year after entry. All students must pass by the second attempt. Examinations will be given each spring and fall, ordinarily on the Thursday morning and Friday afternoon before classes start. The qualifying examination will be a written, closed-book examination, in four parts, of 2 hours each. The four parts are:
Each part will include several questions. More details appear in the Topics and Reading List. Past exam questions will be also be made available. The student should contact the Graduate Program Coordinator for more information and the exact dates of the exams. Possible outcomes for each part are pass, marginal and fail. A pass implies that the student is sufficiently prepared in this area and will not be retested, a fail means that the student should retake that part, a marginal performance implies that a decision will be made in light of the results in the other areas. The possible outcomes for a student taking the exam for the second time are pass, pass with conditions, and hard fail. The Comprehensive Examination is given to ensure that the student has identified a research topic and has acquired a sufficient depth of knowledge in the topic area to perform new and significant research and that the proposed research is feasible. The Comprehensive Examination will be taken after completion of the Qualifying Examination, typically within two years from that time. The student will prepare a written research proposal. The Comprehensive Examination will be an oral examination before the student's Doctoral Advisory Committee, covering the student's research proposal and other topics in his or her general area of study. Upon successful completion of the examination, the chair of the student's Doctoral Advisory Committee will inform the Graduate School that the student is ready to begin work on his or her final dissertation, and the student will be admitted to candidacy. |
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