Comprehensive Exam – Doctor of Clinical Psychophysiology
Written Comprehensive Examination:
After completion of all coursework and prior to the dissertation defense, each student will have to pass a written comprehensive examination.
For each comprehensive examination, each professor in the college submits two essay questions for each of the lecture courses they teach in the program. The student selects one of the two questions for each didactic area to answer. There are 18 didactic areas in the program so the student has to answer 18 questions. The questions must be designed so they can be answered within two double spaced typed pages using 12- point font size characters. The questions must test the student’s understanding of a crucial basic concept and the student’s ability to apply that concept to applied psychophysiology rather than requiring a list of facts. If a student was exempted from taking a course, the student may contact the course instructor to get key reading materials so the student is adequately prepared to answer questions from that area of the program.
The examination is open book as it deals with understanding and applying concepts rather than listing facts. The facts supporting the answer must be written as part of each answer. The student being tested arranges a test date with the college’s dean. On the date of the exam, the dean e-mails the exam to the student and the student has 24 hours to e-mail the answers to the dean. No answers are accepted after the 24-hour limit. The student may not contact anybody who could help with the exam in any way, including faculty members who supplied the exam questions, during the exam period without explicit, written permission from the dean. When the student e-mails the answered exam to the dean, the dean sends the answers to each faculty member. The faculty members have two weeks to grade the exam. Questions are graded only pass or fail.
The student must pass 14 of the questions to pass the exam. A student who fails the comprehensive may attempt questions from the failed subject areas twice with not less than one month between each attempt. Different questions are supplied to the student for each attempt. If the student does not pass on the third attempt (the original and two retries), the student is dropped from the program.
Comprehensive examinations are time consuming for the faculty who need to develop and then score questions as well as the dean who has to compile them and track the process so the comprehensive examination is not free. Each faculty member is paid $25 for each question set provided and scored regardless of how many students take the exam at one sitting (up to a maximum of four). The dean will receive an additional $25 for the time required to administer the exam. The exam costs $475.
