Before scheduling your Oral Candidacy Exam, you should have completed:

• Two terms of Ph242 - Physics Seminar - This should be taken during your first year of graduate study.
• Two written candidacy exams - see the Basic Physics Requirement, the exams should be attempted by the end of first year and successfully completed by the end of second year.
• The Advanced Physics Requirement - These courses should be completed by the end of your second year, if possible.

Remember that your committee members will probably not know everything about your research. Plan for about a one-hour talk in which you describe what your project is about, why the work is important, what questions it may answer, etc.  Describe what work you have done on the project so far, and what you plan to do.  Finally, outline a schedule that describes the path to your thesis.

How to Schedule Your Oral Candidacy Exam

For those students who wish to schedule their oral candidacy exam, follow these steps:

• Talk to your advisor about the exam, and about who should be on your committee.  You will need a total of four people, including your advisor.   Tradition has it that theorists should have at least one experimentalist on their committee, and experimentalists should have at least one theorist.  If you want to include people from other departments or even other universities on your committee, this is fine.  There are no rigid rules, so talk with your advisor about it.   Best to get some alternates as well.

• Send an e-mail to kgl@caltech.edu to get the official departmental approval of your committee.  Unless you are proposing an odd committee, approval should not be an issue.

• After you have your list approved, ask the people on the list if they are willing to serve on your committee.  Remember that no one is obligated to serve on your committee.  If you need to change your committee membership, send another e-mail to kgl@caltech.edu.

• Arrange a date and time with your committee for your presentation. An easy online event scheduling tool can be found at Doodle.com.  In addition to getting your committee to agree to a time, you also need to make sure a room is available.  You will need to contact the Physics Graduate Office via email about reserving a conference room in East Bridge; you can reserve a room elsewhere if you wish, however, the Oral Candidacy Exam Forms are available ONLY from the Physics Graduate Office AFTER you have reserved your exam room.  Getting everyone on your committee to agree on a date can be difficult if your committee members are out of town a lot, so it's best not to leave this for the last minute, especially during April and May when students are defending for commencement in June.

• Make sure your committee members all know when and where to meet for your exam.  You should probably remind them just prior to the exam.

• BEFORE your oral exam you will need to pick up the Physics Departmental (1-page) and the Institute (4-page) candidacy forms from the PGO. Please DO NOT download these forms as the physics department has specific information and signature requirements only available through the Physics Graduate Office. Instructions concerning what parts to fill in and what signatures will be needed at certain times during this process will be given. You will need to list your completed course requirements on these forms, so if you have not received confirmation from Frank Porter you will need to do so before any signatures will be granted.