Preliminary Examinations are to be taken after all course work is completed and the student is ready to begin work on the dissertation. However, a faculty adviser should be chosen in consultation with the Graduate Adviser at the beginning of the third year. After successful completion of the preliminary examinations, formal admission to candidacy for the degree is granted.
Two preliminaryexaminations of a kind described in A and B below are required, and students have the option of taking a third prelim of this kind if the potential prelim
advisor and the DGS agree to this in advance of the exam. At least one of these exams must be on a Greek topic and at least one on a Roman topic and at least one must include attention to textual transmission. A third prelim of the type described in C below is also required: it consists of the students’ work in the three required survey courses.
Apart from the survey courses, the preparation for prelimsshould be roughly a semester inlength with a meeting between the student and the advisor every one to two weeks. The student may enroll in a 990 course with the advisor while preparing for the prelim but is not required to do so. The student and advisor should agree in advance on the goal of the prelim, that is, the body of knowledge to be mastered and, as far as possible, the primary and secondary readings to be covered. If the prelim takes the form of an oral examination, the DGS is present as an observer. If the prelim takes the form of a research paper, the paper must be completed within a month after the advisor-student meetings have ceased and if revisions are needed these should be completed within another month after this. The final version of the paper is submitted both to the examiner and, for oversight, to the Director of Graduate Studies.
There are three categories of prelim, at least one of which should ideally help students transition from coursework to conducting independent research. Normally, apart from the survey courses, at least one of the prelims is an oral exam and at least one is satisfied with a research paper.
A. The Latin/Greek examinations test the student on authors/periods/genres. These are typically oral examinations. The examination often takes the form of a discussion of three or four questions or topics agreed upon by the student and advisor in advance of the exam. The Director of Graduate Studies is present during the exam as an observer. The exam should not last more than 1 to 1.5 hours.
B. The topic of a special field examination is typically chosen by the student from areas pertinent to Classics: for example, archaeology, philosophy, literary or critical theory, history, ancient scholarship or scholia, papyrology, religion, linguistics, numismatics, epigraphy, metrics, law, Medieval Latin, etc. It may have a pedagogic orientation. A professor in another department can be the director of a prelim by approval of the DGS. This requirement is normally fulfilled by a substantial research paper, but can also be met by an oral examination by agreement of the student, the examiner and the Director of Graduate Studies. If the student and the DGS agree, an exam of this kind may be replaced with a 600-level course beyond the one required of all students.
C. Greek and Roman literature:The grades in the three required survey courses in the history of the literatures are used to fulfill this requirement and must be B- or above. The student must take at least one survey course in each language.