Prep Tips

Month(s) ahead of time:

First and foremost, you should alert the relevant faculty that you intend to take comps. As mentioned previously, office staff should inquire with students whether they are interested in taking comps ahead of time but be sure to look out for their emails and to communicate with the comps writing faculty. CMU and our program take these tests Very seriously, and thus the staff needs to know well in advance that you intend to take the exam so that they can reserve space and resources for you.

Given the difficulty of comps and the wide range of skills and ability in our program, the recommended study time for comps varies greatly. Exceptional students may only need a month or less, while less literature adept students will likely need two months or more to prep. The general recommendation is about two months, using roughly two hours a day or some equivalent, to assemble study materials and to memorize them. Assembling your study materials can be quite a challenge in and of itself, as you’ll need to find—and likely make notes out of—a vast swath of research literature and textbooks. To assist you in this process, the comps writing faculty provide a reading list of citations that more or less cover everything you need to know, and this list will slightly change depending on their preferences and or the intended content of comps. The new reading list should be provided roughly two months before the exam, though timing will likely vary depending on the faculty. A previous reading list is provided in the study resources tab, along with some copies of the readings and some study notes to help ease the related burdens—though you should note that the accuracy/relevancy of these materials IS NOT guaranteed, and you should invest the time to ensure that the materials you use to study are up to your own standards of quality.

Once you have a reading list in hand, begin to study the citations it has listed in whatever form you think best. Some opt to assemble note cards with bullet points regarding the various citations, some opt to write out summaries of citation’s work/findings—whatever works best for you to be able to remember the in-text citations (ex. (Pearlman & Sanchez, 2010)) and the contents of the readings. You will also likely want to prepare for comps in some other ways, such as writing out practice answers and answer outlines. This can help give you an idea of how to write quality answers quickly during the exam, as well as how to best prepare and apply the citation knowledge you’ve acquired. You may even want to write out an answer to a previous comps question and have a faculty member (preferably one who will be writing and grading the current session) give you feedback on your answer. While this service isn’t guaranteed, it can give you strong feedback on how to improve your comps answers. Naturally you’ll also want to ensure that you have no conflicting obligations on the day of comps, whether that be classes you attend/teach or personal matters. Previous students have had to cancel or reschedule critical medical procedures because the school was unwilling to be flexible with them regarding these matters, so be sure to take the scheduling of comps seriously.