AMS Qualifying Examinations

A student must pass a qualifying examination to be allowed to continue toward the Ph.D. degree. It is designed to test the student's preparation to do research in applied mathematics. The Doctoral Qualifying Examination comprises the so-called Common Exam and the Area-Specific Exam. Every doctoral student must take the former but may choose to take the latter in the student's declared area of concentration -- computational applied math. (CAM), operations research (OR), Computational Biology (CB) or statistics (STAT). The exams are given twice a year during the first week of Spring semester and summer.

In the first two hours of the three hour Common Exam, the student is expected to do six problems from AMS 510.  These problems are of the type listed in the collection of approximately 300 problems taken from the Schaum’s Outlines on Advanced Calculus and Schaum’s Outlines on Linear Algebra.  All six problems must be solved for a full credit.  In the remaining one hour, the student answers the problems in one of three categories.  For full credit, CAM students are required to solve two problems out of three each from AMS 504 and 505.  OR and STAT students must answer three out of four problems from AMS 507.  Comp. Bio. Students must answer three out of four problems from AMS 535 and CSE 549. 

The OR and CAM Area Exam lasts for three hours.  The Stat Area Exam consists of a two hour Math Stat exam on one day, followed by a take-home Applied Stat exam the next day.  The Comp. Bio. Area Exam is an oral exam given by the Comp. Bio faculty (students signing up for this exam must schedule this exam with their advisor).

Past Common Qualifying Exams and Area Specific Exams may be accessed by clicking here: Past Qualifying Exams