This message comes from the Ph.D. coordinator of the CS Department at Illinois Institute of Technology.

The oral and written parts of the qualifying exam for spring 2011 will be held in late January 2011. The exact dates of these exams has not yet been finalized and will be announced shortly. Guidelines for the oral and written exams and samples of previous written exams are available on the web.

If you were admitted to the program in fall 2003 or earlier, with an M.S. degree, then you have the option to stay in that program or to switch to the new program (for students admitted from spring 2004 on). You must inform me of your decision prior to attempting the qualifying exam, as the "old" and "new" programs have different requirements. Note that you cannot pick only certain features of the new program together with some features of the old program.

You must inform me (by email) by January 13, 2011 if you decide to take the qualifying exam in spring 2011 or not. Please also include:

1. Your name, contact email, and student ID
2. Your advisor's name and your area
3. Whether you have taken the exams in previous semesters and if so, which area(s) have you taken.

Each oral exam will last half an hour (except for the Theory research area). If you want to take the oral exam, you must also let me know in which of the following six research areas you will take the exam and the name of your advisor for that area:

• Programming Languages and Software
• Databases and Information retrieval
• Networks
• Systems
• Theory
• Applications

Those taking the oral exam must fill in, by the same January 13, 2011 deadline, form CS 08 and submit it to the main office of the CS Department (SB 236). In addition, unless you take the oral exam in Theory, a written report is required for the oral part; there is no official required length of the report. The written report should be submitted to me by January 20, 2011. Submit:

1. Four printed copies (preferably double-sided), left in my mailbox or sent to my office (SB 229C).
2. An electronic copy attached as a pdf file, emailed to xli@cs.iit.edu with subject "Written Report for Ph.D. Oral Exam, Spring 2011".

Best wishes,

XiangYang Li
http://www.cs.iit.edu/~xli    http://www.cs.iit.edu/~winet
Department of Computer Science
Illinois Institute of Technology
Chicago, IL
Editor: IEEE TPDS, Networks, Computer Communications, and Ad hoc & Sensor Networks Journal

Questions