Let me tell you all a story.
Once upon a time, a grad student had to take 3 qualifying exams to prove she knew about math and things so she could start working on her dissertation. The first exam she had to take was graph theory.
All the other grad students who had taken prelims told her that she needed to study the past prelims. So she did. She and the other students gathered together and studied hard and the day the prelim came, they answered everything well. 48 hours later, the grad student received an email from the main graph theorist in the department that she had passed the exam. Huzzah!
Later that summer came the Algebra prelim. The grad student was much more scared for this exam because she felt as though she didn’t understand algebra as well as graph theory. She and her fellow grad students studied hard, though, taking as many past qualifying exams as they could get their hands on. The little grad student even read way more about gröbner bases than she ever wanted to know. And then the prelim came. And she had to define elementary symmetric polynomials on the exam. And that was a thing. Two weeks later, she and her fellow grad students received letters in their mailboxes saying they passed. *(kinda. There’s a long story about this one, but it is not little grad student’s story to tell.) Huzzah!
Now little grad student hadn’t fully committed to graph theory as her area of study at this point. So grad student wondered what would happen if she pursued another area. Well, she’d have to take 2 more prelims instead of just one. So for that reason and many others, little grad student decided to prepare only for Algebraic topology the next summer. She studied hard and then on a dark Monday morning, she and her fellow grad students made their way to campus to take the prelim.
According to sources, right after turning in her exam, grad student was as pale as a ghost, which is impressive because grad student is already very very pale skinned.
Everyone in the department had told grad student that she would do fine. But grad student was scared. Then, during TA orientation, the professor of Algebraic topology lets slip to one of the fellow grad students that “they all did fine”. Then suddenly fifteen minutes later, after fellow grad student has told this to his peers, the professor announces with a giant thumbs up that the three grad students passed.
Little grad student missed all this. She was too busy talking to another grad student and professor about something else and only found out she passed her prelim when the professor was right behind her to shake her hand.
But seriously. Little grad student wants it in writing that she passed. It would be greatly appreciated.
TLDR: I have passed all three of my prelims and the way we were told we passed the last one was WILD. This is the condensed version of the story, but at least the chair of the department was in the room.
