Work with your Graduate Program Advisor to determine what coursework you need to take (in addition to the core courses) and what the three topic areas of your Comprehensive Exam should be; one of the three areas you are tested on should be a cropping system, for example fruit trees or vegetable crops.
- Advance to candidacy at least one quarter before you plan to take the exam; the form is on Grad Studies' website at
https://grad.ucdavis.edu/forms
Fill out the form electronically and e-mail a copy to the Graduate Program Coordinator (Kelly Paglia, kpaglia@ucdavis.edu) to review. After making any needed edits, get your Graduate Program Advisor's signature, and pay the Master's candidacy fee. Send the completed candidacy form, and a copy of the receipt for the candidacy fee, to the Graduate Program Coordinator, who will submit it to Graduate Studies for final approval.
The Graduate Program name is Horticulture & Agronomy; the Program Code is GHAG. Leave the Degree Sequence Number blank. - Meet with your Graduate Program Advisor to discuss the exam, finalize topic areas, and determine who should serve on your Exam Committee. Once you have selected your committee members, and all three of them have agreed to serve on your committee, have your Grad Program Advisor and Comp Exam Committee Chair sign your Comprehensive Exam Committee Approval form, then submit it to the Graduate Program Coordinator.
http://ggha.ucdavis.edu/Forms/PlanIICommitteeApprovalForm.pdf
This should be done at least two months prior to the exam.
- Schedule your Comp Exam. As soon as it is scheduled, let the Graduate Program Coordinator know:
- when and where it will be
- confirm the names of your committee members
- confirm who will be Chair
There is paperwork that needs to be sent to your Exam Committee Chair, so the Graduate Program Coordinator needs to know the date of your exam at least two weeks ahead of time.
- Meet with your exam committee members to discuss the exam – what their expectations are, what you should study, etc.
- Prepare your MS Plan II Project Report; it needs to be submitted to your Exam Committee at least one week prior to your exam, preferably earlier.
The MS Plan II Project Report should contain an Introduction (containing a literature review on the subject of the project and a clear statement of the question or hypothesis being addressed in the project), a Materials and Methods section (containing a description of materials and methods used or to be used if the student is not involved in the complete execution of the project), a Results section (or Expected Results section if the results are not obtained as part of the project), a Discussion section that discusses either the results or expected results, a Conclusions or Implications section that addresses the application of the meaning of the results in relationship to the tested hypothesis, and a Literature Cited section (in an acceptable scientific format for the discipline).
The MS Plan II Project Report should be approximately 15-20 pages in length (double-spaced), including the Literature Cited section; it can be longer, if more space is needed. While the writing, organization, and grammar of this report should meet the high quality expectations of UC Davis graduate students, the research methodology and results of the overall project do not have to be of publishable quality.
- The structure of the exam will be as follows:
- The exam will normally take approximately 2 hours.
- During the first 30-40 minutes, the student gives a brief presentation on the project, and the committee members question the student about it.
- This is followed by testing in three general areas (20-30 minutes each) related to the student’s coursework and area of interest; one of the areas should be a cropping system.
- The outcome of the exam will be determined by the quality of the student’s Project Report and the quality of the student’s responses to the examiners’ questions.