MALAS
COMPREHENSIVE
EXAM UPCOMING DATES
Fall
2018
Deadline
to send the MALAS Graduate
Director
your three areas of
emphasis,
booklists, and
names of the three Professors
supervising
your
three areas of emphasis and
authoring your
MALAS
comprehensive exam questions:
October 1, 2018
Exam
date: Friday, November 30,
2018, 8am-2pm
Spring 2019
Deadline
to send the MALAS Graduate
Director
your three areas of
emphasis,
booklists, and
names of the three Professors
supervising
your
three areas of emphasis and
authoring your
MALAS
comprehensive exam questions:
February 1, 2019
Exam
date: Friday, April 26,
2019, 8am-2pm
Summer 2019
Deadline
to send the MALAS Graduate
Director
your three areas of
emphasis,
booklists, and
names of the three Professors
supervising
your
three areas of emphasis and
authoring your
MALAS
comprehensive exam questions:
June 7, 2019
Exam
date: Friday, July 26,
2019, 8am-2pm
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MALAS
Comprehensive Exam INSTRUCTIONS
Updated September 26,
2018
In Fall 2011, the MALAS Program instituted another
culminating option for graduation: the MALAS Comprehensive
Exam. It is your choice to either choose
the MALAS Comprehensive Exam or to complete a Thesis
or Project, and there are pros and cons for each
choice.
There are TWO specific courses on the online catalog
that pertain to the Comprehensive Exam option. The
first, MALAS 795, is
the most important as graduate students who elect to
pursue the MALAS
Comprehensive Exam option must have MALAS 795 on their
Program of Study
in order to take the exam and to graduate.
The second, MALAS 799C only
comes into play if a MALAS graduate student fails
the comprehensive
exam:
IMPORTANT
MALAS 795. Studies in Liberal
Arts and Sciences (3) Cr/NC
Prerequisite:
Graduate standing. Individual preparation for
comprehensive examination for students taking
the Master of Liberal Arts and Sciences under
Plan B.
RARE
MALAS 799C. Comprehensive
Examination Extension (0) Cr/NC
Prerequisite:
Completion or concurrent enrollment in degree
program courses. Registration required of
students whose only requirement is completion
of the comprehensive examination for the
master’s degree. Registration in 799C limited
to two semesters.
The MALAS Comprehensive Exam is offered in the Fall
and Spring semesters, and is available also in the
summer for qualified graduate students.
What is the difference between the Exam
and the Thesis?
The Thesis needs to be published via standard
publishing guidelines found
online.
The MA thesis is an in-depth research document
focused on a topic of
your choosing; people who are extremely worried
about publishing
deadlines or writing an exceptionally long,
challenging paper may wish
to shy away from this option. Note: the average
length of a MALAS
Master's Thesis is anywhere from 60 to 100 pages
including
bibliography, footnotes, etc.
This is where the MALAS Comprehensive Exam comes in.
To put it simply, at the end of the semester of your
choosing (at which time you enroll in the above
MALAS 795 class), you take an exam based on three
areas of emphasis of your choosing (which is great
for eclectic MALAS students). These areas can be
independent of each other or interrelated.
The MALAS Comprehensive Exam uses a Distinction/Pass/Fail
standard and is administered all on the same day
over six hours; each exam is an hour and fifty
minutes long, with a break between each question.
Here are the specifics of how the Comprehensive Exam
works:
You (the MALAS student) meet with the director to
discuss your choice between the Comprehensive Exam,
the Thesis or the Project. Ideally, at this point,
you will know the three areas that you want to focus
on for your Comprehensive
Exam. You’ll be informed that you need three Faculty
supervisors that
are willing to oversee one of each of the areas, for
a total of three
advisors. The advisor is the one who authorizes your
final list of
selected texts for one of your three test subject
areas and authors the
questions you will have on the exam and grades the
test at the end--so
keep that in mind for your choices. Note that your
area supervisors do
not need to be tenured or tenure-track Assistant,
Associate, or Full
Professors at SDSU, but it is preferable that they
are and especially
important that they are experts in the area of study
you have
developed. Lecturers at SDSU
are welcome to serve as area supervisors but please
let the MALAS
Director know about this via email as soon as
possible.
Once you have your subject area supervisors, you
will come up with a
reading list of 7-12 books, critical articles,
anthologies, movies,
etc, that your professor/area supervisor agrees
constitutes a
Masters-level bibiliography for the selected area.
Some of these may be
drawn from your graduate work in MALAS seminars, but it is
also important for you to add to what you have
experienced in seminars with your own
findings/discoveries/researches.
Over the course of the semester, you will be
expected to carefully read
and research the agreed upon items from your three
subject areas--it is
up to you and your supervising professor for each
subject area whether
you meet to discuss your progress on the reading
list during the term.
About two weeks before the exam, it is recommended
you break contact
with your supervising professor in your three
selected areas of
emphasis--at that point, the MALAS director will
directly communicate
with your supervising scholars. The director
will direct your
supervisors to come up with 2-3 questions for the
Comprehensive Exam
based on your approved reading lists (although you
will respond to only
ONE of these provided choices per area of emphasis.
NOTE: you do
NOT get to know what the questions are beforehand.
The
Comprehensive Exam is not an easier choice than the
Thesis and, in
general, it does not have less value than the thesis
if you are
considering going on for a Ph.D. You must
demonstrate mastery of the
material to the point of being able to pull specific
examples from as
many of the works as you can to support your case
without having them
in front of you as reference. The best part of
selecting the MALAS
Comprehensive Exam over the thesis or the project?
It is over in one
day, and the task of chasing down your three thesis
committee member
professors (sometimes an onerous chore) to agree on
your final thesis
draft is not part of things-to-do list!
Sample Case Histories:
Example #1: Richard Grant Muir
Richard Grant Muir had been taking courses on Social
Justice through MALAS and the Women’s Studies
Department. After discussing his areas of expertise
with Dr. Nericcio, Richard decides on the following
areas to be tested on:
1. Cultural Studies
2. Gender Studies
3. Sexuality Studies
This is an actual case history, and appears here
with Mr. Muir's permission. The MALAS Comprehensive
Exam was a better choice for Mr. Muir than the
Thesis because, as he was completing the MALAS
program in only one year, said circumstances did not
give him enough time to write a Thesis--so he opted
for the Exam.
Example #2: Destiny "La Xochi" Sánchez
Janille started the MALAS program to pursue a wide
variety of study options; she had completed her Dual
B.A. in Music Education and Biology at her previous
university, and she wanted a way of focusing on each
in her Master’s Program. Janille decided on the
following areas of focus for her Exam:
1. Academic benefits of Music
Programs in inner city middle schools
2. Auditory stimuli and the effect
on brain functions
3. Matching Musical Instruments to
kids of varying personality types
While some of the areas could easily have some
overlap, this option enabled her to focus on the
areas of her academics that she was the most
passionate about. Indeed, the fact that the
questions were so different made writing the Exams
easier, as she was not confusing sources!
Example #3: Jerome Tran
Jerome had spent his undergraduate degree getting a
general education in Liberal Arts, with a Minor in
German. The MALAS program seemed like a fantastic
choice, as it enabled him to pick from many
different classes and fields of study that peaked
his interest. Because of his varying interests in
many different things, Jerome felt that the Exam
option enabled him to be as diverse as he could,
while still showing off his knowledge skills. After
deliberating with the MALAS Director/Graduate
Advisor, he decided on the following areas:
1. How Transcendentalism impacted
immigrants in the 1800’s
2. The Surreal art movement of
South Korea in the 1990’s
3. Evolution of the Germanic
language in propaganda from World War I through
World War II.
Really, none of these questions had overlap, but
that is exactly what Jerome wanted! The Exam truly
enabled him to be able to highlight specific areas
of competency, while also illuminating his being a
relative Jack of all Trades.
Five
actual past MALAS Comprehensive Exams
appear below as reference; do NOT feel the need to
mirror exactly off
of the examples provided--every MALAS graduate
student is different and
so expect exams to vary widely.
William A. Nericcio
Director/Graduate Advisor | MALAS
bnericci@mail.sdsu.edu
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