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- The purpose of the qualifying process is to allow students to demonstrate they are ready to advance to candidacy. This process is part of a comprehensive evaluation that also includes successful completion of core area courses (which include comprehensive exams) and certain area of specialization courses, as well as good standing in the area of specialization as determined by annual student reviews.
- In line with the department requirements for the qualifying process, students will produce a qualifying document, have an oral exam and a written exam, and be evaluated no later than their 7th semester. (On very rare occasion and due to extreme circumstances, a petition for an extension of any part of the QP process may be granted if it is approved by the GSC Executive Committee with the support of the area of specialization and the Graduate Adviser.) Students must have completed the qualifying process in time to be evaluated at the regularly scheduled fall or spring GSC meetings.
- Students should contact the Program Director or Area Chair no later than their 4th semester to discuss the selection of their qualifying process adviser, as the Areas/Programs have slightly varying processes.
- In exceptional cases, it is permissible for students to seek advisers outside of their areas of specialization. The process for obtaining approval for this would begin with the student’s faculty adviser. The adviser must always be an EDP GSC faculty member.
- Each student will have an officially assigned qualifying process adviser (chosen in accordance with the process developed by the student’s area of specialization) and turn-in date. Once the date for turning in the qualifying document has been officially determined, it cannot be moved to a subsequent semester. For this reason, students sometimes officially choose to turn in the qualifying document one semester later than the one in which they actually hope to turn it in - just in case a courseload causes a problem in completion of the core area courses, etc. If no problem arises (and if all other requirements will be met on time) the student can, with approval of the qualifying process adviser, turn in the document a semester early. To do so, the adviser must email approval to the Graduate Coordinator with enough advance notice for the student to be sent the new deadline information and to be able to meet the deadlines.
- In accordance with the Department’s timeline, faculty will meet to determine the two remaining committee members. Usually, one member will be from the student’s area and the other member will be from another area. Such decisions will be made based on the student's qualifying document topic summary, and members will be assigned based on their expertise with respect to the student’s topic and faculty workload considerations. ( You should give send your up-to-date Program of Work to your committee members access to your program of work in UTBox so they know which courses you have completed and with what level of competency.)
- The written product that students submit can vary, depending on the area/program. In all cases, the document must be the student’s own work to the degree that it would deserve first or sole authorship, and must be prepared under the supervision of a UT-Austin EDP faculty person. “First authorship is based on work to which individuals have substantially contributed (APA Ethics Code Standard 8.12a, Publication Credit).” “Substantial contributions may include formulating the problem or hypothesis, structuring the experimental design, organizing and conducting the statistical analysis, interpreting the results, or writing a major portion of the paper.” (Publication Manual of the APA, 6th Edition, p. 18).
- Recommendation for advancement to candidacy will be made to the GSC from the student’s qualifying process committee and area/program.
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