It’s finally over, the dreaded master’s exit exam is complete!
As I’m sure you can imagine given that this post starts by saying it’s over, I have passed the exam. All that’s left is to pass my classes this semester and I’ll be done - I’ll have the degree. For those of you not familiar with the process I want to spend a few sentences here to just talk about what goes on with the exit exam.
What is an exit exam?
Here at OU non-thesis master’s degrees require the completion of a “Non-Thesis Examination”. This is a comprehensive exam that covers all of the work that you’ve taken in the course of completing your degree.
For the Computer Science department, this exam takes the form of a presentation to a committee of three faculty members. The presentation provides an in-depth explanation of a research paper that has been approved by a faculty member. Throughout the presentation you’re asked various questions about the content of the paper. These questions can depart a bit from the paper being presented to include other topics that should’ve been learned throughout the degree. For example, you may be asked a question about something not explicitly mentioned in the paper with the expectation that someone who truly understands the paper and the field would know the answer.
There’s also an alternative option that involves taking up to 6 credit hours of Independent Studies, and performing a presentation over your work in the course.
Details about my exam
In my case, I chose to do a presentation over an approved paper. I selected Sharif et al.’s 2016 paper, Accessorize to a Crime: Real and Stealthy Attacks on State-of-the-Art Face Recognition. I personally find it to be a very interesting paper, and I’d highly suggest giving it a read if the title sounds interesting to you. My exam committee was composed of Drs. Dean Hougen, Chao Lan, and Anindya Maiti.
The CS department schedules their exams over a one week period in April, and I had mine two days ago on Monday. The presentation itself took about 30 minutes and there were 15 or so minutes of questions at the end. I was then placed in a breakout room for around 5 minutes while the committee made their decision.
What’s next?
Now that the exit exam is out of the way, I still have a few weeks worth of classes to finish before graduation. However, with the exam done I now intended to focus a lot of my effort on the job search and getting out applications.