In the midst of all this octobering, three of my advisees are doing their exams. The first exam was today, and K was great. The best moment for me was when a distinguished sr colleague raised a characteristically blunt objection, and K, who was taking notes, laid down her pen and said "I'm not sure I agree with you." And then she proceeded to lay out precisely why she disagreed with him in a really thoughtful, engaged, and respectful way.
My two departments do exams very differently, and both are pretty brutal. In Communication (that's right, I am effecting the name change) grad students respond in writing to three questions devised by committee members. The students are not given a designated place or time limit to answer the questions and so they labor over these answers for a few months to a year or longer. The answers end up being 30+ pages each and can often be worked directly into the dissertation. Students must then meet with the committee to discuss the exam, a kind of exam defense.
In English, students develop a reading list and a guiding rationale in consultation with the committee. And then they read for months (and months). And then they emerge for a two-hour oral exam.
I don't think either model is better, but I'd bet that the students doing it one way envy--just a little bit--the students doing it the other way.
As an advisor, I think the unbounded writing can be more challenging, but it might also ease the dissertation process. As a graduate student, though, I would have been pretty terrified of a 2-hour oral exam.
Okay, now I gotta get back to reading reviews. (Because we don't just write em, we read em too.)