Comprehensive Exam

Strategies for Studying

Content

• Review your core courses
• Read recent journal literature (including news columns in Library Journal and American Libraries).
• Pay special attention to:
  • new developments in core areas
  • technical advances (not just what they are, but how they're likely to affect services)
  • ethical and professional issues

Pacing

• Spread your studying across several weeks
• Don't be compulsive about memorizing facts, but think about what they mean, how they fit together
• Take breaks,exercise, daydream: it will help you integrate the material

Practice

• Look at old comp questions
• Outline and write sample answers to them.

Strategies for Taking the Exam

• Take a few minutes to decide which questions you will answer
• Leave about 1 hour for each question
• Save half an hour at the end to reread your answers

Attacking the question

Before you start writing, budget 5-10 minutes to:

• Be sure you know exactly what is being asked
• Brainstorm for a minute or two. Think of several ways you could answer the question, then choose one.
• Outline your answer. Organize it so that ideas flow logically, and main points are supported by appropriate facts and arguments

Content:

• Be sure to answer THE QUESTION THAT WAS ASKED
• Use what you've learned in courses and in the literature, not experience alone
• Many questions have more than one supportable answer. Choose what you think is the best response, and back it up with the most relevant facts and persuasive arguments you have

As you write:

• Refer to your outline if you lose your train of thought
• If you don't finish answering a question in the time you budgeted, go on to the next one anyhow; finish or polish your answers after you have written all three. Your outline will show where you were going.
• Outline your answer. Organize it so that ideas flowlogically, and main points are supported by appropriate facts and arguments

Before, during, and after comps: relax.

Practice Exams