Distance Education - Master of Science in Mathematics

The Final Masters Oral Exam

Students in the G7 graduate degree seeking MS Distance Program are required to take a final oral exam. This exam will be administered during your final semester according to calendar deadlines posted at Office of Graduate and Professional Studies.

Students must (i) apply for graduation via the Howdy Portal within the first month of their final semester, prior to taking the exam and (ii) contact their committee chair at least 3 months before the desired examination date to agree on the oral exam subject and form: a considerable amount of time is needed to prepare for this exam!

The exam will be mediated through Zoom. It's recommended to do at least one"dry-run" to be sure the connection, speed, and quality are adequate before the actual oral exam.

Eligibility

In order to be eligible to take the exam, your cumulative and degree plan GPR's must be at least 3.00. You must not have any un-absolved grades of D, F, or U for any course listed on the degree plan. You must have completed all coursework listed on the degree plan, with the exception of registered courses at the time of the exam. You can verify this by running a degree evaluation on yourself in Howdy. If you have taken courses different from what you have listed on your degree plan, you will very quickly need to submit a petition to update your degree plan so that it matches what you have taken. This must be done before you request permission to schedule your final MS oral exam.

Setting the time

• Select a few dates/times, e.g. Oct. 26 at 2pm, Nov. 4 at 10am, and so forth. Make sure you consult the calendar deadlines posted at Office of Graduate and Professional Studies so that you don't accidentally schedule your oral exam too late for graduation. Plan on at least two hours for the exam
• Ask your Committee which of the dates/times they could attend. All members must be able to attend.
• You may need to repeat this procedure a few times to come to a consensus.

When you get agreement on a date/time from all your Committee, fill out the Request for the Final Exam form and submit it in the DocuSign system to Jeremy Kubiak (jeremykubiak@tamu.edu). This needs to be submitted no later than 15 business days before the date of the MS oral exam in order to allow enough time for the form to route for approval before it reaches the Office of Graduate Studies.

Additional graduation information can be found at Graduation Ceremonies.