Exit Requirements

As a part of his or her degree requirements, each student is required to pass a written comprehensive examination or to write a Master's thesis. Most students take the comprehensive exam, but each semester a few students write a thesis. The rules for a thesis are described later in this section.

Master's Comprehensive Examination

It is strongly recommended that a student who intends to take the comprehensive exam should take the exam in the term before he or she plans to graduate. (This allows for the possibility of failing the exam and retaking it the next semester without delaying graduation.) For example, a student who intends to graduate in the Spring semester (June), should take the exam the previous Fall semester. Students must register for the exam within the first month of the semester in which they wish to take the exam; see the Schedule of Classes for the exact date.

Rules for the Exam

The Master's Comprehensive exam has exams in ten areas (the areas tested in each part are listed in the next section). The examination is three and a half hours long. Each part contains approximately one hour's worth of questions. These questions are similar to those that would be asked on a final exam in the appropriate course. Each student must answer three of the ten parts. However, the student does not have to decide in advance which three parts to answer. In the examination room, each student will receive all parts of the exam and can make the decision at that time. Nonetheless, it is strongly suggested that a student plan in advance to answer certain parts, with the option to change his or her mind after seeing all of the parts.

Exam Areas

1. analysis of algorithms
2. architecture
3. operating systems
4. artificial intelligence
5. compilers
6. databases
7. management information systems
8. multimedia computing
9. networks and communications
10. theoretical computer science:
    choice of:
    1. computability theory
    2. formal language theory

M.A. students must take the exam in Analysis of Algorithms, plus any two other exams. M.S. students must take the exam in Management Information Systems, plus any two other exams.

Reading Lists

Grading

Each part is graded individually. In order to pass the exam, a student must pass all three parts. A student who fails one part and passes the other two will receive credit for those two parts. The next time that student takes the exam, he or she will have to pass only one part. However, a student who fails two or three parts will have to retake the entire exam. Normally, a student is allowed to take the exam twice, but students can petition to take the exam for a third time.

Rules for Submitting a Master's Thesis Proposal

The first step is for the student to select a thesis adviser. Normally this will be a full-time CIS faculty member, although there can be exceptions to this rule. The student submits a thesis proposal to a Graduate Deputy Chair. The proposal is then forwarded to the Graduate Curriculum Committee for its approval.

A thesis proposal must be submitted by the following dates: December 15 in order to register for the Spring semester and May 15 in order to register for the Summer or Fall semester.

The thesis proposal should be anywhere from 1-5 pages long. It must state clearly what the student intends to do. If appropriate, a short bibliography should be included as well. The proposal should contain the student's name, social security number, address, phone number, and the name of the thesis advisor. The proposal must be signed by the thesis advisor.

In addition, the student should submit a list of graduate courses completed so far, together with the semester in which each course was taken and its grade. In general, before students start working on a thesis, they will be expected to have completed at least 10 credits with an index of 3.5 or above.

Registering for a Thesis Course

Students who want to register by mail should submit their proposals at least two weeks before mail registration material is due. As an alternative, they can register for their other courses by mail, then register for the thesis when the proposal is approved.

If the thesis proposal is approved, the student will be notified and given a permission slip to register for the appropriate thesis course: CIS 799.1G, 799.2G, or 799.3G. If the proposal is not approved, the student can modify it and resubmit it to the committee.

Similar rules apply to students who want to do a research project in CIS 790X.Students should be aware of the following Brooklyn College regulation (for more details, see the BC Graduate Bulletin): A student who submits a thesis which is not acceptable may not then choose to take a comprehensive exam; similarly, a student who fails the comprehensive exam cannot then write a thesis.