Topical Areas for Written Qualifying Examination (WQE)

Achieving PhD candidacy is contingent upon successfully passing a two-stage qualifying examination which is composed of a Written Qualifying Exam (WQE), followed by a Research Proposal Examination (RPE). For further details, please refer to the “PhD Research Milestones” section of this catalog.

The primary objective of the PhD Written Qualifying Exam (WQE) is to ensure that students pursuing a Doctoral degree in a particular program have graduate level understanding of the fundamentals of that program and evaluates the student’s ability to apply them to solve problems in three topical exam areas. The syllabi for the topical exam areas are taken from undergraduate courses at Khalifa University.

Students must register for the PhD WQE in Banner before the end of the Add/Drop period of the semester in which they plan to take the exams. The student must choose three exam topical areas from an approved list, in consultation with his/her Main Advisor. Students enrolled in the PhD must select at least two of the three topical areas from the list specific to their program.

The exams are coordinated by the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and the Chair of the relevant Department (or designee) and held twice per year over a one-week period. The duration of each exam is three hours. A minimum score of 73 percent is required to pass the exam for each topical area. Failing any topical area of the WQE will result in the student failing the entire WQE and placing him/her on Academic Probation Level 1. A failed WQE can be retaken only once and passed upon the next offering. If the student repeats the WQE, then he/she will be required only to retake the exams in the topical areas that he/she failed during the WQE at the first attempt. The student may opt to retake the exams in topical areas other than those he/she failed in at the first attempt. PhD students who fail the WQE at the second attempt will be placed on Academic Probation Level 2 and will be subject to dismissal from the PhD program.

The list of topical exam areas for each of the PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering and their corresponding undergraduate course syllabi are given below. This list is subject to change.