Preparing for your PhD qualifying exam

Author

Aubrey Odom

Last Updated

January 11, 2025

As you start to prepare for your PhD qualifying examination, regardless of your PhD program at BU, you will be expected to present a brief summary of the major aims of your dissertation at a Kolachalama lab meeting.

The goal in doing this is to effectively craft a strong abstract to convey the science and communicate your work to the lab, NOT to present your entire qualifying exam slide deck. Think something in the vein of “Three Minute Thesis,” in which participants are expected to “effectively convey [their] research in just three minutes using language that is accessible to a non-specialist audience.”

Lab meeting presentation

Your lab presentation may take one of two general forms, your choice:

  1. A text-based 4-5 slide presentation
    1. A few supplemental figures are OK
  2. A 30-60 second elevator pitch
    1. No slides

Your presentation should include the following major points:

  1. Dissertation title
    1. Some thought should be put into identifying a title that summarizes the unifying theme of your project(s) and the problem you are trying to solve.
  2. The problem
    1. BRIEF introduction to the importance of your work
    2. What precisely is the problem that you are trying to solve?
  3. Background / previous work
    1. A brief literature review of what has been done before
      • Scientific/clinical
      • Technical/methodology
  4. Your contributions / innovations
    1. Scientific/clinical
    2. Technical/methodology
  5. Future work
    1. Could also be a timeline

Regardless of the medium, please practice your presentation beforehand! Especially in front of fellow members of the lab 🙂. Your lab mates will be able to give you critical feedback with added benefit of (hopefully) understanding your project context.

The sooner you can complete this presentation and start getting feedback from peers, the better. Do not finish your presentation the night before without the chance to get proper feedback!!

Some example slides from Lingyi, a Data Science PhD student (sign in with your BU email). Text only Slides with supplemental figures

Other notes

  • If you can write the abstract first, then you can write the paper. The same logic applies here!
  • If you would like to reserve another lab meeting at a later time to present your entire slide deck to the lab, please chat with at least 3 lab members.