Elective Courses (12 Credit Hours)
Candidates choose four elective graduate courses in consultation with the the Ph.D. adviser. These can be core courses not used to satisfy the core requirements, courses selected from the following list of additional departmental courses (depending on availability in a given academic year), and even some courses outside the department. Additional courses in the department that have been regularly utilized as electives are:
A list of courses outside the department which have proven useful as physics electives can found in the Physics Department Graduate Student Handbook.
Comprehensive Qualifying Exam
In order to advance to Ph.D. candidacy, students must pass a comprehensive qualifying exam in the form of a four-part written exam on the topics of Mechanics, Quantum Mechanics, Electrodynamics, and Statistical Mechanics. Exams are given annually, usually just prior to the start of the spring semester. Students are allowed two attempts to pass all four sections and must do so before the beginning of their fourth semester.