[jebarker]

This is the first time I've read a detailed account of "generals" in a US math PhD. I'm surprised how broad the topics covered seem. I did my PhD in the UK and the transition to fully fledged PhD candidate after the first couple of years was significantly less traumatic than this seems!

[bmitc]

Granted, this is at Princeton and for a child prodigy. Certainly only a few schools in the U.S. will have oral exams like this. Also, there's a potentiality of an unreliable narrator and certainly a modicum of figurative dick measuring on both sides of the examination table.

[jebarker]

For sure, definitely not equating my PhD experience to Tao's. I felt like even in my viva the examiners didn't push me too hard and stuck close to the material in the thesis. Probably due to my decidedly non-prodigy status!

[bmitc]

I didn't think you were equating at all. I went to graduate school for math in the U.S., and we didn't even cover a lot of the topics in the first two years I see discussed in these general exams, much less be examined on them.

[stanford_labrat]

In life sciences the qualifying exam is an oral exam where they can in theory ask you anything. In comparison with for example the physics qualifying exam which (as I’m told) is a traditional paper exam, just ridiculously difficult.