Table of Contents

This page is designed to collect tips and hints from grad students who have passed their prelims. Clearly everyone's prelim scenario is different, but there are always some similarities. Hopefully some of the advice below will make your study time minimally painful and maximally excellent!

Chat Hull

Greetings! Chat here.

I took my prelim in February of 2010. My topics were Radiation (Geoff Bower), Galaxies (Leo Blitz), and Star Formation (Steve Stahler).

Here I'll outline my general study method in hopes that it might be of use to future generations of grad students who might otherwise spend too much time destroying their bodies and souls unnecessarily.

A couple of notes regarding my situation:

Outline notes (weeks 1 and 2)

Make a topic list

Make note cards (week 3)

Study with other people! (weeks 3 & 4)

General tips (i.e. "How to keep your brain fresh")

That's about it. I didn't end up spouting as many memorized quantities or definitions as I thought I would; however, I still think the exercise of making the distilled notes and the note cards was useful, especially when combined with lots of good face-time with another student in a stand-up, prelim-style situation. In the end, preparing using the above tactics enabled me to dig myself out of a lot of holes during my prelim, even if I hadn't studied in-depth the exact topic that they were quizzing me on. Why exactly my method worked, I can't really say, but I hope it works for you, too!

Aaron Lee

If you became exhausted just looking at the length of Chat Hull's comments above, you are not alone. However, my first piece of advice is to eventually read through Chat's treatise on prelim studying. While I do not agree with all of it (we all have different study habits), he gives a lot of good “obvious” advice. Obvious in that it seems, well, obvious, but is still good to read and remind yourself of.

I took my prelim in early September 2010. My prelim topics were Stellar Interiors (Quataert), ISM (Heiles), and Fluids (Stahler). I sat in on Quataert's class in Fall 2008, took ISM in Spring 2010, and took Fluids in Spring 2009. My practice prelim was ~two weeks before my actual exam.

My background situation:

My emotional state:

Study schedule and habits:

Advice:

Casey Lam

Seems like nobody's added anything to this page in a while, so figured I'd throw in my two cents. I took my prelim in early January 2019. Subjects were Fluids (Chung-Pei Ma), Galaxies (Mariska Kriek), and High Energy (Josh Bloom). I had taken High Energy the semester before (Fall 2018), and Fluids and Galaxies the semester before that (Spring 2018).

Background:

Advice: