The ECE PhD Qualifying Examinations comprise of two written examinations: (1) the Breadth exam and (2) the Depth exam. Each exam has duration of three hours.

MSEE students must pass the Breadth exam as part of their requirements for the MSEE degree.

 Breadth exam:

This exam evaluates the student's breadth of knowledge in Electrical and Computer Engineering. This exam is usually conducted at the end of April in the spring semester and at the beginning of November in the fall semester. In this exam the student is required to answer 4 questions:

• One question on engineering mathematics: The student needs to answer one question from a set of seven questions, each from a different mathematical topic. View the list of mathematical topics here.
• Three questions from selected undergraduate courses of ECE: A sufficient number of questions are provided from six different concentration areas from which the student needs to answer any three by selecting not more than two questions from the same concentration area (i.e. all three should not be chosen from the same concentration area). Complete reading lists along with samples of these questions in all six areas may be found here.

Depth exam:

This is used to evaluate the student's depth of knowledge in his/her chosen area of research. This must be completed by the end of the semester following the semester when the student passes the Breadth Exam. The student should get in touch with his or her advisor after passing the Breadth exam to schedule the depth exam and determine its contents.

The recommended content of the depth exam will be topics from three different courses as decided by the student's advisory committee. These are usually the most relevant courses that are required to perform his/her doctoral research. Each student may have a different list. The following are two examples of courses that could comprise of the depth exam:

Example-1: ECGR-5187 Data Communications, ECGR-6120/8120 Wireless Communications and Networks, and ECGR-6090/8090 Performance Analysis of Communication Networks.

Example-2: ECGR-5122 Random Processes and Optimal Filtering, ECGR-5123 Digital Signal Processing, and ECGR-6118 Applied Digital Image Processing.