Schedule your Oral Comprehensive Exam

To schedule your exam, perform the following steps, in order.  Please print this page so you can follow the instructions in Step 5 very carefully.

1.  See Karen Corl in Room 501A before you do anything else!

She can help to guide you through the process and this will save you a lot of aggravation!

2. Secure your adviser's approval to take the exam

3.  Pick a date and time

Schedule a date and time with all of your committee members.  You will need a minimum of three hours for your exam.  Also, schedule 529 Walker for the date/time that you've chosen (see step 4 below).

4.  Secure 529 Walker

Karen Corl will secure 529 Walker for your exam after the committee has agreed on a date and time. You will receive an email with the details after it is confirmed.

5.  Process Forms

Please check with the Graduate Program Administrator in the Department Office as there is a form that must be submitted to the Graduate School prior to a PhD Comprehensive Exam.

6.  Schedule your Exam

In order to schedule your comprehensive exam, you will need to add the event to the Meteo website.  Use the instructions below; you may want to print them before you click the link in step one. Don't forget step #11 or no one will see your event!

  1. LOG IN to the Meteo website by putting "https://" at the beginning of the URL of this page. 
  2. Go to the All Defenses and Oral Comp Talks section of the Meteo website (this page should open in a new window so these instructions will remain in your current window).  In the left menu bar (black) click on the "Add New" and select the  "Grad Talk" menu item.
    1. Speaker name - your name followed by two dashes (--) and PhD Oral Comprehensive Exam
    2. Affiliation - Penn State, Department of Meteorology
    3. Event URL - leave blank
    4. Description - enter your talk title within quotation marks
    5. Event Location - usually will be 529 Walker Building
    6. Event Starts and Event Ends:  obvious, but be very careful you've chosen the right dates and times (especially the AM and PM).
    7. Event Body Text - Enter "Advisor: (name of your advisor)." The rest may remain blank unless you have an abstract or any other information you want everyone to know.
    8. Event Types (very important) - This tells the system where to publish your event and gives it the designation necessary to generate the automatic email reminders. This part is found by clicking the "Categorization" tab at the very top of your editing window.  In the "Event Type" box, you'll need to select (don't type them in--click in the box and wait for the drop downs to appear) all of these individually.
      • GR and
      • Homepage, and
      • Oral Comprehensive Exam
      • Then click "Save" and you'll go back to the default editing window.
    9. Contact Info - type your name, email, and phone in the next three fields.
    10.  Click "Save"  
    11. FINAL IMPORTANT STEP.  You must "publish" your exam event in order for it to show up on the website.   In the black menu bar at the left, click on  "State: Private" (it should be red) and select, "Publish to the World."