Terence Tao's General Exam

You can see notes about the general exams of many other famous people who have studied math at Princeton at the base URL:

http://www.math.princeton.edu/graduate/generals/

I discovered this link years ago and enjoyed reading accounts of math learners about what they knew at the beginning of their graduate studies.

"This page is maintained by Alison Miller," who just happens to be the first United States woman to win a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad.

The report of Kiran Kedlaya

http://www.math.princeton.edu/graduate/generals/kedlaya_kira...

(which will be a familiar name to some readers here) is laugh-out-loud funny.

Ooooh, you're getting me so hyped up for my PhD! I still have to finish my BS (which I'm starting this fall) and Masters before I can get there, but it excites me nonetheless.

I did a Ph.D. in Classics, and I had the exact same feeling of "Oh, right, I remember that." This form of exam was the last part of our A exams (A exams => after coursework but before being allowed to start a thesis; B exam => dissertation defense). Hadi Jorati's[1] review sums it up for me: "as soon as they feel you know something they will move to something else!"

They sent me out of the room to discuss whether or not I passed. The door stayed closed long enough that I became pretty nervous, but it turned out that two of them were arguing about what they wanted to set as my dissertation topic. By the time they called me back in, I was a wreck. (I paid them back by choosing neither of those two topics.)

[1] http://www.math.princeton.edu/graduate/generals/jorati_hadi2...

> And this is the general exam.

I agree with your basic point, but if you mean to say that some other set of exams (the non-general ones) were harder, I'm not so sure. For most places, there are two sets of exams: generals before you write a thesis and your thesis defense. In my experience, pre-dissertation general exams are significantly harder than the oral defense of a thesis. Most universities use them as a final weed-out phase before allowing people to even consider a thesis topic. As such, you have to demonstrate mastery over a far wider field than a dissertation might cover. For example, all of Math or Philosophy or English Literature or Romance Linguistics - often with chosen specialty sub-topics, so you end up having to worry about breadth and depth. By the time you get to the oral for your thesis, on the other hand, you are in such complete command of the material that defending your views (on that narrower scope) is relatively easy.

Also, in most cases, you won't be allowed to set a date for your dissertation defense unless the work as a whole is already passable.

It's not that impressive, he performs okay. I hear he spent the first few years mostly playing games, until he finally buckled down and got a thesis out.