Advancement to Candidacy also signifies approval of a plan of study by the student’s department and college. The BQE must be passed in order for students to achieve classified status in the graduate program.Īdvancement to Candidacy is the next step after acquiring classified status (and cannot take place until then) and confers catalog rights to graduate students. Normally, students must pass both parts of the BQE by their second attempt. Students may attempt one or both sections of the BQE on those occasions when it is administered.
Successfully passing the text section also requires general philosophical and historical knowledge, insofar as these are relevant to the contextual understanding of the text. The text section of the BQE assesses the student’s ability to read, interpret, and critically evaluate a more lengthy philosophical text. In reconstructing and evaluating these arguments, the student must demonstrate an understanding of basic logical concepts, such as validity, soundness, and cogency. The analytic section of the BQE assesses the student’s ability to extract, explain, and evaluate arguments from short passages. The BQE comprises two sections (analytic, text) that assess the graduate student’s philosophical foundation and knowledge.
