SeniorComps

As stated in the Mercer Catalog, History majors are required to pass a comprehensive examination during their senior year. The Senior Comprehensive Examination consists of two separate exams on American history and European history, and involves different talents than both the department’s required research seminars (which stress research, analysis, and writing) and its 300-level courses (whose foci are thematically or chronologically limited). Quite deliberately, the "senior comps" take majors from the comparative safety of knowledge and analysis to the riskier realms of synthesis and interpretation. Students therefore face questions that transcend eras, involve comparisons or contrasts, require judgments about significance, or entail conceptual or interpretive problems --- questions variously meant to elicit sound knowledge and mature judgment. And while the exam’s very comprehensiveness limits the possibility of conventional studying, majors can nonetheless prepare for the senior comps beforehand.

The following policies and procedures apply to the Senior Comprehensive Examination:

The American and European exams are offered on different days, a week or more apart, during the first half of each semester (either on Friday afternoons or Saturday mornings, as determined by the Chair). A semester’s exam dates are publicly announced during the semester preceding the exams, and the responsibility for taking the necessary exams rests entirely with the student.

Only students who have earned at least 90 credit hours may take the exams. Students should take the exams during the academic year in which they plan to graduate, but need not take the American and European exams during the same semester.

Each exam last two hours and presents three interpretive questions, from which students must choose one (and only one). Early finishers may leave the exam room early.

The exam responses are blind-graded by panels of appropriate History Department faculty, and are either passed or failed according to criteria set forth by the faculty graders. Students are then notified by campus mail of their exam results. Those who fail an exam should meet with the Chair to ascertain the general nature of their answers’ shortcomings.

Students who fail an exam must retake the failed exam at a subsequent exam sitting. Special exam sittings are offered only to enable failing students to graduate in a timely manner, and in such cases are offered entirely at the Chair’s discretion.