MFA Comprehensive Exam

As a required component of the UNM MFA degree, students must pass a written comprehensive exam. This comprehensive exam is NOT a series of “comps,” like the ones required for a doctoral program in literature. The MFA comprehensive exam takes the form of a craft essay, in which the candidate:

• Examines the form (a book-length work of nonfiction, a collection of poems or stories, a novel) of the planned dissertation;
• Discusses the work produced in the program so far which will likely be included in the dissertation and “forecasts” the direction of future work; and
• Discusses particular influences and the larger tradition in which they hope to participate.

An advanced view of the dissertation, the contents discussed in the comprehensive exam are expected to change and evolve substantially as the students write and revise and complete their dissertation.

Typically, full-time students in the MFA program form their Committee on Studies early in their third semester. The Chair of this committee mentors and guides the student in the writing and revising of their comprehensive exam. (This includes filing an “Announcement of Examination” form with the Office of Graduate Studies (OGS). Later in the same semester, at a date decided upon together by the student and the committee, the comprehensive exam is evaluated by the committee, and if the exam passes, the student may begin dissertation hours (ENG 699). While students may be enrolled in ENG 699 prior to passing the comprehensive exam, the student must pass their comprehensive exam in the same semester in order for those credits to count toward the degree.

In most cases, the Committee on Studies becomes the Dissertation Committee, and the Chair of the Committee on Studies becomes the Chair of the Dissertation Committee.

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