Meaning & use
comprehensive exam
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountable
A test covering all the material of a course or field of study, rather than just one unit or topic.
Grammar: Countable: a comprehensive exam, two comprehensive exams.
Patterns
- a comprehensive exam in something
- a comprehensive exam on something
The history final is a comprehensive exam covering the entire year.
Graduate students must pass a comprehensive exam before starting their thesis.
She spent the summer studying for her comprehensive exam.
nouncountable
A major test that a graduate student must pass to show broad mastery of their discipline before writing a dissertation.
Grammar: Countable: usually called comps informally.
Patterns
- pass a comprehensive exam
He failed his comprehensive exam the first time and retook it.
Her comprehensive exam included both written and oral parts.
The program requires a comprehensive exam after two years of coursework.
Word forms
| plural | comprehensive exams |
|---|
Common combinations
- take a comprehensive exam
- Seniors take a comprehensive exam in May.
- pass a comprehensive exam
- She passed her comprehensive exam on the first try.
- study for a comprehensive exam
- He studied for the comprehensive exam all summer.
- written comprehensive exam
- The written comprehensive exam lasts six hours.
- oral comprehensive exam
- The oral comprehensive exam is before a committee.
Synonyms and how they differ
- final exam
- A final exam comes at the end of a course but may cover only the last part; a comprehensive exam covers everything.
- qualifying exam
- A qualifying exam decides whether a student may continue in a program, and is a close match at graduate level.
- cumulative exam
- Cumulative exam is nearly the same, stressing that it builds on all earlier material.
Opposites
Word family
- comprehensive adjective
- covering everything
- comprehensively adverb
- in a thorough way
- comprehension noun
- understanding
- exam noun
- a formal test of knowledge
Commonly confused: comprehensive exam or comprehensible?
comprehensive exam vs comprehensible
Comprehensible means able to be understood; comprehensive means complete and wide-ranging.
Practice
A comprehensive exam differs from a unit test because it ___.
Choose one answer.
Comprehensive means covering everything, so the exam draws on the whole course. The other options say nothing about scope.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “comprehensive exam”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.