UPDATE 2025/02/15: You can find a list of undergraduate MSE topics in the shared Drive or this document.

The preliminary exam, or prelims, is the first milestone in the MSE PhD program at UC Berkeley. It is an individual oral exam where you have 15 minutes for each of 6 topics:

In parentheses I included who my examiners were. Since my cohort had over 30 students, we were split into three groups for the first time, and I was in the group of non-traditional examiners. In particular, Gronsky is retired, Ager (adjunct faculty) has never given prelims, and Dubon and Messersmith rarely give prelims. It be like that sometimes. 🤷

Reflections of prelims day

Prelims is always the Friday before the Spring semester starts, and while I normally exercise on Friday mornings, I decided to prioritize some extra sleep and eat a healthy breakfast instead. I got to lab and immediately prepared some tea and changed into my Berkeley sweatpants. Gotta be comfy!

Around 8:30 before prelims began (at 9:00), they gathered us in HMMB 348 where they provided some breakfast items (a pleasant surprise!) and went over format and guidelines. In short, don’t cheat. The tension and stress was definitely palpable, but at this point I was personally feeling OK with my tea and sweats. After this concluded, I went up to my desk in the Asta group office (thank goodness we have our own office space) and just relaxed while skimming my notes. This is pretty much what I did throughout the day between my exams. People who didn’t have their own office space just congregated in the Grad Bay, which is fine, but personally too stressful for me as everyone was on edge.

My first set of exams was Thermo and Phase (you take them two at a time). I walked into Ceder’s office and sat in front of a table with a sheet of paper in front of me and Gronsky and Ceder seated to my left and right, respectively. Thermo was pretty much what I expected as I had Ceder, though he did ask a very tricky V-T phase diagram question. Gronsky was absolutely adorable for Phase while pulling out sheets of paper to quiz me. He got a little irked when I said eutectic was “one phase turning into two phases” and proceeded to give me a lesson on Greek. After I got roasted, Ceder was kind enough to give me some Belgain chocolate (he offers a piece to everyone).

My second set of exams was Structure and Mechanical. I had never spoken with either of these instructors so I had no idea what to expect. Messersmith seemed very methodical and patient, and was a stickler for terminology as he refused to move on until I said the word “hybridization.” Devine I’ve heard scary things about, but I honestly thought he was fine. In fact, I loved his questions as I thought they were incredibly creative and much more interesting than “please draw a stress-strain curve.” However, this exam was right before lunch and I was feeling pretty hangry and definitely didn’t get all the points in Mechanical, so I got a little worried at this point.

My last set of exams happened to be my weakest points and I also had no idea what to expect for these examiners. Ager ended up being fine for Characterization, except for the fact that he chatted and told random stories for a very long time, leaving me very distracted and with little time left for Electronic. Therefore, Electronic was a complete mess and I was very shaky for Dubon’s questions. I also didn’t get through all the questions for Electronic, so I left the room quite concerned about my standing.

I think I finished around 14:30, and I wouldn’t know the results until 17:00, so I just went home to grab my sleeping bag and other stuff, as I was heading straight to Bon Bon Ball at Stanford that evening once the results came out. I know other people went outside for a walk, went home to sleep, got food, etc. They said results would be passed out in envelopes, and when I went to the front office to receive mine, I was delighted to find out I passed! Fortunately, everyone in my prelims study group also passed! 🎉

When I went to the front office the following Monday, I found out that I scored above 3.0 in all my subjects, but barely eeked by in Electronic properties (3.05), LOL.

Reflections on my prep

Group dynamics

This is so critical as it’s important to find people who you work well with and have similar habits as you. Over the course of the semester I got to know Han-Ming and Nate really well, so the three of us decided to be in a group. After this was formed, Han-Ming invited Chang-Chen to our group and this was my first time really interacting with him. All of us decided that our group should not get any bigger.

In terms of background, we were all over the place. I just came from a MS in computational math, Han-Ming has a BS in ChemE, Nate has a MS in MechE, and Chang-Chen has a MS in MSE. We really had no idea if this would be a strength or a weakness, and boy oh boy did it turn out to be a strength.

We decided that we would meet twice a week and prepare for these meetings by reading the suggested textbooks rather than the past questions. We would have a volunteer present content on the board and the rest of us ask clarifying questions or highlight what else we found was important in the textbook. To this end, our diverse backgrounds made it easy to always have a “topic specialist” for each section that could help lead the discussions, emphasize what’s important, and highlight any common misconceptions. This was particularly helpful when we came to a question that no one knew the answer to, as that specialist would be invested enough in the topic to actually do the extra research and figure it out. While this method might be slower and less prelims-specific than other approaches, we were all in agreement that this was valuable to our education and growth overall, which made me very thankful. By focusing on the topics and group discussions, I also felt like we got to know each other a lot better than if we had solely focused on “studying for the test.” ❤️

Timing

We had our first meeting in early November, which is about average for studying. We met twice a week in the Grad Bay for meetings that steadily got longer, and longer, and longer. LOL. The first meeting was maybe 2 hours while the last meeting a few days before the actual prelims was like, 8+ I think. 😅 During the last week we also met daily but chose not to meet the day before and give our brains a taper. I also have an oddly idiosyncratic 24-hour rule about exams. At home I spent maybe on average an hour a day reading reference material during the semester, and over winter break when I was at home I basically spent the whole day reading the textbooks and past questions.

Content

The order in which we studied the topics was:

  1. Characterization - least familiar, most broad
  2. Mechanical properties - Nate was a great lead
  3. Electronic properties - Chang-Chen was a great lead
  4. Structure and bonding - pretty familiar
  5. Phase transformations - pretty familiar
  6. Thermodynamics - most familiar

In terms of the actual content that we studied, you can find a detailed breakdown in the shared GSC folder. I made this folder, so I can tell you that this is basically what I studied. One question that many students have that I also had was, “When you say ‘read textbooks,’ do you really mean the whole textbook??” And the answer to this question is truly, “It depends.” It depends on the person, what you already know, what you want to learn, how you prefer to learn, and how much you care. Below I share exactly what I read, but please know this is a personal choice.

  • Characterization: The first several chapters of Cullity in their entirety. Most of the chapters of Williams and Carter in their entirety. These two texts are well-written. A lot of Wikipedia.
  • Mechanical properties: All the relevant chapters in Bill Morris’s notes in their entirety. This was extremely dry but it covers all of the relevant topics.
  • Electronic properties: All of Kasap from cover to cover. I had read several of these chapters in MSE 223 already and the textbook is well-written.
  • Structure and bonding: All of Rohrer from cover to cover. This was OK.
  • Phase transformations: All of Porter and Easterling from cover to cover. This textbook is well-written.
  • Thermodynamics: The last few chapters of DeHoff in their entirety. This was OK.

Now, if you think this is a lot of reading, that’s because it is. Is it necessary to read this much? Probably not. But seeing as how I passed and learned a lot, I believe it was time well spent and won’t second-guess it.

Our study group only started reviewing past questions after we got back from winter break. We would have one person answer questions on demand at the whiteboard while the rest quizzed them on a topic of their choosing. We took turns and did many, many cycles. This seemed to work well and emulate the real thing. I cannot stress enough how important it is to practice speaking in front of others. There is no shortcut for this.