7-Jun-82 17:14:06-PDT,2824;000000000001
Mail-from: ARPANET site SUMEX-AIM rcvd at 7-Jun-82 1713-PDT
Mail-from: SU-NET host SU-HNV rcvd at 7-Jun-82 1708-PDT
Date: 7 June 1982   17:11:03-PDT (Monday)
From: ullman@Diablo at Sumex-Aim
To: csd.lenat at score

While it is difficult to define a level of  effort  that  is
likely  to  produce  success  on the comprehensive exam, the
following observations should provide some guidelines.  Each
of  the  six areas encompasses an amount of material roughly
equal to two quarter courses.  If a person needs all  twelve
such  courses, i.e., that person had essentially no Computer
Science preparation  beyond  elementary  programming  as  an
undergraduate,   then  we  estimate  12*(100hrs/course)=1200
hours of  study  would  be  necessary.   It  matters  little
whether  the  courses  are  actually  taken,  since  of  the
estimated 100 hours, only 30 or fewer are actually spent  in
class.   If  a  student  has had most or all of the material
covered by a course, then considerably fewer than 100  hours
might suffice, but it is unlikely that zero preparation will
do.

     A little  additional  calculation  will  indicate  that
someone with little preparation for the exam will spend most
of his or her first year here preparing for  the  comprehen-
sive.   While  the  total  amount  of time per week spent in
academic persuits varies from person to person, we feel that
it  is  normal  for  people  in  intellectually  challenging
careers to put in more than  the  canonical  40  hours/week.
There  are approximately 30 weeks between the time a student
enters the program and the Spring comps.   If  that  student
has  a  20 hour/week TA or RA-ship, and, because of a medium
level of prior preparation, can do with, say, 900  hours  of
comp  preparation,  then  50  hours/week  must be devoted to
study and research  or  teaching  responsibilities.   Notice
that  a  person  in  this  category,  who  has  only  a  few
comprehensive related courses prior to coming  to  Stanford,
will have little time in the first year to take courses that
are not related to the comp.

     There are some additional consequences of this  estima-
tation.   In  order  to  take  courses that are not directly
related to the comp in the first year, such as CS204, or the
VLSI  course, the student must have a fairly good background
in CS.  Do we want this to be the case?  A student  with  no
background,  such as the mathematics major that has histori-
cally been the  preferred  admittee,  will  have  difficulty
passing the exam in the first year.  It is not even possible
to take 12 courses the first year, if you have an assistant-
ship,  and  even  if  self study substitutes for some of the
courses, the work load becomes 60 hours/week, with  no  time
to do anything else.