Students entering the EE-Systems Ph.D. program in EE or CENG with either a B.S. degree or an M.S. degree are required to pass the Ph.D. Screening Exam. The exam is given every Fall and Spring semester around the 12th week of class. The exam is only for those students admitted to or enrolled in the Ph.D. program and in regular graduate standing. You are allowed two attempts to pass the screening exam. You must pass the screening exam no later than two years (four regular academic year semesters) from your date of admission into the Ph.D. program, regardless of the number of units completed. Thus it is strongly recommended that you take the screening exam as early as possible and not wait until your fourth semester to take the exam for the first time! The screening exam is intended to gauge research potential; thus when making a pass/fail decision the Department also takes into account other evidence of your potential for research work, including GRE scores and your USC GPA, in addition to the grade on the administered exam.
You are eligible to take the screening exam only if your cumulative graduate GPA at USC is 3.5 or higher (this requirement is applicable to all students joining the Ph.D. program in or after Fall 2004).
If you wish to withdraw from the screening exam, you must do so at least one week before the first day of the exam. Any withdrawal after that point without a valid medical emergency will automatically be recorded as a fail for the semester's exam.
The Screening Exam application may be obtained in EEB 100 and on this website - Click Here
It must be submitted by October 1 for the Fall semester and February 1 for the Spring semester. As the exams draw near, you will be contacted with the exact times and locations.
A pre-exam meeting will be held, conducted by a faculty member in CENG who will brief you on the content and procedures of the exam. You are responsible for the following topics:
Exam Format
(click on any course number below to view the reading list in PDF)
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The Written Exam: Students should answer a number of written questions covering 4 basic (400 level) courses in 120 minutes.
A student chooses 4 courses at the 400 level as follows:
Choose at least two out of the following three courses:
1) EE465 (Probability)
2) EE457 (Computer Architecture)
3) CS402 (Operating Systems)
Choose one or two more courses (to bring the total to exactly four courses) from the following courses:
1) EE477 (VLSI)
2) EE450 (Computer Networks)
3) EE467 (Digital Communications)
Each exam in the 4 selected courses has the same weight (10 points out of a total of 40).
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The Filter: Students who fail to get more than 50% (20/40) in the written exam will not be allowed to take the oral exam (III below) and will fail the screening exam. Even if a student does not fail the written exam, the score of the written exam will still be taken into account in the overall screening exam score.
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The Oral Exam: Consists of a 90 minute oral exam in front of a committee of 3 professors.
A student must choose two courses from one or two of the following areas
Computer Architecture
Digital Systems Design (VLSI/CAD)
Computer Networks
If the student chooses courses from two different areas, then he/she should designate one of these areas as a major area and the other as a minor area. In this case, two (out of three) examiners will be assigned from the designated major area, and one examiner will be assigned from the minor area.
Following is the list of eligible courses in each of the areas for the oral exam. A student should select two courses in this list. The committee will take these courses into consideration during the exam. But the questions can (and most probably will) go beyond the courses to test research capability.
Eligible courses at the 500/600 level for the oral PhD screening exam in Computer Engineering (CENG)
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In the area of Computer Architecture:
EE 554 Real Time Computer Systems
EE 557 Computer Systems Architecture
EE 532 Wireless Internet and Pervasive Computing
EE 653 Advanced Topics in Micro-architectures
EE 657 Parallel Processing
EE 659 Interconnection Networks
EE 677 VLSI Architectures and Algorithms
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In the area of Digital Systems Design (VLSI/CAD)
EE 552 Logic Design and Switching Theory
EE 577a VLSI System Design
EE 536a Integrated Circuit Analysis and Design
EE 658 Diagnosis and Design of Reliable Digital Systems
EE 680 Computer Aided Design of Digital Systems I
EE 681 Computer Aided Design of Digital Systems II
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In the area of Computer Networks
EE 549 Queuing Theory for Performance Modeling
EE 550 Design and Analysis of Computer Communications
EE 555 Broadband Network Architectures
CSCI 551 Computer Communications
To print the exam format in PDF Click Here
