Has anyone ever dropped out of a doctoral program or got kicked out?

[Anonymous]

I'm struggling to pass my comps for the 3rd time. One more fail on my comps and I will get kicked out. I feel stupid after making it to my 4th year. Any suggestions or thoughts?

[normalice]

I knew a girl who dropped out once. I often wonder if I'm to blame, in fact. See, everyone got to choose four subject for their comps. By coincidence, her and I chose the exact same 4 subjects. Because there is such variance in chosen topics, there is obviously a lot of variance in how they are scored. And the subjective difficulty of each subject is taken into account.

Anyway, I got the impression (they are forbidden from saying directly) that I got the top score. And she got the bottom score (she was the only one who failed). But that's not entirely fair because I was 10 years older than everone else. I wonder if i had picked different subjects if they would have been more lenient, because its hard to write off a bad score as picking hard topics when someone got the top score with the same topics.

But that's besides the point. For qual studying I would recommend focusing on understanding rather than memorization. It's hard to emphasize how critical that is, but it's super important. I guess I don't know what your field is, though..

[abc3643]

Yes, this basically happened to me.
It's a long story and was a multi-year drawn-out affair over the period of FEB 1991 to OCT 1994, but once I decided to stop pursuing a PhD, I was unexpectedly very relieved. I was saddened because I had been working toward a PhD since I was granted the transition to go for a PhD in April 1987 AND many of my friends had gotten PhDs including some of my students by 1994. So, that hurt a bit, but the relief of "abandoning ship" and finally admitting that I had to go out into the real world (again) was actually not bad. Once I got a paying job with a real paycheck and didn't have to worry about the bullshit of university politics, I was happy to actually be living more or less like a normal human being for the first time ever at age almost 32.

[abc3643]

You can PM me if you wish.

[MotorcycleMan]

You're certainly not stupid if you made it this far. Hell, just making it through 1st years says that.
All about focus and study. You can do this. You made it this far.

[Alonelyf]

I did from Phd and I feel it was the right choice lol

[Asker]

Thanks, sometimes I too feel it would be a relief.

[Alonelyf]

You can text me we can chat if you want to

[Feelicks]

Nope I don't have the patience, but I I'll give you a bit of advice. If you're the smartest or the dumbest person in the room you're probably in the wrong room.