- All GSBS PhD students must petition for Ph.D. candidacy by the end of their 2nd year of enrollment
- Before submitting the petition, the student must be in good academic standing and have completed the following requirements
- Three tutorials
- Core Course or Program-specific Area Courses
- Ethical Dimensions of the Biomedical Sciences and the online ethics modules
- A course that satisfies the GSBS scientific writing requirement
- Program-specific pre-candidacy course requirements
- The purpose of the candidacy examination is to test the student's breadth and depth of knowledge in the biomedical sciences
- The examination is meant to be an evaluation of the student’s ability to construct an hypothesis, to design the means by which to test it, and to critically analyze obtained results