An important element in the preparation process is taking the pertinent colloquia (HIST 6235, HIST 6240, HIST 6245, HIST 6250, HIST 6110, HIST 6115, HIST 6120 and HIST 6125), which serve as "foundation courses" for most of the major and minor fields offered to M.A. and Ph.D. students. These courses are intended as more than cognates for the exam fields. They should serve as introductions to the chronological and topical fields with which the instructors are most familiar and in which they have done most of their research. There should be two components to the colloquia: 1) exposure to the broadest possible body of historiographical literature, with reading assignments equivalent to at least one book per week, and 2) substantial written assignments, which will encourage students not only to read books but to articulate their own ideas about them.
Although all classes should help prepare both M.A. and Ph.D. students for their examinations, course work alone is not sufficient to prepare students for exams. In fact, each faculty member has his or her own ideas about the appropriate ways for students to prepare for examinations and about a faculty member's appropriate role in that preparation.