Strategy Oral Comprehensive Exam
The Strategy Oral Comprehensive Exam (SOCE) will take the form of a Socratic Method dialogue with your Professor. The Socratic Method is essentially a dialogue between the two of us, for approximately 20-30 minutes, using a video conferencing tool, such as Collaborate. It is based on asking and answering questions to draw out your knowledge of strategy, stimulate critical thinking, and allow you the opportunity to defend your point of view.
Develop one question that you will address during the exam. The question must pertain to business strategy and be applied in nature to facilitate your learning of theory, research, and tools in an area related to your MBA expertise. (NOTE: An ideal first question has elements of theory or research that will be familiar to you but also, stretches you to learn a new strategic theory or tool. You may solicit input on the appropriateness and the rigor of the question from his/her Professor. The Professor (me) will develop a second question. The second question typically builds upon the first question by considering the implication of work (in question 1) for research, tools, and practice. You will know the first question prior to initiating the exam. However, question 2 will not be presented to you until the first day of the comprehensive exam;
Start working on your PPT (about 5-10 slides or so) that you'll follow during the oral comp to answer your question.