This page contains basic general information about the qualifying exam. For specific information about the next exam, follow this link.

If you have any questions please stop by Dr. Matthews's office (SWGN 3A57) or Dr. Fenner's office (SWGN 3A65).

Reading List

Core Topics (see below for specialty topics)

1. Algorithms (CSCE 750): Introduction to Algorithms (2nd ed.) by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, and Stein
   • Foundations: chapters 1-4, 5-9 recurrences, sorts and order statistics
   • Trees: chapters 12-13, search trees, red-black trees
   • Dynamic Programming and Greedy Algorithms: chapters 15-16
   • Graph Algorithms: chapters 22-24
   • NP Completeness: chapter 34 +
   • Parallel Computing: refer to the lecture notes on Dr. Buell's web sites for 750. (Please note that some links on this page may no longer be valid due to changes in its directory structure.)
   For further reference see Dr. Buell's website (above) and Dr. Fenner's CSCE 750 website (http://www.cse.sc.edu/~fenner/csce750/index.html).

2. Architecture (CSCE 513): Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, 3rd ed. Hennessey and Patterson, Morgan Kaufman, Chapters 1-5, 8.1-8.5, Appendix A
   • Fundamentals of Computer Design
   • Instruction sets
   • Instruction Level parallelism
   • Loop unrolling and static techniques
   • Memory Hierarchy design
   • Interconnection networks
   • Pipelining
   For further information see Dr. Cameron's CSCE 513 website (http://www.cse.sc.edu/~kcameron/csce513.html).

3. Compilers (CSCE 531): Compiler Construction: Priniples of Compiler Design by Aho, Sethi and Ullman, Addison-Wesley, Chapters 1-9
   • Lexical analysis
   • Syntax Analysis
   • Syntax-Directed Translation
   • Type Checking
   • Run-Time Environments
   • Intermediate Code Generation
   • Code Generation
   For further information see Dr. Fenner's CSCE 531 website

4. Theory (CSCE 551): Introduction to the Theory of Computation (1st or 2nd ed.) by M. Sipser, PWS, Chapters 1,3-5,7-8 (This replaces Introduction to Automata and Language Theory by Hopcroft, Motwani and Ullman) Note: the main difference between the two editions is that the 2nd edition contains solutions to selected exercises and problems.
   • Finite Automata, Regular Expressions, Properties of Regular Languages
   • Turing Machines, Decidability, Reductions
   • Time Complexity
   • Space Complexity
   For further information see Dr. Fenner's CSCE 551 website

Specialty topics

• Computer Security (CSCE 522): Follow this link. For further information see Dr. Farkas's CSCE 522 website.
• Pattern Classification (CSCE 768): Follow this link.
• Data Mining (CSCE 822): Follow this link.
• Databases (CSCE 520): Chapters 1 through 8 of A First Course in Database Systems by J. Ullman and J. Widom.

Core areas of past exams

2011	Fall	Spring
2010	Fall	Spring
2009	Fall	Spring
2008	Fall	Spring
2007	Fall	Spring
2006	Fall	Spring
2005	Fall

This page was last updated Thursday February 2, 2012 at 16:46:54 EST.