Last year, our department did away with a second year qualifying exam for PhD students--faculty hated grading them and after two years in the program, no one ever failed--and instead put in a research competency requirement for second year PhD students. Here's a brief description of the requirements from our graduate school handbook:
Each student is required to complete a sole-authored research manuscript that meets high standards of scholarship and exposition. The manuscript must meet standards comparable to those used to evaluate contributed papers to major scholarly meetings though it does not have to be publishable quality. The manuscript may represent only a modest departure from published work, but it must be well conceived, justified, and communicated.
The appendix to the handbook--because all academic documents have appendices--contains a few more details about what is involved.
Yesterday, the current class of 2nd year PhD students asked me to meet with them and answer a simple question: "What the hell does that mean?"
So I've put together some answers to questions that came up in our meeting. First I will give you the handbook answer, then my interpretation. Hopefully a few of you out there will find them useful. I may add to these as I think of more. Feel free to pile on in the comments (or ask questions that I can answer).