Here you'll find general information about the Algebra Qualifying exam study group for the January 2005 exam. To contact me, you can email me at cbtruman (at math etc etc), or stop by my office, 4410, where I can be found approximately whenever I happen to come in (which tends to be every weekday between about 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.). I'm pretty easy to find, though your mileage may vary.

Generally, during the sessions we will work on old qual problems. This tends to work as follows: I pick out a problem, and then pick some poor sucker to work it out on the board, while everyone else in the room nit-picks (or provides hints, depending on any given person's personality and mood). If necessary, I will work some problems on the board, or try to clarify things which I think might be fuzzy. However, when I work problems, I would generally like to give a general outline and leave the details to everyone else. This may seem like I'm being lazy, but working out the details will be more helpful than just hearing how to work the problem (in addition, I'm lazy). If you would prefer to be left out of the sucker-picking process (for working problems on the board), just let me know, though I will warn you that doing the problems is the best way to learn, especially doing them for other people to critique. On the other hand, if you'd like to work on the board more frequently than you find you are being chosen, I can try to do that as well.

The old quals can be found here. This doesn't seem to be a complete list; there are probably more in the graduate office.

The qual syllabus is posted here. One thing you may note: there are six questions on the exam. These pretty reliably break down as group theory, ring theory, module theory, Galois theory, representation theory, and linear algebra. There may be some mixing of the questions (you may need to know a little linear algebra and finite group theory for the Rep. and Galois stuff) but these topics generally are represented by one question each.

Toni Watson has compiled a collection of Algebra Notes/Problems; you can find that here.
Charles Glover has a study page up here.

We had four meetings in December, and then began meeting January 3^rd. The meetings in December were:

Date	Time	Location	Qual Discussed
December 6	12:30-1:30	2300	Summer 03
December 8	12:30-1:30	2300	Winter 03
December 10	12:30-1:30	2300	Summer 02
December 17	12:30-1:30	2300	Winter 02

In January, we will be meeting from 1:00-2:00 every day in room 0411. We are starting with Winter 01 and working backwards, one qual per day.