The first year Harvard astronomy grad students of Fall 2002, posing here with the Reverend Frank Shu. With our copies of "The Physical Universe" at hand, we pay tribute to the man who inadvertently set us in motion towards the dreaded "Shu Exam", and whose awesome mental powers were evidently enough to slightly blur this photo, and to scare one of our students into staying home for the photo...note the one who looks a bit unnaturally out of place here. Anyway, with this year being the last year of the Shu Exam in its traditional oral exam format, it seemed fitting that Frank Shu himself just happened to be in town for a colloquium talk, during the precise moments when we were being grilled like chicken by the faculty. Coincidence? I think not! In any case, here is a record of our woe, for future years of grad students to ponder, and wonder, with bitter jealousy and irony, how we had it so easy, as they struggle in vain to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity for question 1 on their impossibly brutal written exam!

Previous Shu Exam Questions (.tex / .ps / .pdf)