The Doctoral Candidacy Exam is for the student to present his thesis proposal. Here is my idea of its major components.

1. What are you proposing to do? (E.g., transmute lead into gold.)
2. Why is it worth doing? (We'll all get rich.)
3. How is it intellectually deep? (The required cold fusion design...)
4. What has already been done in this area? (Alchemists have been working in this area for over 1000 years.)
5. What is your research plan? (To irradiate polywater with N-rays.)
6. What have you already done? (Have transmuted lead into copper, tin, and silver.)
7. What remains to do? (To produce polywater, demonstrate N-rays, irradiate the polywater, then create cold fusion and combine.)