Wiktionary
n. (context education English) A qualifying exam that usually qualifies a student to continue studies at a higher level.
WordNet
n. an examination taken by graduate students to determine their fitness to continue [syn: preliminary exam, prelim]
Wikipedia
Preliminary examination is an umbrella term. It can refer to a court appearance of a person accused of committing a crime, to a test taken by a graduate student, or to the initial inspection of a patent application, among others.
Preliminary examination may refer to:
Usage examples of "preliminary examination".
At their control center, the physicists, after automata performed the preliminary examination, could not decide whether the damaged lander had been damaged by an accident or by design.
Sitting behind his desk in a starched white laboratory coat, he took a complete medical history, then performed a preliminary examination.
After all, this is only a preliminary examination, and I am not going to be trapped into making a big production of it.
I have made a preliminary examination and when the results of the tests are in I intend making a more detailed one tomorrow.
I thought it sufficient precaution, since you had made your preliminary examination.
Above the vid-plate, the preliminary examination wound to its conclusion.
I'm going to hold a prompt preliminary examination in the Branner case.
I perform a brief preliminary examination, studying both the macroscopic and microscopic effects, creating an active first-approximation stress-point map, producing a similar map of molecular energy levels within both the ceramic and the induced crystallization planes, calculating energy-transfer profiles between each of the ultrasound frequencies and the crystallization planes, and extrapolating possible new resonance frequencies based on this analysis.