I will be graduating with a PhD from a US institution in Bioinformatics. I have already published 10+ papers in peer reviewed journals. I was interviewed by one PI who went over my CV, cover letter and then interviewed me for 40 minutes. Now she is giving me "exam" asking me to read some papers and analyze data and submit the report based on that analysis.
I found this "exam" part of hiring process really odd. We go to graduate school for years, and not just that, we write dissertation, publish papers, attend seminars (all reflected in the CV), then finally the university confers degrees. I have taken more than 5 graduate level courses in Statistics and 4 courses in computer programming/algorithm during my graduate program. Besides, she also went over my github account, checked all my software and algorithms I developed in the past 5 years and now she wants to assess my abilities with an "exam".
During the interview, she was also raising some concerns about my university's policy for letting someone graduate in just 6 semesters completely ignoring the fact that I was able to publish 2 papers as a first author and 4 papers as a co-author in just two years span. I will have two more manuscripts published by the time I graduate which I mentioned in my CV/cover letter.
Is this normal? I was wondering if anyone has been in such a situation. By the way, I have already rejected her offer to participate in her "exam".
