I think it would be great to require this of our students, but we do not.

When I was at Oberlin, honors students had to take an oral exam. It was mostly thesis defense, but they extended the discussion  (from what I recall;  I was terrified) to whatever they want.

We do something fairly similar.  Students are given 5 articles (one in each of the traditional areas of chemistry) and sets of questions for each.  They have three weeks to answer two sets of them (their choice).  The questions are written to encourage them to synthesize material in the required course, and also take advantage of their ability to find and assimilate information on unfamiliar topics.  The second part of their comprehensive exams is a 2.5 hour multiple choice exam (with questions similar to the ACS standardized exams) covering material learned in the required courses.  This acts as excellent preparation for the GRE subject tests, or MCAT, and helps us assess our program from year to year.

At Reed, there is an institution-wide requirement that all students must pass a Junior Qualifying Exam in their major before they are eligible for to register for Senior Thesis.

In most departments, this is a written exam.  In Chemistry, we have decided to base our Junior Qual on papers from the literature.  The qual takes place over 4 days (Thurs - Sun) late in the spring semester of the Junior year.  Students sign up for their choice of either 2 papers in one of the four subfields (Organic, Inorganic, Physical, or Biochem) or 1 paper in each of 2 subfields.  Once we have the list, the faculty find individual papers for each student that has signed up in our field.  So, for example, I find papers for any student that signs up for an Inorganic paper.  The students pick up their 2 papers on Thursday at noon.  They have 24 hours to read the 2 papers and choose the one that they want their exam to be based on.  They then hole up in the library and learn everything they can about that paper.  We give each student an oral exam on Sunday (typically 30-45 minutes long) in front of 2 faculty members.  Sometimes, students may be asked to follow up this oral exam with a written component.

Students usually base their choice for the qual on which subject they feel the most confident in, based on coursework completed at that point.  There is no formal connection to the subject of their qual and their senior thesis work, although we usually find the qual to be a reasonable predictor for where a student's primary interests lie.  In some cases, often due to a "late start" in the major, students delay their Junior Qual Exam until right before the start of their senior year.

In general, we learn a lot about our students through this process, and it is particularly helpful for future thesis advisors.

 I wish  we had something like this at JMU.  Personally, I think an oral exam is a great way to hold students accountable for their learning and provide us with feedback on retention across the curriculum.

This year we are supposed to be administering the  DUCK (Diagnostic of Undergraduate Chemical Knowledge) put out by ACS Exams.  (Supposedly because it was planned, but I don't know whether it's actually happening because I'm on sabbatical this year.)  At one point we toyed with the idea of giving the standardized exam for chemistry graduates that is published by ETS.

As an undergrad at Princeton, we had comprehensive exams.  I only vaguely remember this, but I'm pretty sure that we took 3 ACS exam.  (We got to choose 3 out of 5 subjects - I think.)  We were assigned a grade and this appeared on our transcript.   At JMU, we give the ACS exams at the end of courses rather than at the end of the undergraduate career.

We have a senior exit exam.  This exam is oral and much like a thesis defense (although they don't have a formal thesis).  Students prepare a presentation on some aspect of their education (usually their research but sometimes focused on something from one of their courses). After their presentation they are asked questions by their chemistry and physics faculty.  The questions can be from any part of their chemistry or physics courses but are usually related to their presentation.

All Sewanee students must pass a comprehensive exam to graduate; if they fail they have to come back and retake it before they get a diploma. Our exam is a three part process. First the students take a written exam intended to test their basic understanding of chemistry fundamentals (think gen chem and simple organic content but with the "review" material often presented in upper-level courses thrown in too). Then they take an exam in which they tackle more detailed questions in 3 of 5 subdisciplines; although as the inorganic chemist, my questions tend to require them to use knowledge from other areas as well (analytical, quantum mechanics, organic, etc). Many of these advanced questions are based on primary literature that the faculty provides about two weeks before the exam (which will take place right after spring break) but in some cases we stick in non-lit questions. The process culminates with an hour long oral exam. For weaker students the oral is a chance for them to explain/correct their answers from various parts of the written exams (which they do get to see before the oral). For stronger students, we just make up questions to see how much they know.