28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Outdated, Inaccurate, August 23, 2009
This review is from: Get Into Graduate School: A Strategic Approach for Master's and Doctoral Candidates (Paperback)
This is the so-called "Third Edition," with a publication date of October 2008, so one would expect the information to be reasonably up to date, yet I found this not to be the case. For example, on page 55 the book talks about a number of changes to the GRE that supposedly will be implemented in Fall 2007-- about a year prior to the book's publication date. I took the GRE last month, and none of the changes mentioned in the book have taken effect; in fact, I took GRE tutoring from Kaplan prior to taking the test, and they made no mention of these changes ever going into effect. I suspect the information in the book is just wrong, and clearly wasn't updated in the year between Fall 2007 and the publication date of the book.
Similarly, the book assumes throughout that most candidates will be submitting paper applications to graduate schools. It talks about using a typewriter to prepare the application form, cautions not to send in application materials with coffee stains, etc. Every grad program that I'm considering is online-only, yet this book, supposedly revised for publication less than a year ago, hardly makes reference to the online application process. Things like this might seem minor, but if the book is inaccurate with respect to things that I can readily verify, how can I trust it to be accurate with respect to things I can't? It doesn't seem like any great effort was put into bringing this book up to date for the current edition.
Finally, there's an awful lot of filler material in here that feels like it was added just to bring the book up to a suitable length. As I suspect will be the case for most people, I purchased this book for help with actually preparing my grad school applications-- advice on test scores, personal statements, writing samples, etc. There are a few chapters on that, and the sample personal statements with critiques are perhaps the most helpful part of the book. But most of the rest of the book is useless. There's a long section on how to research grad programs that basically can be boiled down to "look at different schools' websites and talk to your professors," which anyone purchasing this book has most likely already done. There are long sections for minority, international, and disabled students, which might be of some use to those demographics but add nothing for the rest of us. Finally, the last third of the book is a series of chapters on specific types of programs that collectively take up a lot of space, but at least as to the one relevant to my program, seemed quite superficial and didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.
In short, this is a disappointing publication and not worth the cover price.
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0 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointed, March 29, 2011
This review is from: Get Into Graduate School: A Strategic Approach for Master's and Doctoral Candidates (Paperback)
this is quite excruciating!!!!!!!!!
I'm shock to get it dawn on me that a book I book via Amazon for the past one month has not reached its destination up till now.
Well, Indeed I've learnt my lessons.
Onyekachi
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4 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good for giving an overview., January 6, 2009
This review is from: Get Into Graduate School: A Strategic Approach for Master's and Doctoral Candidates (Paperback)
I am looking to start a Ph. D. program within the next year. I purchased this book in order to get a better idea of what Gradute schools are looking for in their candidates. Overall the book has been helpful.
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