Customer Reviews

Getting Mentored in Graduate School

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Don't go to grad school (or at least don't go too far) without reading this helpful guide. I did not find the material to be "common sense," although the authors are clear and make the task of finding the right grad school mentor easier to understand. Reading this book helped me to avoid making some big mistakes when it came time to pick my own advisor, and he has become my mentor. The chapters on what to look for in a mentor and how to go about getting a mentor relationship started are alone worth their weight in gold. Several of my friends in the same PhD program have either had terrible experiences with their advisors, or have not been mentored at all. I've recommended this book to them, but it would be most helpful to read just as you are getting started. There are detailed recommendations on how to increase the chances you get mentored, what to look for in a mentor, how to get things off the ground, how to deal with problems, and some specific things women should know. Very helpful to me. I plan to hand it off to one of the incoming grad students next year!

I highly recommend this book for anyone in a graduate program or
post-doctoral training. Prior to reading this book, I did not fully appreciate the importance of creating quality mentoring relationships. Reading this book really helped me to approach the process of finding the right mentor in a much more thoughtful way. I found the suggestions to be very effective. I attribute much of my success to developing two critically important mentoring relationships within the very competitive

Harvard community to having read this book in advance.

This book was required reading for my Ph.D. program in psychology. However, it was not very useful to me. It makes a few good points as to what you should look for in a mentor and the kinds of questions that you should ask, but overall, this book was not particularly useful. It's pretty much common sense. To summarize this book, you should: ask a lot of questions to a potential mentor as well as other individuals who have worked for him or her. You should not: procrastinate, sleep with your mentor, or work with someone just because they're famous. Honestly, that's about all I got out of this book. I'm not trying to be mean, but for someone like me, this book did not tell me anything I didn't already know.

I purchased the book as a requirement for a graduate course. The book is a waste of time and money. The advice and suggestions offered in this book cannot be carried out in most departments unless you want to get booted or shunned by your department. This book is great if you want to commit academic suicide.

This book should be required reading for every student entering graduate school and for senior psychology majors who are applying to graduate school. Additionally, faculty who are considering involving graduate students in their program of research could benefit from reading this text as well.