Playing the Game: The Streetsmart Guide to Graduate School [Paperback]

Fredrick Frank (Author), Karl Stein (Author)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Frederick Frank and C. Karl Stein are the irreverent alter-egos of two very serious and sober Ph.D.’s who graduated from prestigious doctoral programs. Their combined experiences include publishing, researching, conference presentations, doctoral committee service, consulting, grant writing, and teaching graduate school.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse, Inc. (February 18, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595304869
• ISBN-13: 978-0595304868
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #982,571 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

141 of 142 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good advice, terrible writing, August 9, 2005

By 

Timothy Peever (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Playing the Game: The Streetsmart Guide to Graduate School (Paperback)

This book contains some rather useful advice for getting through graduate school. My main problem with it was that it seemed focused on the student who is going to graduate school because a graduate degree gets them a pay raise, or they need the degree for the line of work they're going into. If you are a student (like me) who just wants to learn everything in the world, and perhaps become a professor, a better book is "The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career."

The book has many other flaws, as well. First, it needs an editor. The cover is an eyesore. Many of the sentences seem like they were rewritten, but not proofread, and so they change syntax right in the middle. Each of the quotations gets its own page, which means that a chapter which ought to be 10 pages can end up being 20 or 30. Overall, I felt like the book could be 50-100 pages shorter, just by changing the layout.

The authors' style is also really bad. It's informal enough that I know I would never want to meet these guys in person. Every time they make a joke, they put something in parentheses to point out to you that, hey, they made a joke, and they're really funny, so you should laugh at their joke.

My recommendation is that you check out this book from your library (as I did), rather than buying it. For what you get, it's rather overpriced. (I actually wanted to give it 3.5 stars, but felt that it was more on the side of 4 stars than 3.)

125 of 128 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This poorly written trash is the best thing ever. (Really), March 7, 2006

By 

D. Solberg (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Playing the Game: The Streetsmart Guide to Graduate School (Paperback)

The cover of this book looks like a third grader made it. Inside the book, the text is poorly edited. The jokes are inane. Some of the content is worthless.

So why should you buy this book?

This book gives you a very clear idea of what graduate school is like. It will save you countless hours by showing you how to keep on task and stay organized. The book gives you the authors' opinions on what's important and what's not. After reading the book, I feel much better prepared for graduate school.

I've purchased several other books for graduate school, and their main weakness is that they tell you the advantages of everything, but offer no guidance. In other books, the authors state axioms such as "Grades are Important" without giving you a clear idea of how they might fit into your future plans or how important they are compared to other things you need to do. The Streetsmart Guide explains how grades fit into the authors' plans, and from there, intelligent readers can determine the value of grades to them.

One thing to note, though, is that this book is written for people who do NOT plan on a career in academia. I do plan to be an academic, but I still found this book to be the best thing since sliced bread (inside joke if you read the book) because it gave me a nice picture of how things actually work.

Seriously, buy this book.

88 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fab-u-lous, October 7, 2006

By 

Gilmore Girl (Arkansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Playing the Game: The Streetsmart Guide to Graduate School (Paperback)

This book is great. While the language in the book temporarily increased my personal level of profanity, the ideas the authors present have stayed with me. As a first semester doctoral student, the most valuable lesson I've learned is that the smart kids do research projects linked to their dissertation topic along the way. I definatly recommend this book. Unlike many of the articles I am assigned to read, this one isn't boring. And while I wondered how I'd find the time to fit in reading something "for fun," it was an easy read when I only had 15 or so minutes free, not enough time to get into the "heavy, boring" reading, or when I got tired of reading big words in sentences that seemed to never end.