The Real Guide to Grad School: What You Better Know Before You Choose Humanities & Social Sciences [Paperback]

Robert E. Clark (Editor), John Palattella (Editor), Lingua Franca (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1997 | ISBN-10: 0963023802 | ISBN-13: 978-0963023803

In a clear and student-friendly style, this guide gives students the lowdown on 23 humanities and social science disciplines and the departments which offer them. It gives students everything they need to make an informed decision about their graduate study program: what to study, where to go (and why), and what to expect once they are in.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This guide, based on interviews with professors, graduate students, and administrators, takes a practical, comprehensive look at the ins and outs of graduate work in the humanities and social sciences. Editors Clark (Christian Education, Moody, 1991) and Palattella address every issue that liberal arts graduate students will face, preparing them for everything from the expected course load to financial concerns. The editors are frank about the difficulty of finding a job post-Ph.D., but the book is not without hope, listing plenty of employment possibilities and covering 23 disciplines that make up the humanities and social sciences. Each chapter juxtaposes the history of a given field with current developments and is rounded out by a discussion of that job market. Though the book offers only a simple list of the top ten schools for each discipline, based on the rankings of the National Research Council, this book steps beyond the bounds of most reference guides in offering the reader practical advice in everyday life of graduate school. Recommended. [This is the first book in a new imprint from the award-winning academic magazine, Lingua Franca.?Ed.]?Samuel T. Huang, Northern Illinois Univ. Libs., DeKal.
-?Samuel T. Huang, Northern Illinois Univ. Libs., DeKalb
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 511 pages
• Publisher: Lingua Franca Book (August 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0963023802
• ISBN-13: 978-0963023803
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,564,204 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars you get far more than your money's worth, August 4, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Real Guide to Grad School: What You Better Know Before You Choose Humanities & Social Sciences (Paperback)

This is the one and only source book you will need for grad school research in humanities/social sciences. I am an impoverished film school guy and I had to research everything you can think of to try and get a scholarship. I had begun reading other "how to" books with a jaundiced eye. I started peeping at this book every time I was in a bookstore to the point where I broke down and bought it. Graduate school counseling services perused my copy and bought one for every single one of its staff members. The information is well presented and informative without being redundant or overly scholarly. The book is even funny at times! Accept no substitutes.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Reading - Great Buy - Insightful and Instructive, July 3, 2000

By 

Michael Wischmeyer (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Real Guide to Grad School: What You Better Know Before You Choose Humanities & Social Sciences (Paperback)

Researching graduate schools is like doing graduate research - the obstacles filter out all but the persevering. I can't imagine a better starting point for your research than "A Real Guide to Grad School".

How does one specialize in the humanities and social sciences? Are there job opportunities after completing a doctorate in anthropological studies, in medieval Italian history, in German literary studies? Is there any common currency (like mathematics in the sciences) that can provide some degree of career flexibility? Or once a specialist, always a specialist?

The high school student is overwhelmed by shelf after shelf of college guidebooks and school rankings. But comparatively little can be found on graduate schools. Graduate school evaluation is more complex, rankings change with the gain or loss of professors, and as publishers recognize, the market is smaller. We are quite lucky that such a guidebook even exists.

"Real Guide" is prefaced (some 50 pages) with a pragmatic look at what life as a grad student entails, a historical perspective of the "rise of the research scholar", and overviews of the admission process and financial issues.

The bulk of this book is comprised of 23 chapters (12 to 20 pages each) with a similar format - an examination of how a discipline evolved, informed speculation what will happen next, and an analysis of job trends.

Each chapter begins by introducing a somewhat representative graduate student or two - I found them a bit intimidating in their maturity, experience, and expectations. Following these profiles is a historical summary of the "intellectual and methodological" development of the discipline. This may sound dry, but it was helpful in understanding differences in emphasis and approach by various universities. For example, we learn that the quantitative approach to historical studies shifted prestige away from Ivy League departments to the large state schools. And Portuguese may be resurgent because some of the best theoretical language research is coming out of Brazil. Also, boning up on differential equations is the best preparation for graduate economic studies.

Each section ends with a look at the current academic and nonacademic job prospects of recent Ph.D's. An appendix even lists by name all graduating Ph.D's, their school, their discipline, and where they were hired. This book is really two books in one - a guide to grad schools and a guide to an eventual job position. I highly recommend this book and give it five stars. It is without peers.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and Astonishing, June 30, 2008

By 

J. Whitford - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Real Guide to Grad School: What You Better Know Before You Choose Humanities & Social Sciences (Paperback)

Wanting to be a graduate student and actually becoming one are so far apart they barely share an atmosphere. This book does a superb job of building a bridge between one state and the other.

The chapters on individual departments and specialties are detailed, thoughtful, and extensive. They not only include information on where the specialty has been, but they also examine where it is heading, what the hottest (and best-funded) topics currently are, and what are the best universities for particular sub-branches of the subject--in many cases, citing the names of prominent professors who are there at the moment. While some of them may no longer be teaching at those institutions, having a name to start a search can lead you to their current placements, their old publications, and programs that supported them in their research.

One of the cruel ironies of fate is that this book is now out of print, and therefore no longer updated. More than ten years after this book came out, some of the information is undoubtedly past it's expiration date. It doesn't matter. For all the specific and time-sensitive information it possesses, this book is surprisingly general when it comes to examining the basic questions of what it means to enter graduate school in the various disciplines. It looks at, not only the new hot areas of study, but also the old traditional standbys and a few areas they identify as up-and-coming, so you aren't left completely at the whim of the trends of the mid-nineties. Given that the NRC data they are quoting is still the most recent--the next list doesn't come out until fall 2008--you're still doing as well as can be expected, ranking-wise. Your own research into the particular program that interests you will help you fill out any gaps or lapses.

At this rate, I anticipate that this book will become dated sometime around 2020--and even then, some of the general observations, warnings, and advise about graduate study will still no doubt be true. It is, hands down, the best graduate school guide I've ever read or seen. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in a career in graduate study in the humanities. (And, for what it's worth, try to read more of the chapters than just the one you think you're interested in. You never know where your interests will take you.)