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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
62 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Too basic for its audience,
By A Customer
This review is from: Ultimate Grad School Survival Guide (Paperback)
Despite its pleasant tone and occasional bits of helpful information, this book is far too basic to be of much use to anyone. It tries to cover an incredible amount of territory -- Finding the Right University (Ch. 1) all the way to Your Thesis/Dissertation (Ch. 8) and Getting a Job (Ch. 10) -- in barely 200 pages. Simple is not better in this case. Anyone above a college sophomore should read Robert Peters' "Getting What You Came For" instead.
66 of 75 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very Useful for Those Contemplating and Pursuing Grad Study,
By
This review is from: Ultimate Grad School Survival Guide (Paperback)
The Spanish have a colorful saying, `Antes de te cases, mira lo que haces', which literally means- before getting married, look at what you are doing. Figuratively speaking, this expression is a Latin version of our own cautionary admonition- look before you leap.Ms. Mitchell's The Ultimate Graduate School Survival Guide offers thoughtful advice to those motivated students interested in critically evaluating the decision to pursue and attain an advanced degree. The book is excellent and extremely valuable because it forces the prospective grad student to focus on the most important things before, during and after taking the grad school plunge. The book elaborates on the right way and the wrong way to approach prospective schools, choose which school to attend, play the graduate school game, and navigate the treacherous, shark-infested waters of academe. It also offers useful, practical advice on grant and proposal writing, publications, and time management. Additionally, the author has included a bibliography full of useful books to help grad students achieve their degree goals. Many students do not realize that by deciding to attend graduate school, they often lose control over their own fate, as your advisers dictate both your course of study and the possible career choices in academe and the professional workplace- long after you have left the ivory tower. Although I balk at the book's wholehearted endorsement of conformity to the prevailing regime and using sycophancy at every opportunity in the face of tyrannical faculty, this book provides the real deal, the inside story on the realities of graduate training. The book covers everything important, and tries to provide helpful hints and suggestions geared to successful navigation of the capricious politics in the ivory tower. Additionally, the author manages to cover even the more objectionable topics, such as romantic liaisons between students and faculty, the theft of student ideas and research by faculty, the fickle favoritism for some students over others by faculty, and the thorny politics of inclusion. However, there are a couple of noticeable caveats in the book. First, the author neglected to add that a student, in deciding which school to attend, should consider the cost of living in and around the school environment, and the difficulty of attaining minimum lifestyle requirements. Even when a student receives generous financial aid, it may not be enough to cover the cost of living. If the aid given is not in line with the cost of living in the particular environment, the student will be forced to depend on loans for some or most of his or her living expenses. Moreover, many campus environments face housing shortages, and as can be expected, rents are bid upward when housing is scarce. Not only is the cost of living exorbitant in many environments, housing for students tends to be scarce and costly. If working professionals living in these areas are paying five hundred to one thousand dollars for the privilege of sleeping in someone's attic (or in more than a few cases, a closet), one can imagine the difficulty students would face. Moreover, in recent years, given the generally dismal economic outlook, many students increasingly look upon graduate school as a safe harbor from both social and economic turmoil. One should bear in mind that one may give up much more than one gains in attending graduate school, as the cost of graduate study, whether paid for by loans or by fellowships, and the income foregone by not working, quickly mount. Also, these costs worsen the longer it takes to complete the degree. Therefore, given the hidden, though very real costs of a graduate education, I suggest one consider working part or full-time (for pay), preferably in a field related to one's studies while pursuing the graduate degree, or having one's place of work foot the bill for graduate study. Otherwise, one just might be better off substituting practical, on the job experience for advanced education, as many graduate programs are not geared to providing students with marketable skills. Second, one should make certain that whatever body of knowledge one acquires, this knowledge should be transferable to other endeavors, or at least something that one can build upon. Too many students have pursued graduate degrees, in the process learning obscure concepts, methodologies and techniques, only to learn after completing their studies that their knowledge is either impractical or obsolete (or in many cases both)- a situation which not only makes them ill-prepared for the realities of the workforce, but also forces them to play catch-up and spend valuable time and money picking up other skills. Being in such a situation is never pretty- especially when one has a family to support. Therefore, it behooves the prospective student to consider the expected payoff from an investment in advanced education very critically. This book, along with RL Peters' Getting What You Came For and PJ Feibelman's A PhD Is Not Enough, should be required reading for all graduate students.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Understand real grad school issues to be more successful,
By A Customer
This review is from: Ultimate Grad School Survival Guide (Paperback)
Disclaimer: I am the author's husband (they don't have a separate comments option for us--but be advised I have a vested interest here.)
The point of this book is to help you be a more successful grad student in the arts and sciences. Being a grad student is not like a regular job: no one gives you a list of what's expected of you and what you can do to attain your goals. Instead, you have to figure it out along the way, learning little bits from your professors, other students and your own mistakes. This book shortcuts that process. Most of the information in the book comes from the real-world, first-hand experiences of hundreds of regular grad students (including Lesli). Lesli combined their horror stories and success tips with advice from experts in financial aid, publishing, admin, etc. to create a pretty clear picture of what separates the successful grad students from the not-so- successful ones. The book distills all this experience to help you understand the processes and issues at the very beginning. You'll be able to identify your goals, create a plan to reach them, get started early and avoid costly mistakes.
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