Getting What You Came For The Smart Students Guide to Earning an M A or a Ph D
Is graduate school right for you?
Should you get a master’s or a Ph.D.?
How can you choose the best possible school?
This classic guide helps students answer these vital questions and much more. It will also help graduate students finish in less time, for less money, and with less trouble.
Based on interviews with career counselors, graduate students, and professors, Getting What You Came For is packed with real-life experiences. It has all the advice a student will need not only to survive but to thrive in graduate school, including: instructions on applying to school and for financial aid; how to excel on qualifying exams; how to manage academic politics—including hostile professors; and how to write and defend a top-notch thesis. Most important, it shows you how to land a job when you graduate.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Practical Advice for Impractical People
In the humanities, completing a PhD can take as long as 10 years. Reducing that time as much as possible is crucial for a graduate student. This book addresses many of the practical issues related to completing your graduate degree, from applying to grad schools to choosing a dissertation topic to find a job afterward. While different disciplines vary greatly in their requirements and expectations, this guide will be very useful to anyone considering graduate school or currently enrolled.
3 Stars Helpful for considering grad school, but…
“Getting What You Came For” is a good common-sense guide for the majority of students who are considering grad school, and some of the advice and guidance that Peters imparts is particularly valuable. That said, there’s a lot that is out of date here, especially as applies to technology and the application process, which is now woefully out of date. It’s utility to non-traditional older students, students seeking to attend only part-time, or those who cannot just pick up and move to wherever to attend grad school is far more limited. Since I fall into those three categories myself this book was of almost no use to me; it simply repeated things I had heard or read elsewhere. Worse still there’s little discussion of things like accelerated PhD’s (bypassing Masters), nothing on creating/updating CVs or resumes. The book is overall geared more towards getting into grad school rather than the problems and issues you can and will encounter once there. While reading it I found myself repeatedly flipping forward through sections that didn’t apply to me, which is not the hallmark of a useful resource. There have to be other more useful books on the subject than this!
5 Stars One word – Great!!
I have not found a book like this that is as good yet! The chapters are neatly organized, it’s easy to read and helpful whether you are a current graduate student or thinking of going to graduate school. As I am an MA student, some portions of this book are a bit irrelevant for me but in no way does that discount the great information that it DOES provide. I would recommend this book to anyone thinking of or already in grad school.
5 Stars Review
This is an excellent book for any person considering graduate school. The book is practical and well written with excellent advice. As a professor, I recommend this book at least 5 times a year to my students who are considering pursuing a masters or PhD degree. I highly recommend this book.
4 Stars Great for undergrads trying to pursue a PhD
I’m currently a junior in a top-10 engineering school and I found this book extremely useful. I now have a very clear idea of what graduate school is all about and what I need to do to get in.
However, as several other reviewers have pointed out, this book is heavily biased towards PhD students, which works well for me. But I don’t believe it’ll be of too much use for Master students. Also the technology sections are outdated and a bit amusing simply for that reason.
And finally, if you’ve been out of school for a while, the book won’t help you too much. However if you’re still in school, it can be really useful. I would highly recommend this book to anyone still in school and thinking about graduate school.
Knock em Dead 2010 The Ultimate Job Search Guide Knock em Dead