A Field Guide To Grad School

An essential handbook to the unwritten and often unspoken knowledge and skills you need to succeed in grad school Some of the most important things you need to know in order to succeed in graduate school—like how to choose a good advisor, how to get funding for your work, and whether to celebrate or cry when a journal tells you to revise and resubmit an article—won’t be covered in any class. They are part of a hidden curriculum that you are just expected to know or somehow learn on your own—or else. In this comprehensive survival guide for grad school, Jessica McCrory Calarco walks you through the secret knowledge and skills that are essential for navigating every critical stage of the postgraduate experience, from deciding whether to go to grad school in the first place to finishing your degree and landing a job. An invaluable resource for every prospective and current grad student in any discipline, A Field Guide to Grad School will save you grief—and help you thrive—in school and beyond. Provides invaluable advice about how to: Choose and apply to a graduate program Stay on track in your program Publish and promote your work Get the most out of conferences Navigate the job market Balance teaching, research, service, and life

Introduction -- Choosing a program -- Building your team -- Deciphering academic jargon -- Reading and writing about other people's research -- Staying on track in your program -- Doing research and finding funding -- Writing about your research -- Publishing and promoting your work -- Talking about your research -- Going to conferences -- Navigating the job market -- Balancing teaching, research, service and life -- Conclusion.

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.

"This book is lewd, rude and superb! Frank and Stein have written the first guide to grad school from a student's point of view; and the result is an irreverent, humorous and USEFUL book of advice. These foul-mouthed sages will help you get through a master's or doctoral program more quickly, with fewer blunders and less angst. I plan to recommend this book to all the graduate students I coach and teach." -Mary McKinney, Ph.D. Clinical Psychologist and Dissertation Coach http://www.successfulacademic.com Yes, sports fans!, er, grad school fans Bad boys Fred and Karl are back with an updated version of their best selling self-help guide for grad students. This New and/or Improved Version is stocked with additional content, more lame attempts at humor, and a lower price (Karl threatened to moon the publisher unless his demands were met). Written with the attitude of a couple ill-mannered schoolboys who exhibit the insight and genius of the Ph.D.'s who wrote it, Playing the Game simplifies even the most complex aspects of grad school. Authors Frank and Stein have broken down Playing The Game into three hilarious and straightforward sections: Getting In, Getting Through, and Getting the Hell Out. In whatever stage of graduate school you find yourself, rest assured that you will never again grumble, "If only I had known! If only someone had explained this @%#! to me sooner!" Playing the Game simplifies the entire graduate school experience while imparting comically relevant stories and translating complicated graduate school jargon. This self-help guide helps grad students to comprehensively navigate their graduate school journey from application to matriculation. Unlike most of the material you'll be reading in grad school, Playing the Game is actually intelligible. www.playing-the-game.com

In Negotiating Opportunities, Jessica McCrory Calarco argues that the middle class has a negotiated advantage in school. Drawing on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Calarco traces that negotiated advantage from its origins at home to its consequences at school. Through their parents' coaching, working-class students learn to follow rules and work through problems independently. Middle-class students learn to challenge rules and request assistance, accommodations, and attention in excess of what is fair or required. Teachers typically grant those requests, creating advantages for middle-class students. Calarco concludes with recommendations, advocating against deficit-oriented programs that teach middle-class behaviors to working-class students. Those programs ignore the value of working-class students' resourcefulness, respect, and responsibility, and they do little to prevent middle-class families from finding new opportunities to negotiate advantages in school.

What’s the hardest part of grad school? It’s not simply that the workload is heavy and the demands are high. It’s that too many students lack efficient methods to let them do their best. Professor Zachary Shore aims to change this. With humorous, lively prose, Professor Shore teaches you to master the five most crucial skills you need to succeed: how to read, write, speak, act, and research at a higher level. Each chapter in this no-nonsense guide outlines a unique approach to acquiring a skill and then demonstrates how to enhance it. Through these concrete, practical methods, Grad School Essentials will save you time, elevate the quality of your work, and help you to earn the degree you seek.

Addresses the mental health challenges of graduate school and how students can succeed and thrive. With rates of depression and anxiety six times higher among graduate students than the general population, maintaining emotional wellbeing in graduate school is vital! Students must be prepared with skills that will not only help them perform well but also help them feel well. Thriving in Graduate School: The Expert's Guide to Success and Wellness is the first book on graduate student mental health written by mental health professionals. It promotes psychologically healthy approaches to navigating the graduate school experience and teaches students that they are not alone in their mental health struggles. The authors introduce students to unique perspectives that are key to positive mental health. Additionally, this is the only book of its type to explore issues routinely faced by historically marginalized graduate students. Special sections at the end of each chapter written for faculty, administrators, and mental health professionals augment the book by suggesting ways that each of these groups can help guide and support graduate students through their journey. Featuring vignettes and experiences from actual graduate students, Thriving in Graduate School sheds light on common—but hidden—truths to help students manage the many challenges they will face and even thrive during their graduate school years. Written with compassion and humor, this is a must read for prospective students and those who seek to support them.

The fully updated fifth edition of the go-to guide for crafting winning essays for any type of graduate program or scholarship, including PhD, master's, MD, JD, Rhodes, and postdocs, with brand-new essays and the latest hot tips and secret techniques. Based on thousands of interviews with successful grad students and admissions officers, Graduate Admissions Essays deconstructs and demystifies the ever-challenging application process for getting into graduate and scholarship programs. The book presents: Sample essays in a comprehensive range of subjects, including some available from no other source: medical residencies, postdocs, elite fellowships, academic autobiographies, and more! The latest on AI, the GRE, and diversity and adversity essays. Detailed strategies that have proven successful for some of the most competitive graduate programs in the country (learn how to beat 1% admissions rates!). How to get strong letters of recommendation, how to get funding when they say they have no funding, and how to appeal for more financial aid. Brand-new sample supplemental application letters, letters to faculty mentors, and letters of continuing interest. Full of Dr. Donald Asher's expert advice, this is the perfect graduate application resource whether you're fresh out of college and eager to get directly into graduate school or decades into your career and looking for a change.

This irreverent, but serious guide to what life in higher education institutions is really like, now enhanced by 100 new tips Invaluable advice that ranges from getting your Ph.D. to setting the course of your academic careerThe 100 new hints expand sections on the dissertation process, job hunting, life in the classroom and on dealing with students, as well as on matters that affect readers’ careers, such as research, publication, and tenure. The book concludes with a tongue-in-cheek appendix on How to Become a Millionaire while an academic.

This guide helps faculty and student affairs practitioners better serve graduate and professional school students as they navigate what can be an isolating, taxing, and unfamiliar context. Providing actionable strategies, as well as a common language for practitioners to advocate for themselves and for their students, this book is a quick start manual that defines current issues around graduate and professional student development. Drawing together current resources and research around post-baccalaureate student outcomes, this book explores the diverse student needs of graduate and professional students and provides a clear understanding of their social, personal, and psychological development and how to support their success. Case studies showcase specific examples of practice including a holistic development model for graduate training; integrating academic, personal, professional, and career development needs; promising practices for engagement; a diversity, equity, and inclusion approach to access and outcomes; how graduate schools can be important partners to student affairs professionals; and examples of assessment in action. This book provides tools, resources, communication strategies, and actionable theory-to-practice connections for practitioners, professionals, and faculty at all levels who work to support post-baccalaureate student thriving. Appendix available for download online at www.routledge.com/9780367639884 on the tab that is entitled "Support Material."