The Smart Student's Guide to Earning a Master's or PhD | Essential Tips for Graduate School Success | Perfect for Academic Research & Career Advancement

One needs three things to succeed in any graduate program, and they are an interesting topic for research, the necessary facilities and resources to pursue the topic, and finally the money to pursue the topic of interest. Although I agree with Peters when he says that one should attend grad school only if one needs an advanced degree for career advancement, he neglected to mention that having an interesting, doable topic for your research can make the difference between a heavenly or hellish grad school experience.In twenty-four highly detailed, readable, and often (darkly) humorous chapters, Peters shows the reader an excellent way to play the academic game as a traditional graduate student. Bear in mind, however, that there are other options to obtaining the graduate degree. When considering the decision to obtain a graduate degree, one can choose from a variety of colleges and universities. Furthermore, one can obtain an advanced degree in any number of ways, thanks to advances in technology and a changing social and corporate climate. In today's red-hot economy, many companies offer continuing education for free, and will even foot the bill for an advanced degree to retain workers. Rather than quitting a good job to attend grad school and put up with a lot of stress and abuse for the prospect of making peanuts (if you're lucky enough to get funded) and an uncertain career future, one could, depending on the field of study, work while going to school. That way, you get the education without sacrificing the salary, experience, promotions, networking opportunies and career contacts. By paying for your degree yourself or having your employer pay for it for you, you more often than not get a better education, and you most certainly avoid all of the abuse and exploitation which unfortunately pervades many grad schools (Peters is absolutely right here).This four hundred page book is designed to help the traditional graduate student get through the academic meat-grinder with a minimum of physical, mental, and emotional turmoil. The first three chapters of the book give you a good idea of what you are really up against, and the picture really is not pretty. The fourth chapter helps one to decide whether or not to take a break before going to graduate school, and if you do, what sort of job to take to increase your chances of getting into grad school.Chapters five through eight offer a lot of extremely useful information on the grad school admissions process and good ways to get accepted by the school of your choice. Chapter nine gives a brilliant, very detailed, though a bit dated discussion of the most important concern among grad students- financial support for grad study.Chapters ten and eleven give a brief background and history on the master's and doctorate degrees. Chapters 12 through 19 go through organization, time management for grad students, and selecting, completing, writing and defending a thesis topic. Chapter 20 deals with oral presentations, and being the bread and butter of academic life, should have come before the chapters dealing with the thesis.Chapters 21 and 22 talk about coping skills specifically for graduate students, and emphasize the importance of having a life- something many grad students simply do not have.Chapter 23 gives very general advice to students who do not happen to be white and male- most of this information can be skipped, as it is not very helpful. The 24th and final chapter outlines some practical steps to landing a job on your own, and covers such things as resume preparation, the informational interview, and optimizing the use of various resources to find a position worth having.Peters also appends a couple of chapters on buying a good computer and useful education related web addresses, both of which may be of some use but are pretty much dated given the speed at which things change in the computer and internet space. Finally, he includes a useful bibliography which contains a plethora of good references for further reading.If anything, this book serves as a sobering eye-opener for those who are either thinking about making the plunge, or have made the plunge. Keep in mind that some schools are changing for the better by offering grad students other experiences and career options (though not fast enough) outside of research and academe, and some are getting worse. A briefer, blunter treatment of much of the material in this book can be found in P J Feibelman's book, 'A PhD Is Not Enough'.