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

Rating:
Summary: Essential Reading - Great Buy - Insightful and Instructive
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: discipline dependant
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: discipline dependant
Review: The clear cut discipline categories embraced by this book leave little for those searching in any specific manner. Highly limiting categories which are all becoming mute in the increasingly interdisciplinized academy and serve to equilize highly different programs. I was quite dissappointed.

Rating:
Summary: you get far more than your money's worth
Review: 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.