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Book Recommendations for Potential & Current Graduate Students
Source.
1~8. Sun, K-L. (2022). Books to prepare for graduate school. BestColleges. https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/books-prepare-graduate-school/
9~11. Jen. (2020). Recommended reading. PhD to Life. https://fromphdtolife.com/resources/recommended-reading/
12. KACA Grad Student Council’s recommendation
By Paul J. Silvia
In this popular guidebook, Paul J. Silvia prepares you for the significant amount of writing required in graduate school.
"How to Write a Lot" (2018) addresses how to overcome bad habits and writer's block. You'll also learn practical strategies to help you become a stronger writer and researcher.
By Jessica McCrory Calarco
This book is a great resource for the academic soft skills most programs expect grad students to have. "A Field Guide to Grad School" (2020) covers basic academic skills, like writing and research.
More importantly, the book covers how to apply to a program, select an advisor, and benefit from conferences. It also addresses how to network and navigate the job market. The book even gives tips for balancing work, life, and grad school.
By Donald Asher
The updated "Graduate Admissions Essays" (2012) is the quintessential guide for crafting successful essays for scholarships and graduate school programs.
Whether you are seeking to earn a master's, MBA, or JD degree, or are seeking funding to become a Fulbright Scholar, this book contains 50 sample essays with detailed strategies you can apply to your writing.
By Robert L. Peters
"Getting What You Came For" (1997) begins by helping you decide whether graduate school is right for you and, if so, whether you should pursue a master's or Ph.D. Every chapter gives tips on the application process and how to deal with politics in academia.
This classic guide has been revised and reprinted with great resources and information carefully curated from academic counselors, graduate students, and professors.
By Guy E. White
Guy White's "The Dissertation Warrior" (2017) helps students think through the completion of their dissertation. This book does not contain quick and easy tips for completing a dissertation; rather, it provides skills you can develop to grow your writing craft in the long term.
White guides you through one of the most challenging parts of the dissertation — the introduction — and other pitfalls that often derail dissertations.
By Barbara Rittner and Patricia Trudeau
This 1997 book provides practical advice for women seeking to attend graduate programs in the United States and Canada.
"The Women's Guide to Surviving Graduate School" gives great tips on schools who focus on recruiting women. It also discusses how gender factors into the admissions process.
By Frederick Frank and Karl Stein
Frank and Stein, both having graduated from famous graduate schools, give readers indispensable advice in "Playing the Game" (2004). Written with a bit of sass, the advice is not what you would find in your typical grad school guide.
This book gets down to the basics and is divided into three parts: getting in, getting through, and getting out of graduate school. The authors break down the complex process into everyday language and pair it with personal, funny anecdotes.
By Joey Asher
"Even a Geek Can Speak" (2006) explains how, with our dependence on the digital world, many people have lost the art of public speaking. Author Joey Asher teaches the average nerd how to convey complex ideas in a way that successfully connects with their audience.
Even though it's not specifically designed for graduate students, this book can help you refine your presentation skills, which are needed in most advanced fields.
By Loleen Berdahl & Jonathan Mallow
I loved the authors’ emphasis on getting clear about what you want, and the advice to reflect at each stage of the graduate school process whether continuing on is the right one. It is refreshing to read a book on graduate school that neither presumes academia is the desired career outcome nor implies it ought to be. Instead, the authors encourage readers to keep their options open and rightly point out the benefits of varied work experience, training, and professionalism to careers within and beyond the Ivory Tower.
10. What Color is Your Parachute? 2021: Your Guide to a Lifetime of Meaningful Work and Career Success (50th anniv. ed, 2020)
By Richard N. Bolles with Katharine Brooks
If you read only one book on how to get a job and change careers, make it this one. Bolles has an idiosyncratic writing style but his advice is spot-on. Read my review of the 2019 version here.
The 2021 edition was thoroughly updated by Katharine Brooks, EdD, who is the author of You Majored in What? (below). Great choice! An excellent way to bring a classic up to date, and at a time when good advice and guidance is particularly needed.
By Hillary Hutchinson & Mary Beth Averill
Two long-time academic coaches wrote this fantastic guide and workbook for the academic job market. They take you step-by-step through the process of understanding how hiring works — and how it works differently for specific types of positions and kinds of institutions, getting sorted for your search, where to find job ads and other crucial information, staying organized, creating all your materials, prepping for interviews, and other considerations. The book also takes a clear-eyed view of academia and it’s challenges for job seekers, both in the US and around the world. This book is an essential companion to your academic job search. Buying the e-book version? Download and print the worksheets here.
By 엄태웅, 최윤섭, 권창현
This is a book in which three people share their experiences: a final-year PhD student in Canada studying artificial intelligence, a current researcher with a PhD in life sciences, and a professor working in the U.S. after earning a PhD in industrial engineering. They talk about their experiences as graduate students, obtaining their doctorates, and their careers as professors. The personal experiences and advice offered for those facing challenges in research life, human relationships, and career issues in graduate school are incredibly realistic, wise, and highly helpful.
This post is composed of two blogs cited above and KACA Grad Student Council’s recommendation. Information was reorganized on August 10th, 2024.
When it comes to connecting school learning with Wasilkow, I would rather understand one useful detail properly than rush through a long list of ideas. A project about nearby places can give students a shared starting point for research. This is why I would approach Wasilkow school community with a specific question rather than a fixed expectation. The part I would like to explore further is what happens when the idea meets a real situation with its own limitations. Which community questions could students investigate through interviews or observation?
My first thought about sharing cultures through language learning is that the everyday experience deserves as much attention as the larger explanation. An everyday conversation can reveal cultural habits that a vocabulary list cannot explain. Seen this way, European cultural exchange becomes a topic to explore rather than something to sum up too quickly. I can imagine different answers depending on the situation, so I would want to understand the context before drawing conclusions. What kinds of shared activities make an exchange feel meaningful?
What interests me about supporting the move into secondary school is how a broad idea becomes part of an ordinary day. New routines can take time to become familiar even when a student enjoys the lessons. It gives me a more concrete starting point for thinking about secondary school transition. I would probably come back to this question after trying to work through one concrete example rather than deciding immediately. Which parts of the school day need the clearest introduction for new students?
There is something approachable about discussing discovering the cultural heritage of Lusatia through situations people can actually picture. Language and local stories can reveal connections that are easy to miss on a map. That is the kind of detail I would keep in mind while exploring Lusatian cultural heritage. A short discussion of an everyday example would make this easier for me to connect with, especially as someone still learning about the subject. How would you introduce regional heritage through a classroom project?
Thinking about making particle physics approachable, I find the smaller practical questions more interesting than a quick conclusion. An everyday analogy can help introduce an idea while still leaving room to explain its limits. It gives me a more concrete starting point for thinking about particle physics basics. I would be interested in a simple example, because it is often the ordinary details that make an idea memorable. Which comparisons make particle physics easier to picture without creating misconceptions?