The Graduate School Handbook

The Grad School Handbook
Richard Jerrard and Margot Jerrard

Here, GradSchools.com gives you some key excerpts from The Grad School Handbook. This book is a manual on how to get in to graduate school, and how to succeed once you are in. The chapters given here are on Why Graduate School?, Deciding Where to apply, and Paying for the Degree. A fourth topic, getting information on graduate schools, is covered elsewhere on gradschools.com.

These four topics are the first, and most important, things you need to consider when thinking about graduate school. Graduate school makes a radical change in your life; it alters your whole future, and you need information.

Graduate school is different in many ways from work on a bachelor's degree. You study in a single field, often working closely with professors in your area. There is a great deal of financial aid available. You need to find the school that is best for you, with good faculty in the field you want, and that will give you financial aid. These chapters will help you to do that.

For example, Paying for the Degree discusses all sources of funds, and emphasizes that a great deal of financial aid is available directly from the universities themselves in the form of teaching and research assistantships, and fellowships. Professors in the field will decide whether to admit you and give you financial aid. A good application can bring in tens of thousands of dollars in cash and tuition waivers.

The book as a whole takes you step by step through the whole process of applying to graduate school and succeeding once you are in. It includes chapters on getting good references, preparing for graduate admissions tests, and writing the required essay.

Professor Richard Jerrard was Director of Graduate Studies in mathematics at the University of Illinois; Margot Jerrard has written handbooks, newsletters, and catalogs in the University's Graduate College. Together they know how graduate schools work, what students need to do to get in with financial aid, and how students succeed.

Richard Jerrard

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Reprinted from The Grad School Handbook by Richard P. Jerrard and Margot Jerrard. Copyright 1998 by Richard P. Jerrard and Margot Jerrard. Permission granted by The Berkeley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc. All rights reserved

Contact the publisher at 1-800-788-6262 or http://www.penguinputnam.com/