Departments and Programs Books

This is a huge book, worthwhile and seems complete. I also have the Your MBA Game Plan: Proven Strategies for Getting into the Top Business Schools, and this book is ten times the size. I have yet to read the whole thing and probably will never; however it is easy to find the data I need for my search. I also like the discussions about why and where to go, not just the how like in other books.

I think it's one of the most complete guides for the subject. It covers many different topics in a very sound way which many other books "try to" cover in hundred of pages.

Insightful information and good examples of essays and recommendations. I also liked the directors of admission's quotes. It is pretty much the same advices you hear when you go to the School's info sessions but on the book the advices are clearly linked to how you write each part of your application.

This book is the bible for getting into the top MBA schools. I am currently in the process of applying to some of the top schools and have talked to a lot of current and recent grads, all of whom swear by this book. It walks you through all the steps required and the right way to approach the situation. I had my first round interview last week and knowing how the different schools differ in their approach helped tremendously.

STILL TBD on if I'm successful in my bid for the top schools but so far, I feel I'm getting all the right insider tips from this book.

Needless to say, this book is now the Bible of MBA applications.

What works:

1. Lots of advice, starting from the basics.
2. Tons of feedback from Admissions Committee Members
3. Essay samples

What doesnt:

1. Essay samples are limited to people who were leaders, consultants, etc etc. I dont believe these form the majority, Instead, I think the majority applicants are engineers, investment bankers and people from Asia. So the examples should have been chosen to fit that demographic too. I am more interested to see how an engineer represented himself well to get into a B-school, rather than read an essay of someone who was in the Army asa Lieutenant. It doesnt help much by publishing essays of people who're inherently different because of a very rare background.

2. Nothing much has really changed over the 2002 edition of the book. So, if you have the old one, I dont think this is worth buying. You could just use the library.

This book is brilliant. A must have for the entire application and interview process!

This book made the applying to grad school process far less painful. It allowed me to compare different programs so that I could narrow my choices down substantially. It was also an easy read, so it wasn't exhausting reading it.

This book has a lot of helpful information for looking for and applying to graduate schools for clinical or counseling psychology, Ph.Ds or Psy.Ds. It provides different perspectives on the degrees and careers so that readers have a better understanding of what they may be going into.

I bought this in the beginning of my hunt for graduate school and it was a pretty good reality check. They don't tell you, "if you do what we tell you, you'll get into the school of your dreams". Instead they're pretty raw, as in, graduate school is very competitive and you might not get in when you first try.
On the other hand, I would have appreciated a little more of "you can do it" morale boosting.
Also, I'm not so sure how reliable their scales in the appendix are of just how "research oriented" or "practice oriented" each school's program is, but it is a nice feature.

As a university lecturer at three universities, I get plenty of questions about these things. I hear plenty of horror stories from students about faulty or non-existent mentoring in these areas. There is plenty of advice out there to be had from ignorant, indifferent, or hostile sources. A big problem is that many professors and staff in psychology departments at major universities don't have knowledge or interest in clinical and counseling psychology. They may be openly hostile to the entire field, or toward areas and programs they perceive as being too unscientific. Even among supportive mentors, there isn't enough time to mentor students on all these issues. For many professors, finding quality time with students sucks time from writing papers and chasing grants. Your best bet is to use this book to master the basics. Find a great mentor and use that person's time to fine tune your thinking and turbo-charge your applications.

My advice is to start here if you are serious about getting into grad school. Or, take a look at the APA's book, "Getting In", which is on the same topic. I haven't seen it, but I hear it is good, too.

And if you want your life as a grad student to go well at at the Big U, then make sure to consult the following classics: (Do this even if you aren't considering an academic career)

David Sternberg's "How to Complete and Survive a Dissertation."
Robert Sternberg's "Psychology 101 1/2: The Unspoken Rules for Success in Academia"

Another must read, for future academics:
Darley et al's "The Compleat Academic: A Career Guide"

And for future clinical and counseling psychologists:
Yalom's "The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients"

Get these other books. Do it. This stuff is worth its weight in gold.

This book will give you an accurate look at the GRE. It will challenge you on your reading analysis skills and vocabulary.

THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN A GOOD BOOK BUT I ONLY NEEDED THE WRITTEN PORTION OF THE GRE AND THIS INCLUDED EVERYTHIMG, WRITING BOOK MUCH BETTER

It was delivered on time, book is in excellent condition. I haven't had time to use every aspect of the book yet but I'm looking forward to taking the online practice tests and using the handy CD that comes with it. I've been reading the book, and I have already picked up a few things!

I didn't have much time to prepare for the GRE; as a result I wasn't sure if buying this book would be worth it. While I didn't come close to working through the entire thing, with the help of the online diagnostic test, I was able to identify my weaknesses and study accordingly. This was money well spent.

I bought the Kaplan GRE Premier Program 2008 edition that comes with the CD-Rom. Note: the CD is only compatible with Windows version 1.0. Though I personally found the book to be less effective than Barron's GRE prep book [for one, I thought Barron's was better organised and had more content in it], the CD-Rom by Kaplan was very useful.

The CD-rom provides access to practice tests for the verbal and quantitative components of the GRE [three tests each]. In addition, we get three CATs with the full exam on each [i.e. the written, verbal and quantitative components]. Once one takes the CATs, a score is provided scaled from 200-800 [except for the essays]. It also provides a detailed answer list with explanations. On the whole, this is a good buy for those preparing to take the GRE.

Could somebody please tell me how to use this CD? I thought the problem was the CD itself, but contacted the seller, who then sent me another copy which has the same problem. The only thing that comes up is the search screen. When I enter the type of program to search for, I get the same thing.

If someone could please tell me what to do I'd greatly appreciate it. I am trying to choose programs to which I can apply RIGHT NOW.

Thank you.

This is definitely the only reliable MFA Guide out there. Although it may not be perfect, at least it's based on thorough research and accurate information. Anyone who knows anything about MFA Programs always recommends this one over the MFA Handbook.

This is the best book I've found on the subject but it's far from great. It gives one short page narratives of about 60 programs and general advice on the application process. It has some good points: it's fairly objective, stresses the strengths (or "perks" as she calls them) of each school and program as well as some of the weaknesses, discusses funding and gives approximate tuition and concentrations on each program. However, there is little here that could not be gleaned from the websites of the schools or the now decade old U.S. News & World Report listing.
The book contains some surprising omissions, such as George Mason University and most well regarded smaller programs. An accompanying CD allegedly gives further reviews but I could not get it to run on my computer and picking through its index files it seems to only give hyperlinks anyway.

I would recommend this book simply because it is still better than its competition, but the definitive book on MFA programs has yet to be written.

I would like to take this opportunity as the author of this book to say that I was contracted with the publisher to write a book on three kinds of opportunities for writers that give them time, money, and places to write: 1. grad programs 2. colonies & residencies and 3. grants & fellowships. Then it was given a title that made it seem skewed towards graduate programs, when that was only one section. I wrote it to present a horn of plenty to writers. The CD-ROM has problems, and no one is more disappointed than I, but the publisher will only fix it with the next print run. I am working on a way to remedy this through my web site. I believe I have a great book that opens readers up to the possibilities, but still leaves it to them to pursue the ones they deem worthy. I think that Tom Kealey's Creative Writing MFA Handbook has been criticized for being too much about money, when he's offering his specific and helpful viewpoint on what should matter when you apply. I come from a background of information services, where a few books on a subject is the best way to research anything. The definitive book will likely not be written unless you can find someone who has attended all the programs and still has the motor ability and thought processes to write a book. The secret elixir is on Mount Olympus. You need to know that finding a program that will educate you about an artistic endeavor is going to be a personal journey, and those of us who have knowledge about the market can only give you our perspectives. You need always to judge which perspectives are pertinent.

The book is a very decent reference but it is very limited. The book description even states there are only 80 reviews total in the book and that includes universities, colonies and international programs. What sold me on the book was the CD that expanded the reviews to include over 300 programs. Well, the CD doesn't work. Amazon has replaced my original book/cd and the second one doesn't work either. There are three other reviews of this book that say the same thing. THE CD DOESN'T WORK. It is false advertising and the book/cd should be recalled by the publisher. If you have also bought this defective product send an email to Amazon to put pressure on the publisher to fix the problem. If you haven't bought it, DON'T until the publisher fixes the problem.

The book is not really the best book to use. And, to be quite frank, no book on MSW programs is a good book to use.

I say this mostly becuase programs change their requirements and their expectations year after year.

Your best bet is to use the book as a guide to help you narrow down your search, and to help you understand what the MSW program amy generally look like. But, really, any MSW progrma book can help you do it. And, you can get the information for free online.

The book may help some, but for many the best bet is to find the program you are interested in and research what that program expects and is interested in.

Also, the section about personal statements is a bit pretentious and biased. A personal statement should come from the student's perspective, and there isn't too much you can do wrong. The "Do's and Don'ts" are pretty common sense, and what you probably learned when writing your essay for undergrad.

Overall, keep your money and do your research online and through the school you're thinking about applying to.

Best of luck to all!!


p.s.--I got into my first choice MSW program without muchhelp from this book!!!

This Book did not help me do anything but get worried about writing my personal statement for Graduate School. I wound up buying another book that made me feel much better and really helped me write my essay.

This book helped me get accepted to a graduate school of clinical social work in the Northeast. (I only applied to one.). I highly recommend it to anyone applying to graduate schools of social work!

I used this book to apply to graduate programs in New York. I followed the guide and got into every school! I am so glad I bought this book!

This guide was extremely helpful. It gives insight into what admission committees look for in applicants. The do's and dont's sections of the guide are a great resource as well. I highly recommend this guide book to anyone who is interested in the field of social work and anyone who isn't sure if the field is right for them or not. This guide gives great insight into the field of social work and how it is organized.

Princeton Review: Gourman Report of Graduate Programs, 8th Edition: A Rating of Graduate and Professional Programs in American and International Uni versities ... in American and International Universities)Princeton Review: Gourman Report of Undergraduate Programs, 10th Edition: A Rating of Undergraduate Programs in American and International Universities ... in American and International Universities) As an educational professional for over thirty-years, I have used Dr. Jack Gourman's guides to select my graduate schools, to help my children select their undergraduate and graduate schools, and to help my students choose their colleges and universities. As consumers of collegiate products, most parents just accept what a school says about how good they are. Dr. Gourman (Univ of MI) furnishes us accurate information to measure school quality vs. price. Given the impact of these decisions on a child's education, Gourman has done a great public service by publishing his evaluation. It shows how far from accurate are the evaluations contained in popular "news" magazines which many depend on to make this momentous decision. Gourman's guidea are easy to use but they also contain a discussion of the methodology he uses in his analysis. This is key information for parents concerned about getting what they pay for.

I've used several major ranking references. I have found the Gourman Report to be the most accurate in rating educational institutions in terms of faculty quality and library - an often over-looked yet the MOST important resource for research in graduate schools and professional schools such as med schools, business schools and law schools.

By contrast, other ranking reports tend to put too much emphasis on subjective opinions (mostly gathered via opinion polls) in their ranking calculations. Some put almost no emphasis on the size of the library; and some calculate a "library size to student population ratio", making a lousy library of a small school seems better than a good library of a big school.

I have encountered many disenchanted students at small private universities who are disappointed at the lack of library resources and the small selection of classes in their particular programs. Their research is slowed down or made impossible because of the inadequacy of these resources. They would have avoided such disenchantment if they had used the Gourman Report.

Jack Gourman is a former professor from the University of Michigan who compiles his rankings by calling professors in various departments at different schools and asking them which programs they think are the best in their field. Not a bad way to rank schools and programs if your sampling is statistically valid, but since Jack is vague about his methodology, we'll never know that. What we do know is that his rankings are noticeably skewed in favor of large state universities and especially the University of Michigan. For instance, most observers rank Harvard Stanford and Yale among the top three law schools, with Michigan between fifth and ninth, but Jack consistently ranks the Wolverines in the top three. (Hey! They've got a great football program, haven't they?)

This approach produces ludicrous results in his rankings of undergraduate institutions (a separate book), but is less of a problem with graduate programs which are (1) the province of larger universities, and (2) subject to fewer constraints in their acceptance of out-of-state residents.

The book is especially useful as a checklist of all of the major players in a particular discipline. Just remember to move all Big Ten schools down one to two notches, and the University of Michigan down three to four, and you'll end up with some pretty decent rankings.

Jack, you really should make your ranking available online. Otherwise, many people will not refer to it and they will miss the opportunity to access the most objective and accurate college ranking!

As an educational professional myself, I can assure that the rating provided by Dr. Gourman is certainly the most objective and well prepared of its kind. Of course, there is no equal to the National Research Council study conducted every 10 years, but the Gourman Report certainly fills the gap.

I refer to the 8th edition, available since 1996. A really useful guide. I strongly recommend it to each and every potential taker for the expensive MBA studies.

The best book I have seen in one year searching and investigating about MBAs,GMAT, European vs American programs,etc. If you are planning to buy this book, wait for the 2001 edition which should have recent data.

Don't waste your time looking up for another book, this is THE MBA BOOK.

Do not expect some key information about Harvard, Wharton or NYU. This book just lists about 200 MBA with a quick overview (2 pages) on each. If you want to apply to an MBA in Australia or in China, this book can give you all the basic information you need to know.

"WHICH MBA?" is a valuable source of information for understanding the student composition and curriculums of MBA programmes all over the world. I appreciated Bickerstaffe's focus on European programmes. Often it is very difficult to find information on programmes outside the U.S. "WHICH MBA?" does not attempt to rank MBA programmes or assess thier reputation. It merely provides facts.

This book is a godsend to anyone contemplating one of the many top-notch MBA programs outside of the US. Bickerstaffe doesn't attempt to "rank" the schools, which seems to be the only way anymore that the US programs are described in the guidebooks. Instead, he provides factual information often difficult to locate anywhere else. I was surprised to find a book like this existed. Great find.

This book focuses on commenting code in a structured language which can be parsed into documentation, an idea which has gained great popularity with the distribution of JavaDoc for java comments. There are various essays concerning structured programming and a detailed description of CWeb, an early JavaDoc-like system. I bought this book hoping for a guide to writing readable structured code and formalizing comment semantics, but those problems are not addressed in this text.

This book is the only one that I can say has truly changed my view of software development.

The premise of this book matches my experience: technical communication with people is critical, and harder than communicating with the machines. Knuth carries that idea forward by one bold, logical step: in Literate Programming (LP), the main goal is to get technical ideas across to people. Programs are a co-product of the description process. This inverts the premise of JavaDoc and the like, in which human communication is incidental to the code.

A literate program, by the way, reads like a standard human document, whether an essay or an IEEE standard specification. JavaDoc output reads like an HTML dump of a cross-linked tree data structure - which it is. JavaDoc serves a valuable purpose, but does not permit system description in the order required by human reasoning.

My own experience with LP (a custom system) was very happy - I actually reached the "impossible" goal of true requirements traceability. I unified the system requirements, design, multi-language implementation, configuration control, and even tests under one document set. With HTML output, traceability was made real using interactive links. Anywhere else, traceability is mostly wishful thinking shared by the many owners of physically disconnected documents. (Process gurus - I hope you're paying attention.)

LP practice, however, has not caught on. LP, in today's form, does not support programming in the large. What LP does to the compilable form of a program brings C++ name-mangling to mind. I don't know of any WYSIWYG LP systems, so today's window-icon-mouse-pointer (WIMP) programmers will have nothing to do with it. And, ironically, the people who need the most support in communicating with their peers are the ones most resistant to tools for effective communication.

It's a grand vision and an exciting experiment. LP deserves more attention.

Writing computer programs is easy, writing programs that are useful is hard and writing programs that are very useful as well as correct sometimes seems impossible. Knuth takes this truism even further and offers up the radical notion that the very best programs are so profound that people will one day read them as one would a piece of classic literature. If the idea of curling up by the fire with a copy of The World's Greatest Programs and spending the night in a state of rapture seems absurd, you think as I did. However, after reading this book, my mind now concedes the possibility does exist. After all, most of the great works of literature describe actions, conditions and solutions (algorithms) to problems of human-human and sometimes human-god interactions. Science fiction writers and readers have known for a long time that computers are very interesting objects. Buildings, paintings or other works of art are often admired not only for their subjective beauty, but also for the talent that it took to create them. Programming ability can be admired just as easily.
However, an extremely large technical barrier exists, in that programming languages are literal, terse and lack flair. Knuth works to eliminate this problem by combining the programming and documentation languages into a structure called a WEB. He also adopts the reverse paradigm that a program should be an explanation to humans of what the computer is doing. The result does wonders for readability and introduces a bit of flair. Certainly, this is a good first step towards Knuth's ideal.
The development of TEX is chronicled in great detail. It is personally comforting to read about some of the errors made in its development. Learning that the great ones make errors provides emotional security to all who hack for fun and/or profit. Some classic programming problems are used to demonstrate exactly what literate programming is meant to be. Jon Bentley, author of the `Programming Pearls' section of "Communications of the ACM", contributes two chapters that were co-authored with Donald Knuth. These pearls demonstrate the applications of literate programming to common coding problems. All are presented in a clear, easy-to-understand style.
A bit of clever humor is also used. A WEB program is constructed from two distinct components. The Weave part explains what the program is doing, and the Tangle component produces the program. Of course, this suggests the line from Sir Walter Scott's poem Marmion, "O what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."
I do not know whether to consider this book the product of a dreamer or a visionary. The truth, like most of the work of pioneers, is no doubt somewhere in between. My opinion is that it is more vision than dream. And is that not a common theme among the greatest works of art and literature?

Published in Mathematics and Computer Education, reprinted with permission.

This book is a collection of articles Prof. Knuth
wrote about programming. He promoted a particular
programming methodology called "literate
programming", which weaves comments into codes and
make them more readable and easier to maintain. This
book was published in 1992, but Chapter 4, "Literate
Programming", was originally published in 1984,
which was an idea way ahead of his time (JavaDoc was
first released in 1998, 12 years after the Knuth's
article). Chapter one is Knuth's Turing Award
lecture and still worth reading for his view on why
programming is an art. I was wrongly impressed that
Knuth is a very theoretical people and doesn't do
much programming. As you would discover from these
lecture and other articles in the book, he indeed
did a lot of programming and arguably in a very
clever and beautiful way, "the program of which I
personally am most pleases and proud is a compiler
I once wrote for a primitive minicomputer that had
only 4096 words of memory, 16 bites per word
(pg. 10)." The discussion about the "goto" statement
in Chapter 3 is not relevant in today's programming
and computer environment. The last few chapters are
more like manuals of the WEB and CWEB programs (C
version of WEB), which are the programs generating
documents and source codes. These manuals may not
interest readers unless they are well motivated to
write program "literally." One gem should not be
missed is is Chapter 10, "The Errors of TeX" (and
the accompanying Chapter 11, "The Error Log of
TeX). Seeing how Prof. Knuth meticulously documented
all of his bugs in TeX is just amazing. Overall this
book is more of historical value and for people who
love Knuth and his work on literate programming.

Excellent analysis of control structures in the classic article "Structured Programming with goto Statements." Invents the literate programming style of program documentation. Convincingly demonstrates the literate programming style with six example programs. Includes an independent program criticism and an error log. Highly recommended.

Murray Sperber shows the scandalous financial side to NCAA college sports in this well-crafted book. It's hardly news that college sports are corrupt - amateurism is and probably always was un-workable. What is news, however, is that most colleges lose money from their athletic programs. Readers see that while football and basketball might attract revenue, they seldom offset the losses from "non-revenue" sports like gymnastics, tennis, swimming, track, etc. Also, winning sports teams fail to increase academic donations to host colleges - alumni don't like their schools having "jock" reputations. The author shows how colleges abuse Pell and minority grants to benefit athletics, and how these institutions force students (or their parents) to pay hefty "activities fees" along with tuition to bail out the athletic department

Like most appeals to reform NCAA sports, this book fell on deaf ears - we simply like the games too much. Still, this book should be of interest to educators and to students forced to pay outrageous activity fees at tuition time.

How to evaluate and improve a university department? That has been a perennial and contentious topic in many universities. Wergin weighs in with several observations and suggestions.

The basic idea for moving forward is simple. The faculty should be closely involved in defining and promoting a department's mission and focus. This takes advantage of a desire amongst many academics for a sense of community and purpose within their department. The biggest problem is simply that, once tenured, individuals are largely autonomous. Plus, in order to get tenure, researchers often have to be very competitive within their fields. Wergin offers ways to counteract these tendencies. Appealing in part to that sense of community. Along with the notion that faculty working together often have greater political clout within a university.