Books about Doctoral from Amazon.com

"Fifteen minutes!" you say. "That's too good to be true!" Okay, author Joan Bolker admits she gave her book the title Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day to get the reader's attention And she admits that it's unlikely you'll actually finish a dissertation at that speed. As she tells her clients, however, a mere 15 minutes is much better than no writing at all when they're stuck. As a clinical psychologist who cofounded the Harvard Writing Center, Bolker has helped hundreds of writers complete their dissertations. She offers suggestions on how to create a writing addiction so that you feel incomplete if you don't write every day and stresses the need to set reasonable goals and deadlines for yourself to keep from getting discouraged. She also offers strategies for dealing with both internal and external distractions and for fending off writer's block. Even more important is the advice on some of the more awkward issues related to dissertation writing, such as how to choose your adviser carefully. (For example, when faced with the tradeoff between a famous advisor who is inaccessible and a less famous advisor who is willing to make time for you, Bolker advises, "If choosing a politically advantageous, famous advisor makes it unlikely that you'll complete your degree, it's clearly not worth it.") The book even includes a helpful appendix for advisers that could become the basis for an honest discussion of what student and adviser can expect from each other. Throughout this excellent book, Bolker acts as a therapist, cheerleader, and drill sergeant, all rolled into one.

While some of the book's advice is of interest only to dissertation writers, much of the information--on battling writer's block, for instance--is valuable to anybody engaged in writing. Rather than being filled with rules defining how to become a great writer, Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day is about finding the process by which you can be the most productive--it's a set of exercises that you can use to find out more about you and the way you write. Along the way, you'll do a bit of writing. And that's what matters, especially when you experience writer's block--as Bolker says, "Write anything, because writing is writing." With its helpful advice and supportive tone, Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day should be required reading for anyone considering writing a dissertation. --C.B. Delaney.
Price: $7.33 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This strategic guide will give applicants the insider advice on everything from:

* Planning for graduate school during college--what courses to take and extracurricular activities to get involved in

* Researching the best graduate program for each applicant

* Preparing an outstanding application and excelling in the interview

* Personalized information for all applicants, including minorities, students with disabilities, older students, and international applicants

* Detailed advice on how applicants can finance their graduate degree without going too far into debt after graduation.
Price: $8.65 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $3.84 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Here is the first book a prospective doctoral candidate should read. Updated to reflect both modern technological advances and the realities of contemporary academia, it serves as an excellent overview of the dissertation process in most academic fields. Advice starts with selecting an advisor and a dissertation committee, then covers problems connected with selecting a dissertation topic, submitting the proposal, working with an advisor, and writing and defending the dissertation..
Price: $6.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This groundbreaking book explores the current state of doctoral education in the United States and offers a plan for increasing the effectiveness of doctoral education. Programs must grapple with questions of purpose. The authors examine practices and elements of doctoral programs and show how they can be made more powerful by relying on principles of progressive development, integration, and collaboration. They challenge the traditional apprenticeship model and offer an alternative in which students learn while apprenticing with several faculty members. The authors persuasively argue that creating intellectual community is essential for high-quality graduate education in every department. Knowledge-centered, multigenerational communities foster the development of new ideas and encourage intellectual risk taking..
Price: $29.61 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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Price: $23.15 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"Mastering your PhD" helps guide PhD students through their graduate student days. Filled with practical advice on getting started, communicating with your supervisor, staying the course, and planning for the future, this book is a handy guide for graduate students who need that extra bit of help getting started and making it through. Every year, thousands of students around the world embark on the long and difficult journey toward a PhD. Some of these students will make it through their program with flying colors. Others will experience difficulty getting to the end: some will sink and some will manage to swim – barely. The doctoral years can be daunting. While mainly directed to PhD students in the sciences, the book's scope is broad enough to encompass the obstacles and hurdles that almost all PhD students face at some point in their doctoral training. Who should read this book? Students of the physical and life sciences, computer science, math, and medicine thinking about entering a PhD program, doctoral students at the beginning of their research and any graduate student who is feeling frustrated and stuck. It’s never too early or too late!

"A must for any student in natural science who is doing or is considering doing a PhD. Also, I strongly recommend PhD supervisors to read this book – they will learn a lot."

Henrik Stapelfeldt, Professor of Chemistry, Arhus Denmark

"At last, a book about graduate study that paints the big picture and that recognizes PhD work as a real job involving many of the same relationship and business issues that will be important to students throughout their careers. Outstanding!"

Lou Bloomfield, Professor of Physics, University of Virginia, USA

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Price: $26.37 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The development of students as “stewards of the discipline” should be the purpose of doctoral education.  A steward is a scholar in the fullest sense of the term—someone who can imaginatively generate new knowledge, critically conserve valuable and useful ideas, and responsibly transform those understandings through writing, teaching, and application. Stewardship also has an ethical and moral dimension; it is a role that transcends a collection of accomplishments and skills. A steward is someone to whom the vigor, quality, and integrity of the field can be entrusted. The most important period of a steward’s formation occurs during formal doctoral education.

  Envisioning the Future of Doctoral Education is a collection of essays commissioned for the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate. The question posed to the essayists in this volume was, “If you could start de novo, what would be the best way to structure doctoral education in your field to prepare stewards of the discipline?” The authors of the essays are respected thinkers, researchers, and scholars who are experienced with and thoughtful about doctoral education.

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Price: $38.66 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Following the growing commitment to assessment at the undergraduate level, doctoral programs are now grappling with what accountability means for them.

This book provides a foundation for faculty and academic leaders of doctoral programs to promote inquiry into the educational practices that define their programs and contribute to graduate students' learning. It presents an array of examples of new program- and student-level assessment practices. The ideas and practices described here expand program review to include evidence of student learning--that is, students' demonstration of their knowledge, abilities, habits of mind, ways of knowing, ways of problem solving, and dispositions--through direct and indirect assessment methods that verify or challenge the efficacy of educational practices.

The book encourages faculty and academic leaders to reconsider the process and to formulate new questions about the efficacy of educational practices and traditions, such as the dissertation, that have historically led to the conferring of the doctorate. It will prompt constructive discussion of desired student learning outcomes, and of the kinds of assessment methods that provide evidence of what and how students learn within the context of educational practices.

Stressing the importance of listening and responding to graduate students as they progress through their studies or reflect on the relevance of their studies after graduation, the book also suggests new strategies to orient and support doctoral students in their educational journeys..
Price: $24.61 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A long-term bestseller, this book is a pragmatic step-by-step guide to completing you dissertation or thesis during two semesters, in fifty workdays or less. It covers advisor and topic selection, proposal development, data collection and organization, available assistance, writing, and defense. The author demystifies the process and provides you with essential guidance through the rites of passage that are an integral part of completing your degree..
Price: $14.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]