Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student's Guide to Earning an M.A. or a Ph.D.

Chock full of useful advice, though the title's a bit misleading: this book would be much more useful to someone first setting out to look at graduate schools, not someone who is already there. I also had to stop reading at the blanket statement that teaching too much in graduate school is bad for you and your career because you might be "branded as a teacher" (rather than a researcher). The book may have been intended for a larger audience, but I think it would be most useful for someone who is planning to get a PhD in the sciences in preparation for a primarily research-based career.

Helpful, but I wouldn't call it indispensable. Definitely slanted more towards students pursuing graduate work in the sciences; as a humanities student, I felt like a lot of the book didn't apply to me (about getting into labs, etc). Also, quite dated. Recommends that you get a computer with a modem and at least 1 gb in memory, for example, and doesn't even touch upon the myriad of online sources available today. Perhaps if a revised edition came out in the next few years, I would give that a better review, but this one definitely shows its age.

An interesting read at primarily academia-tracked grad school. Also very much in the early stages of the internet.
I enjoyed the book, although it showed a very different track to the one I took prior to and during graduate school. I don't intend to go on for a PhD and I'm not certain whether or not this book has been updated, but I would recommend this to people on the academic grad school track

indispensable. must read before applying to grad school. Totally sensible and well informed.

“This is an excellent book. I don’t know how Robert Peters was able to assemble all this highly relevant and valuable information after only one pass through the system known as graduate school, but he has produced a definitive piece of work.” – Dr. Gene Woodruff, Dean of the Graduate School, University of Washington, Seattle, President of the Association of Graduate Schools, Chairman of the GRE Board

suggestions on managing a course of graduate study