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com 1
Think like a graduate www.placementor.com 2
Many view
This program
http://www.placementor.com
(A division of Globarena)
2000-2003
Think like a graduate www.placementor.com 4
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 5
How to read this book ............................................................................... 8
A2Z OF GRAD-SCHOOL ............................................................................... 11
WHAT IS SO EXCITING ABOUT GRAD SCHOOL? ..........................................................12
WHY SHOULD YOU GO TO GRAD SCHOOL IN THE US? ..................................................15
WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING FOR? ..........................................................................17
WHY DOES GRAD SCHOOL HAVE DIFFERENT EXPECTATIONS ...........................................19
LIFE SKILLS FOR GRAD SCHOOL................................................................. 23
QUALITIES THAT HELP YOU MEET EXPECTATIONS ...............ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.
Envision your future....................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
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Anti-Motivators........................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
Persevere ..................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
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A primer on Time management..................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
Advantages of Planning ............................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
A workshop on SWOT Analysis ...................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
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SHARPEN YOUR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE ....................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.
THE FOREIGN ZONE.......................................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.
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More on being polite and positive..................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
TAKE THESE HOME ........................................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.
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USE THEM NOW ....................................................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.
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Introduction
You just took the first step toward a great Grad School.
If you followed the instructions in the “Read-me-first.txt” this must be the first book
that you have opened in the comprehensive package.
Think like a graduate www.placementor.com 6
There is a good reason to ask you to make this the first book you read. This short
unique book will help kindle excitement and passion in you about joining Grad
school.
If there is one quality that will ensure your admission in Grad School, it is passion.
It will show in
So, the advice is straight and simple. From now onward, for the next year or two,
just think, sleep, eat and dream “Grad School”.
Let me repeat what I said in “Read-me-first.txt”: This is the most important book
that you can lay hands on at this point as it gives you everything you need to get
excited about Grad School
You will acquire several crucial emotional and intellectual skills that you need from
now until you leave Grad School. By then you will anyway have internalized these
skills!
Think like a graduate www.placementor.com 8
Different people have different styles of working that suit them. However, try to
follow these general guidelines.
During the first reading, don’t try to practice the concepts or study the material
seriously.
But don’t skim over it too fast either. Read it seriously enough that you get the big
picture. Right after you complete the first reading, read the “application strategies”
book.
The first reading of both should not take any more than three to four hours.
All the Placementor programs are designed for a delightful online read. However, if
you feel like it, take a printoutAnd settle down in an easy chair and read. (The
Digilox security enables you to take 2 prints.)
The books will give you the right perspective. Both books also have so much of
useful information in them that you will find yourself constantly coming back to them
to refer and learn.
Just read the exercises and activities. Their purpose is to drill all the concepts that
are covered. Don’t do them in the first reading.
Give yourself a gap of at least two to three weeks between the first reading and
serious studying. The “read-me-first” gives a couple of options on how you could fill
these two or three weeks.
For the second reading, give yourself at least a complete week of attentive
reading time (approximately 3 hours a day and 6 days a week).
You need two notebooks along with this workbook, or, if you are working on a
system, two Word documents.
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More important, do all the activities and exercises with all seriousness and
concentration.
You may not find similar activities in the GRE exam, but don’t underestimate the
importance of these exercises. They help you do well in many aspects of securing
admission.
The second book is even more important than the first one.
By the time you complete the current e-book, you will have filled the GSM with really
valuable information. The information is going to be so powerful that it will build your
application package by itself.
If you choose the hard copy option, keep the book extremely neat. In fact, type it
out and save it on a computer if you have access to one. Keep a backup.
This will be an invaluable resource that you will be building for yourself.
Think like a graduate www.placementor.com 10
A few portions of this guide are taken from the ‘Gradmentor’ program of
Placementor.
http://gradmentor.placementor.com/
Henrik Tikkanen
Human beings tend to get really enthusiastic and excited about only five things.
These may have different levels of influence on different people. Most people may
have been inspired by more than one of these causes.
They are
• Service,
• Intellectual challenge,
• Love
If you are an average Joe, it helps you acquire three of the five (financial, intellectual
and ability to serve) in a positive and almost guaranteed way!
Well, many were blissfully engaged in the pursuit of the fifth activity too during
Grad School.
In today’s parlance, with your Grad School degree, you will become a thought
leader in your field.
A Grad School degree is a must or will be of great help if you are interested in
• Teaching
The degree helps you rise fast in your career. It gives you the confidence to tackle
substantial problems in your field and solve them independently or form teams that
can solve them methodically.
Most important, it connects you to people who are motivated, intellectual, sincere,
and passionate, and share the same academic interests as yours.
While in college, you may have been fortunate to attend lectures by one or more
exceptional professors.
But in Grad School, you get to rub shoulders with them. You work with them closely
and that, let us assure you, is the experience that you will cherish lifelong. You can
learn more by watching these people at work than spending hours and hours in
libraries.
If you are an average or above average, passionate student, Grad School teaches
you, trains you, and inspires you.
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No matter who you are, grad school can help you do better in life and that is a good
enough reason to give it a try.
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• More important, US graduate schools follow perhaps the most fair and
rational procedures to identify candidates for graduate studies and hence
virtually anyone interested in joining has a fair chance
The US offers greater choices in higher education than other countries in terms of
number of schools, variety of programs, and cultural diversity of the classroom.
To put it simply,
Any graduate department has certain expectations of its prospective students like
you.
They want to know how much you can learn while you are with them, how much you
can contribute in return intellectually, and how worthwhile it is going to be for them
to associate with you.
These objectives sort of define almost everything the school evaluates you for.
• Your ability to take any point and analyze and investigate it scientifically
using the proven methods of logic, deduction, and intuition;
• Your ability to present the ideas in a logical and coherent fashion to the
academic and scientific community;
Your potential for fulfilling these expectations is what they evaluate you for. In other
words,
“I was a college student for four years. So, I did study serious stuff at a high degree
of complexity. Then why should grad school be difficult for me?”
To understand this, you must first know the difference between graduate or higher
education and ‘non-higher education’.
If you went to a good college, you probably know the difference, as good universities
consider college education also as higher education.
But even in the best colleges, the graduate classes are generally much more serious
and adhere to certain stringent standards as compared to the undergraduate classes.
What you must understand are the philosophical differences between the higher and
non-higher education, which are very effectively included in graduate educational
programs.
For that purpose, let us define “higher education” and “non-higher education” from
what they expect from you.
Most questions that come to your mind up to a certain level of education have
already been answered by scientists and savants of previous generations. That
education where you learned these answers by questioning is ‘non-higher education’.
If you already possess these qualities, congratulations!,. You will find them handy
even in graduate school.
At this point you will be ready to question and tackle the unexplored using methods
of reasoning, logic, and experimentation that you have learned till now.
• Well conversant with nature, society, and industry (to identify the
sources of questions);
• Logical (to present it in a manner that helps the future generations); and
Read this again and again until you fully understand. Graduate studies are not
merely an extension of your high school or in most cases, your college.
You have to balance the qualities that you acquired for years as a
student with these new expectations.
The universities want to see how many of these qualities you have while they are
evaluating you.
Note
You will get the guidance from us. The fact that you
are at this point in this book shows that you are
planning to put in systematic work.
Graduate education is going to demand a lot more from you and shape you into a
much more competent person.
Let us now look at all the personality aspects that you need to know to start
preparing for graduate life. These are the skills that you require to convince the
department that you will be able to pursue high-end research.
We call them the skills required to think like a grad student. They help you
contribute to any discipline of study in a systematic way.
You will get the full “Think like a grad” 103 page ebook
along with the GradMentor product.