Graduate School Application Survival Guide: Fill & Download for Free

Here are some helpful resources:1) Book: A PhD Is Not Enough!: A Guide to Survival in Science: Peter J. Feibelman: 9780465022229: Amazon.com: Books. I've only read the intro and skimmed some of the book, but it seems to have some widely applicable advice on how to enter, survive, and flourish in the world of science.2) Book: Philip Guo - Ph.D. Memoirs - The Ph.D. Grind. Written specifically within the CS context. A detailed, well-written, and impartial look at what CS research can really entail. Highly recommended!3) Blog: Career advice from Terence Tao. Written specifically for mathematics, but it generalizes to other fields too, perhaps more closely to CS than, say, experimental biology of psychology.4) I've also found Daniel Lemire's blog helpful.5) And Cal Newport's blog. He's got some good stuff lately from his reflections on what it takes to do masterful work in CS (see, e.g., Some Notes on Deep Working)6) The importance of stupidity in scientific research7) http://www.bhertz.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/The-transition-to-independent-research.lovitts.pdf8) This Quora thread: What qualities characterize a great PhD student? (and others on Quora).But Hadayat Seddiqi is right - do everything you can to get involved in research NOW. Books and blogs are no substitute for actual experience, and real-life connections. Don't be afraid of cold-emailing/calling researchers. Offer to work in a lab for free. If you can't land an research internship/fellowship before graduating, it might be a good idea to take a year off to intern (perhaps for no pay??) at a research lab before applying to graduate school.

When my wife and I were both in graduate school, we were extremely poor. We focused on buying the most nutrient-dense food we could find, no matter what the taste.What I’m going to tell you is what we did a half century ago. No doubt what YOU can purchase will differ. This isn’t intended as a guide for your shopping trips as much as a source of inspiration to get you thinking about your situation and what nutrient-dense foods are most available to you.Our breakfast comprised homemade yogurt (made with powdered milk—but powdered milk is much more expensive now, relative to liquid milk, so this isn’t as much an option as it used to be) to which we added wheat germ and brewer’s yeast. Yeast is a nearly perfect food, in that it contains nearly all (but not quite all) nutrients humans need. We flavored it with Kool-Aid powder (yuck!). The concoction was rather disgusting, but it provided the cheapest possible source of complete nutrition.For evening meals we subsisted on beans and brown rice, alternating with beans and cornbread. The beans, of course, started out as dried beans, which are much cheaper than canned beans. We bought brown rice in the largest bags we could find. For cornbread, we bought the largest bags of stone-ground, whole-grain corn meal we could find. The recipe also requires eggs and buttermilk. You can save a bit of money by making your own buttermilk, but we just bought it at the supermarket.Typical evening meals comprised salad (with homemade vinegar-and-oil salad dressing) plus beans and brown rice, or salad plus beans and cornbread.Another common main dish was something we called “Cambridge pizza” (because we were living in Cambridge, Massachusetts). In those days Velveeta cheese was significantly cheaper than real cheese (that’s not so much the case anymore). We would cover slices of whole-wheat bread with slices of Velveeta, which we would then cover with ketchup; on top of that we would add bits of chopped onion, garlic powder, dried oregano, dried basil, and red pepper flakes; then we would cook it in our toaster oven till the cheese melted. That’s actually a dish that I still make from time to time, because it turned out to be pretty tasty (I know, “sophisticated” people aren’t supposed to like Velveeta—but I could not care less).Always eat whole-grain rice or bread or pasta, even if you don’t like it as much as the usual fare. It’s much better for you, and for anyone on a starvation budget it just makes eminent sense.To make these ideas applicable in your situation, I suggest figuring out the most nutrient-dense foods that are available (and relatively inexpensive); and then figuring out ways to prepare them to make them palatable. It can require a bit of sleuthing on the internet, if you’re not already well aware of the nutritional content of foods and the nutritional needs of your bodies.One easy principle to follow: to the extent that it’s feasible, avoid all packaged/prepared foods (e.g., canned, boxed foods).They are by definition more expensive than foods in a more natural state. And almost always less healthful.A note about vegetables: They are absolutely necessary for a healthful diet, and also pretty expensive. It requires a greater investment of time—but when possible, buy them on sale (in the largest quantities that are feasible for your situation). We invested in a small chest freezer. We couldn’t afford it—but on the other hand, we ended up saving a lot of money by buying produce (or even meat) when it was drastically on sale and freezing it. You can freeze most veggies (except lettuce) and fruits. It requires an investment of time, but if you’re as poor as we were, you will be able to make time to do those things that save you a lot of money.Concerning meat: Unless you are vegetarian, you can benefit by purchasing cheap cuts of meat on sale and freezing them. Never eat a whole piece of meat! Use it only as a source of flavor. Add meat (including fowl—and please note that turkey is much more economical than chicken, if you have room to freeze leftovers) to rice or pasta or whatever in order to add flavor. A little bit of meat goes a very long way when you do that. And if you cook fowl, be sure always to simmer the bones or carcasses in order to make stock—then freeze the stock and use it to flavor future meals. Freeze chicken or turkey meat in containers to which you add homemade stock to cover the meat—that protects the meat from freezer burn or from drying out, and makes it last much longer in your freezer.If you can manage to buy a freezer (an investment I strongly recommend), make LARGE batches (two or three gallons) of highly nutritious dishes—e.g., chicken-vegetable soup, beef-vegetable soup, seafood gumbo. Freeze in one-quart containers (I use one-quart yogurt containers). Then enjoy an entire nutritious meal-in-a-bowl for many nights by simply microwaving one of the containers. That’s if there are two of you. If you’re single, use one-pint containers.If at all possible, start a garden! I began growing veggies in beds adjacent to our university housing that, I’m pretty sure, had yielded nothing but weeds for decades. It saved us a significant amount of money, required a minimimal amount of time, and provided pesticide-free produce nearly for free.Good luck!

Allison, Phil and Stephanie all have excellent tips. I'd like to add that before your child starts to apply to schools, you should be upfront with them about how much financial support you can offer them. This is especially important if you have other children you're planning to help put through school. Many parents have a fear about talking money with their kids. As young adults about to test the waters of independence, you're not doing them any favors by keeping them in the dark.Give them a realistic price range for how much you can offer them per year for school (total, and make it known that also accounts for living expenses). Explain that if the schools they have in mind are over that range that they'll have to go through the process of filling out the FAFSA once they get accepted and that there's a very real chance of them having to take out loans to cover the rest. Basically, don't let your child end up like the girl that graduated NYU with nearly $100,000 in debt... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/your-money/student-loans/29money.html?_r=1If you're looking for something to continually reference as your child goes through the application process, StudentAdvisor has a free Parents' Survival Guide that can come in handy: http://www.studentadvisor.com/guides/parents-survival-guide