Making a Good Impression in My Graduate Department

Add this to your list of priorities for graduate school: making a good impression on your professors. Why? As a graduate student you need to find someone on the faculty who will be willing to become your advisor or mentor. Moreover, jobs and academic fellowships often require references. Faculty are ideal sources of references. In addition, your professors’ perception of you could also influence your grades and ability to find a good advisor. Like it or not, perceptions matter.

Read the entire article,Making a Good Impression in My Graduate Department, 5 Rules

Do You Have What it Takes to Complete a PhD?

I recently attended the Ph.D. Candidacy reception at UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), where Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, III — president of the university — gave a speech on the characteristics of people who successfully achieve their Ph.D. Here are the characteristics he pinpointed, and my own comments about how they can help you succeed.

Read the entire article, Do You Have What it Takes to Complete a PhD?

Thesis and Dissertation Help: Tips, Tools and Resources

This issue of FinishLine was written for those of you who are struggling with completing your Master’s thesis or dissertation. Many advisors think that the struggle to complete your thesis or dissertation is based on your inability to write and or conduct research but at TA-DA we recognize that completing your degree is about much more.

Three of the most helpful resources by far for graduate students are TA-DA FinishLine, TA-DA! Online and the TA-DA! CD. These tools are designed to guide you step-by-step through the entire process of finishing your thesis or dissertation, and to help keep you motivated along the way. The tips and guidelines included will make the process much, much easier … including the writing phase. TA-DA! also provides tools to help you overcome procrastination, frustration and any other obstacles you may face. Most importantly, TA-DA! will show you how to organize and plan your time and actions so that you complete at least one task every day … and that’s what it will take to make sure you finally get finished. Our motto is “A Good Dissertation is a Done Dissertation.” Remember: it doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be done!

Read the entire article, Thesis and Dissertation Help:Tips, Tools and Resources, including the answers to some common questions posed by some readers of FinishLine.

Completing Your Thesis or Dissertation:

Pull Out Your Cape and Tights

I got the idea for this newsletter after listening to past Dissertation House participants describe how they were able to complete their dissertation. Most of them relayed almost heroic tales of what they had to go through in order to complete their degree. One told of sleeping in his office only two hours a day and living on freeze dried rations for sustenance. A female graduate remembered giving birth and having to get back on task only three weeks later, despite her desire to spend time bonding with her newborn. Yet another recalled being so anxious about her ongoing workload that she wasn’t ever able to get a full night’s rest.

When students in the Dissertation House heard these stories, many sat silently thinking, “I don’t think I can do that”. This newsletter is for all of you who have the same fear, or who are thinking you have to be “Superman” or “Superwoman” in order to finish your degree. Read more about Completing Your Thesis or Dissertation.

Make It Work for You: The Research Assistantship

The previous newsletter dealt with a number of ways to help you through graduate school more quickly. In my own opinion, how you support yourself financially also determines how quickly you finish your degree. One of the best options is a paid research assistantship.

To begin with, this position can help you complete your degree more quickly than with other funding options. According to the National Research Council (NRC), students with the shortest time-to-degree (TTD) generally received some type of funding assistance in the form of fellowships, traineeships or research assistantships. Those with teaching assistantships and other forms of funding – such as loans – generally took longer to complete their degree.

To read the entire article, Making Graduate School Work for You, The Research Assistantship, click here.

Make it Work for You: Another Perspective on Graduate School

Graduate school is typically viewed as a three-stage process, comprising:

1) Coursework;
2) Qualifying exams; and
3) Dissertation/thesis writing

Most grad students don't have any difficulty with the coursework, as they're well accustomed to taking classes and receiving a grade. After the coursework is done, however, many students falter in the unfamiliar territory of the next two stages, particularly when it comes to writing their dissertation or thesis. Students can take months and even years to complete these final stages.

In my opinion, the key to avoiding this pitfall is to view these three stages not as isolated segments but, rather, as tightly inter-woven processes that connect and complement one another. For example, before you even begin the first stage of taking courses, it is highly beneficial to have at least a general idea of what you would ultimately like to research for your thesis or dissertation. If you wait to make this decision, all of the work you complete in your coursework will be simply to fulfill university course requirements. But if you've already pinpointed a general subject area, you can use every single course as a vehicle to explore your interest and, consequently, contribute to your end-stage document.

For more about Making Graduate School Work for You, click here.

'I Need Answers!' ... The Quest of the Research Problem

What problem do you wish to solve? What questions do you hope to answer? What pertinent knowledge do you want to uncover? What do you aspire to prove?

These are among the questions you will need to answer before you can write a "problem statement" for a proposal or research paper ... and certainly before you can begin writing the paper itself.

When most graduate students begin their journey, they have only a general idea in mind for their topic, e.g., "women's poverty in Senegal." The far more difficult task is to specifically define what they wish to discover about "women's poverty in Senegal." The purpose of a research paper or thesis is to answer a research question (or questions). Read the entire article on research problems...