The process in other disciplines
Saw a link on applyingtograd today to this, a report on grad school and the grad school admissions process written by a computer science professor:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf
It's designed, naturally, for computer scientists and is applicable also to other scientists, mathematicians, and engineers, but seeing as I don't feel like grading papers, I read the whole thing anyway and found it fascinating. There's some general advice in here that applies to us English folk, too, but more than that, this was the best explanation I've seen of how graduate programs in the hard sciences work, which is something I knew far less about prior to reading this. Thought I'd pass it along for anyone else who wants to procrastinate....
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~harchol/gradschooltalk.pdf
It's designed, naturally, for computer scientists and is applicable also to other scientists, mathematicians, and engineers, but seeing as I don't feel like grading papers, I read the whole thing anyway and found it fascinating. There's some general advice in here that applies to us English folk, too, but more than that, this was the best explanation I've seen of how graduate programs in the hard sciences work, which is something I knew far less about prior to reading this. Thought I'd pass it along for anyone else who wants to procrastinate....