A Mathematician’s Survival Guide: Graduate School and Early Career Development by Steven G. Krantz (PDF)

Description

Graduate school marks the first step toward a career in mathematics for young mathematicians. During this period, they make important decisions which will affect the rest of their careers. Here now is a detailed guide to help students navigate graduate school and the years that follow.

In his inimitable and forthright style, Steven Krantz addresses the major issues of graduate school, including choosing a program, passing the qualifying exams, finding an advisor, writing a thesis, and getting that first job. As with his earlier guide, How to Teach Mathematics, he avoids generalities, giving clear advice on how to handle real situations. The book also contains a description of the basic elements of a mathematical education, as well as a glossary and appendices on the structure of a typical department and university and the standard academic ranks.

Steven G. Krantz is an accomplished mathematician and an award-winning author. He has published 130 research articles and 45 books. He has worked in many different types of mathematics departments, supervised both masters and doctoral students, and is currently the Chair of the Mathematics Department at Washington University in St. Louis.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Very valuable for the prospective student … definitely good advice … definitely recommend to every mathematics department to keep a copy of this book for their undergraduate and graduate students.” —- MAA Online

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This book is great. I bought it soon after graduating with a BA in Mathematics, right before beginning my Masters. While it is focused on PhD students, it is still applicable to MSc. students. It walks you through what to expect in grad school and beyond. It has very helpful advice for a lot of situations that come up and was a complete lifesaver for me. I would definitely recommend this to anyone going to grad school for math.

⭐”Survival Guide” might be a misnomer, because this is less a book of advice and more a description of what the next several years of your life will be like if you choose to pursue a Ph.D. in mathematics. For me, this made the book far more valuable than the “tricks and tips” type book I was expecting. I feel like I actually know what lies ahead for me in much greater detail now than I did with the Career Services basic synopsis. That I want to play with numbers for the rest of my life was never in doubt, but it’s good to have a less murky picture of the process now. Of course, I won’t fully know how accurate the book’s description is for a few years, so we’ll see.

⭐Many have written before me, closer to the day-to-day grind of graduate work. Being retired and holding a DSc in math, I enjoyed reading this book and was impressed with the depth of sound advice it offers to those students going on to higher learning or just having started. Highly recommend.

⭐You should read this if you want to be a graduate student in mathematics. Maybe some contents are outdated but still worth reading it. As a Ph.D. student in the math​ department, I have got lots of advice from this book.

⭐I gave this to my son who is a high school junior planning to major in mathematics in college. He thought it was great because it looks beyond just getting into college and taking a bunch of math classes. What does a math major do next? Do you have to teach? What do professors and TA’s really do? What does it take to get into grad school and is it worth it? I would recommend this book to anyone contemplating any type of career involving higher level mathematics.

⭐A resource which I will treasure and use on a consistent basis. Thank you for the exceptional service.

⭐I think this book is a great source of advice.

⭐Well, the author tells it like how it is in A Mathematician’s Survival Guide. I must say, there is a good deal of hubris in the book that is a big turnoff to me although it is not intended. It’s just that the whole deal about elitism is what bothers me the most.Although math professors have earned their stripes because of their intelligence and hard work to get to the point of where they are, I am really disappointed in them because college students nowadays shell out tens of thousand dollars only to get uncaring, dispassionate “teachers.” They are simply walking oral books that are played ad verbatim in classrooms. That’s why the passages in the book about how teaching is highly valued in the academia are a real laugh for me; never I in my life met any of Ph.D. mathematicians that resemble the model of it. Morris Kline’s Why the Professor Can’t Teach: Mathematics and the Dilemma of University Education paints a perfect picture of it. Above them all, who cares about their research?Nearly none of them presently holds any value, and only a half dozen in the world can only understand the specialization of varying mathematical areas. It’s the very definition of the ivory tower. Being widely published and being held at high esteem by fellow peers are all wonderful and marvelous, but let’s be real: who cares?The most important thing out of A Mathematician’s Survival Guide for me is that I really learned a lot about how the Ph.D. process works, and it has given me a very clear idea whether or not I want to pursue it. I want to say something else in this matter:It’s discouraging when schools place so much emphasis on high stakes testing of math content knowledge. So much information to cram, and absolute perfection is required in every step of the way within the most limited time as possible. Simple mistakes derail the whole solution and result in an immense loss of points, thus a significant lowered overall test grade. Mathematics is truly the survival of the perfectionist.I am the kind of a mathematician that actually enjoys learning math for the sake of it, and I wholeheartedly pursue it for fun. I am rather sick of mathematics being used as a measuring stick to determine one’s worthiness.All in all, A Mathematician’s Survival Guide gets the point across, and I’ll leave it at that.

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