If you are thinking of going to graduate school (either for Master's or PhD) I recommend this book highly (it was recommended to me by a friend who had it recommended to him by a friend, and so it goes):

_Getting What You Came For: The Smart Student's Guide to Earning a Master's or Ph.D._, by Robert L. Peters, Ph.D.

If you are thinking of getting your Ph.D. to become an academic (especially in the social sciences or humanities), this is also an excellent book to read prior to embarking:

_We Scholars: Changing the Culture of the University_, by David Damrosch, Professor of English and Comp. Lit at Columbia University in NYC.


Here's a stat from the former book:

"A study by Ramiro Valdez at a northeastern school of social welfare found that, on a standardized scale where 100 equaled the amount of stress experienced by someone whose spouse had just died, doctoral students in their first year scored an average of 313 points."