Is Using Schaum's Outlines for Graduate Study a Good Idea?

[Beer-monster]

Hi

I've recently been accepted to grad school in Physics, after some time away from the class room, and have been looking at the sort of questions I'll be asked for the qualifying comprehensive exam.

I'm starting to panic a little.

Obviously, I'm going to hit the books hard in a number of subjects. I was thinking of buying a number of Schaum outlines in various subjects (Mechanics, Langrangian mechanics, Thermodynamics, etc), since they're substantially less expensive than a lot of textbooks, and using them to supplement library books.

Is this a bad idea? Are Schaum's too low a level for this sort exam.

Thanks.

 

[naele]

For classical mechanics, get the schaum's outline of Lagrangian dynamics and the outline of Theoretical mechanics (if it's still in print), for E&M the Schaum's outline is OK but it's very much at the undergraduate level, you can also get the 2000 solved problems in electromagnetics that's decent too also undergraduate level. The QM book is great, and closer to graduate level than undergraduate. Otherwise, if you have a bit more money to spend, for CM and EM there's the qualifying exam questions series that was put out by a bunch of chinese authors, the editor is Yung-Kuo Lim. Here's a link to their classical mechanics book https://www.amazon.com/dp/9810212984/?tag=pfamazon01-20. They have books for CM, EM, QM, Thermo with some stat mech, and some others, but they're a bit pricey of course.

Other options could be to look up qualifying exam problems and their solutions from various schools (including your own) and work them out. A lot of schools make them available so their students can practice.

 

[ThrashAbaddon]

and this https://www.amazon.com/dp/8183552153/?tag=pfamazon01-20
this book i use and it kicks *** everywhere you go :D