| Graduate
school? Can't I just worry about college, first?
Yes. And no. These days, as the number of students
earning undergraduate degrees increases, a graduate
degree is becoming ever more important as a professional
calling card and career foundation. Especially for
students pursuing a broad-based liberal arts degree
(a Bachelor of Arts, typically), a capstone graduate
degree provides the specialization and skills necessary
to enter or advance through a higher-level career
track. For some careers, such as law, medicine,
or tenured teaching at the university level, a graduate
degree is a necessity. It is essential for careers
in technology and the sciences. For others, such
as those in the catchall field of business, a graduate
degree like the Masters in Business Administration
(MBA) may be helpful for future promotions, but
not necessary for hiring or success. Thinking about
college as a foundation for graduate school can
be more or less specific, but it behooves you to
consider your long-term educational and career goals
when choosing a |
 |
More
Links |
 |
|
| |
| |
|
college. Many students gain great satisfaction from
pursuing a particular interest in depth at the graduate
level.
Fundamentally, your college transcript will be
the most important part of your graduate school applications.
Just as colleges are most interested in your high school
transcript and what it can tell them about your particular
strengths and interests and your preparation for the program
offered at their institution, graduate schools are especially
interested in your college transcript and what it says
about your ability to take advantage of their higher level,
more specialized degree. Think about graduate school as
sitting at the top of an educational pyramid. In your
early school years you learned basic skills, such as reading,
writing, and arithmetic. In high school you advanced to
higher level analytic writing and speaking skills, and
added some significant content to your understanding of
history, literature, language, and mathematics. Yet you
still studied at a fairly broad level of focus. In college,
you often don't declare a major until the end of sophomore
year. By then you have fulfilled a fair number of a college's
distribution requirements (if they have any!) and are
beginning to tailor your curriculum to fill major requirements
in one or more areas. You are building content knowledge
in a few key areas, making your understanding deeper,
and not just broader. You are meanwhile continuing to
improve your writing, speaking, and analytic skills, and
are realizing the multi-faceted nature of most problems,
be they historical, political, literary, or scientific.
Graduate school is the culmination of your formal educational
preparation (independent lifelong learning goes on afterwards),
and will ask you to focus even more on special areas of
knowledge. You do this while simultaneously broadening
and deepening your understanding of the fields of knowledge
important in the discipline you are mastering. Thus, the
first year of law or business or medical school, and the
first few years of an academic Master's or Doctoral program,
will often demand that you take seminars or experience
exposure to a variety of fields. Later, you will specialize
further in cardiology, or international relations, or
tax law, or 19th century British literature, or virtually
any field of serious interest.
Very few people know as early as high school, or even
as early as senior year of college, where they will
eventually specialize for graduate school or a career.
Some may have developed notions about being strong in
science, or wanting to work in business, or hoping to
teach, or wishing to become a veterinary doctor. Often
these aspirations change or sharpen, as they should
if you are being exposed to challenges and opportunities
in your undergraduate education. Given that likelihood,
what should you plan to do in college, to be ready for
graduate school and a career, whatever shape that may
take? First, try to go to a college where you will fit
in, be happy, take a demanding academic program in your
potential areas of interest, and succeed. That means
you will earn a Grade Point Average (GPA) upwards of
3.5 (mostly B+, A-, and A grades), learn with talented
faculty, take advantage of internships, research opportunities,
and other chances to deepen your knowledge and explore
new fields, and develop your critical thinking, writing,
and personal communications skills. If you do that,
you will be prepared for almost any graduate program.
Second, you will want to enter a college with a good
record of graduate school placement. Most colleges publish
or make available their graduate school entrance record,
and many strong colleges send half or more of their
graduates to further education. Usually these figures
are provided for those five years out from graduation,
which is a more meaningful figure for than those entering
graduate school right after graduation. Many of the
more competitive graduate business schools, for example,
look for several years of work experience, or more,
after college. More and more students are also putting
off law or medical school to gain work experience, teach,
or serve their communities. If you are interested in
a specific field, then you should look at the graduate
placement record in that area, as well as counseling
for students headed in that direction. You might also
meet with faculty in that department, evaluate the number
of courses and students majoring in that department
each year, and see how many faculty are available to
you on a full-time basis. How are they about writing
recommendations? Is there a formal process for this?
Third, you will want to consider the cost of your
college program. If finances will be an issue for
you, and they are for most students, then you should
consider the cost of your undergraduate education
in the context of your overall education. What will
be your loan burden upon graduation? Will that impact
your choices for a graduate degree? Unless you obtain
a research or teaching assistantship in a doctoral
(Ph.D.) program, you are unlikely to get much in the
way of scholarships and grants for graduate school.
You are likely looking at additional, significant
loans to pay for business, law, or medical school,
for example. Sometimes, saving money at the undergraduate
level, by choosing a less expensive college, or a
college that requires you to take out fewer loans,
may help you conserve your resources for the graduate
level. You must make sure, however, that you are not
sacrificing too much academically by making such a
choice. Don't be penny-wise and pound-foolish by picking
a cheaper undergraduate college that will not help
you prepare for your chosen profession or which may
limit your options and opportunities.
Finally, as you choose your college environment, be
open to the myriad graduate fields available today,
and understand that you do not need to major in a specifically
related undergraduate field to be qualified for a specific
graduate program. Half of all graduate medical college
entrants today, for example, were not undergraduate
science majors. These philosophy, English, and psychology
majors fulfilled pre-med course requirements while pursuing
something else in which they were interested. Or, in
a lesson about it never being too late to switch fields
and open up new avenues, they may have joined the growing
ranks of students pursuing post-baccalaureate pre-medical
programs.But that's another story.
by Howard and Matthew Greene
|
