<p>I think there’s a misunderstanding in my original post in what is considered a fresh college graduate. For instance, a 23-year-old and a 30-year-old applying to the same program will have different life experiences and expectations. Some programs don’t have an age preference, but that does not deny that some programs prefer younger applicants.</p>
<p>My daughter was in the same position as you, plus was doing BSM study abroad and remotely working on a long term group research project with deadlines, all while applying for grad school and fellowships. I think it was insane. She certainly didn’t put forth the best application she could. Still, she got PhD track acceptances and funding. Would she have got more options if she delayed a year? Don’t know. I only know that she had a single minded focus to get there. Otherwise, the backup plan (and maybe it was a better plan for the long term, who knows?) was to go one more year as part of the 5 year MS program at her school.</p>
<p>So, assess the strength of your package. You don’t realy have to study for the general GRE, just do some practice and assessment tests so you are used to the timing. People always reccommend that you do the GRE before you are out of school, cause you actually get rusty, so you need to do that anyway.</p>
<p>Brownparent, interesting post…I remember being in undergrad and having profs put pressure on many students to go into grad school right away. I wasn’t really sure why. Perhaps they have better control of where the students go and can target certain schools for certain students with letters of recommendation…this may be especially true for smaller schools. I don’t know though.</p>
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<p>Not my experience at all…are you talking about the general GRE. I actually did much better after being out of school for years than when I took the thing while in undergrad. Perhaps, I had more time to study for it when out of school…I took a few weeks to study while collecting unemployment and sending a few resumes out.</p>
<p>yes jack63, I am talking about the general GRE. I do think most advice is to take it while you are fresh in student mode. Especially your verbal will be at its peak. I know some people say they ‘study’ for it, but I haven’t personally met anyone who has. My daughter just reviewed some practice tests the week or two before for timing. I guess I don’t recommend this to anyone who doesn’t feel confident, she is just a good test taker and doesn’t put too much weight into it. </p>
<p>My understanding is that the math one is really easy (for anyone with good HS math skills) and the verbal is harder for most people overall. So if you are an English major with no skill in math or any college math, the math is going to be hard for you, just cause you don’t know basics. But your grad program may not care about your math score. If you are a math/sci major and you don’t score above 750, you might be in trouble cause it is only 10th grade math, even if you haven’t done that for awhile. Even 750 in math is only around 85 percentile. But if you don’t have good english skills, you are competing with millions of English majors, but your 650 will still be like 93 percentile, so you win, except your engineering school doesn’t care what you scored on the verbal that much.</p>
<p>The subject one may be different and you may do better by reviewing for that.</p>
<p>I wish I could remember how many of my daughter’s classmates from her department were going into grad school. I can’t recall the percentage, just that many more went to industry right off and some took temporary research lab jobs before applying to grad school. I just can’t imagine someone being pressured or prodded into grad schools since you have to be so self motivated. I’d just be surprised at that except if the profs found promising students and knew that they needed the advanced degree to get anywhere in the field? I certainly wouldn’t think it was about LOR.</p>
<p>Emotionally, I think it is easier for many people to take a year or more off before grad school. They work, mature, get a clearer sense of why they want to go to continue their education and what they want to focus on, etc.</p>
<p>In my experience, in admitting students to two different top-flight humanities PhD programs, nobody cared if you had taken a few years off. One of my schools, however, was much more welcoming of people coming back in their late 30s/40s/50s.</p>
<p>The only downside I see to delaying grad school is for women who plan to get PhDs and proceed to academic careers (esp. in the humanities, though the sciences are affected too, less acutely.) If they enter grad school at, say 25 and spend 5-6-7 years as a grad student, they are in their early thirties when they are getting their first job. Then they either have to move around as postdocs/visiting faculty, or, if they are lucky enough to get a tenure-track job right off the bat, they have to work their tails off in the lab or the library and the classroom for the following 6-7 years. Their lives are unsettled and financially strained for a long time, years that neatly overlap with women’s period of fertility. I never thought about this at all when I was young, but realize now how lucky I was to finish a PhD at 25, which allowed me to be stably employed in the same part of the country as my husband by my early 30s. In fields where jobs are more plentiful or where it’s more common for people to take time off from work and then jump back in, the problem wouldn’t be so acute, and obviously it wouldn’t bother women who don’t plan to reproduce. But I see it plaguing a lot of women at the tenure-evaluation stage, at which point many have published too little, waited too late to have kids, trashed their personal lives, settled for a less ambitious career or sacrificed their original career goals altogether.</p>
<p>So in short, if you’re female, you might want to take off one or two years, but not more.</p>
<p>Jingle, thanks for being so honest about the issues facing women in academia. Many female university presidents have pressed for tenure reforms that don’t penalize women who want families, and they have made a slight difference. Many universities now allow parents (both male and female) to delay their tenure decisions by a year if they have a child. </p>
<p>Although I don’t know how they do it, some women choose to have their first child while in graduate school because they figure it will only get more difficult as they begin their post-doc and tenure-track careers.</p>
<p>I went straight from undergrad to grad school and I actually recommend the year off (or 2 or 3 or whatever). Going straight from school to school has its benefits, but you can feel burned out pretty quickly. In addition, working for a few years may give you some focus as far as research topics go and dissertation ideas; that may be the time you take to 1) really decide whether you actually, 100% need and want to go to graduate school, and 2) if you do go, what it is you want to do there and what you want to get out of it. A lot of people say “If I take time off, I might not go!” Well, that may end up being the best thing for you, honestly. You may discover that you’d rather work or work in another field in which you don’t need an advanced degree.</p>
<p>At the very least, you can save some money! And you’ll need the saved money.</p>
<p>I’m the only one in my public health cohort who went straight through - I was 22 when I entered graduate school. The next youngest person was 25, and the ages ranged all the way up to 34. I’m also one of the few in my psychology cohort who went straight through.</p>
<p>I’ll also chime with psych_'s observation that psychology doesn’t necessarily prefer students straight out of undergrad. I thought that was the case, too, but then I got here - I’m in an interdisciplinary program and I’m definitely in the minority of students who didn’t take time off in my psych cohort, as I mentioned. Most of us did - some people took two years off to be a research assistant and some people got a master’s degree first.</p>
<p>I’ll also chime with jingle’s observation that family concerns are a factor, but it really depends on your program. One of the reasons I did go to grad school straight after is that I should be around 27 or 28 when I finish, which leaves me still pretty young re: having a family. However, my program is pretty family-friendly - we have quite a few graduate students who have children (male and female). They take a little longer to finish but they get great encouragement and support from their mentors. One older woman in my cohort just had her first child in the summer between our first and second year.</p>
<p>Frankly, I think that while much of the advise you’re receiving is supportive of your desire to take some time off, your reasons for wanting to do so don’t resonate. And without knowing your major or what you plan to do with the year gap, it’s impossible to provide you the wisdom you’re looking for. That you’re taking “upper level science courses” suggests that your graduate ambitions are not in business. If they were then some number of years of experience is invaluable. But if your graduate ambitions are technical, the gap is likely to be problematic. Moving from undergraduate science/math/technology to graduate level courses works best without gaps.</p>
<p>My major is Biological Science and I want to go to graduate school either Fall 2011 or later. I have been thinking since my GPA is only a 3.5 and I would like to get into my favorite PhD programs that taking the time off to concentrate on the GRE as well as getting some work experience by perhaps being a tech working in a lab or working in industry or something?</p>
<p>Taking time off seems like a really great idea so I can mature as a scientist and be certain that this career path is ideal, however I am also a women and I do want to start a family and starting grad school later would probably delay that in some way so that also worries me.</p>
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<p>It depends on how you define “gaps.” Research experience is highly valued (pretty much above all else) in the sciences, and so a year of full-time, high-quality research will trump another less experienced applicant every time.</p>
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<p>That’s a solid GPA, although how it is viewed depends in part on what university you attend. GPA and GRE are the least important factors in admissions. Low stats will cut you out of the pool, but high stats won’t get you in. If you feel that you can cultivate better contacts (for LORs) and improve your research experience, then your application will be much stronger. If, on the other hand, you just want to study for the GREs, then that time might be wasted. Most promising students can get a relatively high GRE score with just a few weeks of review and practice. </p>
<p>Don’t focus on a 3.5 as weak. It’s not. It’s good enough to get consideration at some of the best programs, provided that it is accompanied by excellent letters and research experience.</p>
<p>I agree with MOMwfnews, a year doing something in your field helps to define goals. I think the year of working in a lab, getting to know his profs, relaxing from 4 hard years of studying, was enormously beneficial to my son. Towards the end of grad school, one classmate became pregnant, but she began grad school a little older and already married.</p>
<p>I tries to convince my D to apply to UPenn’s 1 year Masters program available to undergrads who apply in their junior year, citing the tuition savings. She didn’t want to spend any more time in school and decided to get a job after graduation (2007). This spring she applied to 7 grad schools and was accepted to all of them, including UPenn. She declined UPenn’s offer because she felt too many of the accepted students were straight out of undergrad. After working 3 years in her field, she wanted a program where the class would have working experience and she accepted MIT’s offer of full tuition.</p>
<p>She’s glad she waited and so am I.</p>
<p>I contemplated balancing research, coursework, extracurriculars, the GREs and applications and didn’t try. My senior year was stressful enough as it were and I’m so glad I didn’t try to do anything on top of it. The following year, I had plenty of time for the grad school applications, and additionally was able to work on fellowship applications. I’m under the impression that money is harder to come in biology programs so putting time into a fellowship application may be very important (or if you are paying for it yourself, putting time into earning money wouldn’t be the worst idea ever).</p>
<p>I spent the first 6 months after I graduated doing research which I’m sure didn’t hurt. Then I turned all the applications in early December and have been traveling and enjoying myself ever since! I highly recommend taking some REAL time off before starting grad school.</p>
<p>A year off can be very useful if it gives you a new experience or something compelling to talk about in your interviews. I took (and am currently finishing) a year off after undergrad before medical school, and I found my interviewers were very interested in why I took a year off to work and how I thought that helped me refine my goals and strengthen my initial purpose. I don’t see how it could be a bad decision as long as it’s your choice.</p>
<p>Also, taking a year or two off can be very beneficial IF you can find work in your field because it will help you decide what you really want to do with your life. Suppose you work for a while and decide you don’t like it? Then you can try something else without having spent years in graduate school in the wrong field. </p>
<p>A friend of mine is ABD (all but dissertation) because she got all the way up there through the program and then decided she didn’t like the field! Real-world experience goes a long way.</p>
<p>My question is, if you’re out of undergrad a year or two or three, how do you get recommendations from professors? Who would remember you? Do you instead get recs from your bosses?</p>
<p>If your professors would have remembered you and been able to write you good letters had you applied straight out of undergrad, they will still remember you and be able to write good letters on your behalf when you apply 2 or 3 years later.</p>
<p>One helpful thing to do is to provide some supporting documents (CV, summary of research under that professor, etc.) as if you were applying straightaway. Your professors will file these away and always be able to draw on them in the future.</p>
<p>what about the technology fields such as computer science, computer engineering. electrical eng., software eng., etc… do they prefer fresh graduates or they prefer some one with good experience? can you share me your experience?</p>
<p>thank you.</p>
<p>They don’t “prefer” either. The best candidates get accepted and time since graduation is a non-factor.</p>
<p>suppose some one got a computer engineering degree some 8 years ago. he has got full 8 years of work experience at an unrelated area. what can be said about the degree?? is it obsolete or it is still a valuable degree?? can he apply for masters in comp. eng. directly??</p>
<p>thanks.</p>
<p>Hmm, probably.</p>
<p>Thanks for this thread guys! I was unsure about taking some time off and rushing off to grad school. I got in, but would have to pay (at first) in maths. Going in august, a month, seems way too soon for someone as unsure about what he wants to do (I do want to learn more math though . . .). And, this thread made me fairly confident of the decision to hold off on it for a bit ^_^</p>