Gap a semester? Or go prepare application in limited time?

Graduate School
1

Hello grad school gurus,

It’s Umika again. I’ve received some precious advice last time, and I truly appreciate your help.

Life gives me challenges everyday. Just when I thought i finally figured out when and where I wanted to go for grad school, new problems came.

I’m a senior in journalism and I’m supposed to graduate in May 2016, which means I should apply to grad school that starts Fall 2016. This makes deadlines for most grad schools in mainly December and January.

But I ’m spending my 1st semester of senior year in France (August-December), where I can’t take any journalism classes but only French. This gives me little time to know professors and have experiences in journalism industry, I could only think of two professors out of 3 I know who might be willing to write me recommendation letters.

Also due to Freshman year’s chemistry classes, I’m still recovering from bad GPA by doing well in journalism classes. I have a GPA of 3.3 or 3.4 now, but i definitely hope to improve my GPAs by doing more journalism classes once i return from France (December) when obviously most schools could’ve closed their applications by then.

So I’ve actually been thinking about staying in school for one more semester, having more time to boost my GPA, knowing more professors and having more time to prepare for GRE tests. This means I’ll graduate in December 2016 instead of May 2016. So I’ll have to apply for Spring admissions in grad school.

The problem is: I have 4 dream schools now, Northwestern, USC, Georgetown and University of Missouri, but two of these schools only have fall admissions, and the other two allow spring admissions also. I REALLY like Northwestern and I desperately hope i could go to Northwestern, so now I’m lost because i don’t know if I should:

Option 1: apply for Fall 2016 while I’m in France, rush the application, ask professors remotely

Option 2: apply for Spring 2017, give up Northwestern and USC

Option 3: wait for two semesters, and apply for Fall 2017 (b/c most prestigious schools only allow fall admissions), so that I could apply to all 4 schools that I like (but I’ll have Spring 2017 completely open in which i have no school, do a full-time internship during this time)

Which option would you recommend?

Sincerely thank you,

Umika

2

Option 3.5: Don’t do an extra semester in school. Graduate in May 2016, and find a full-time job or internship to work and make some money while you apply to graduate school.

An extra semester in undergrad is not going to raise your GPA by that much. And it doesn’t make sense to rush into spring admissions if you have to rule out two of your top choices. So I think you should graduate on time and then work for at least one year before applying to journalism school. Actually, more experience would help diminish the impact of your GPA, but if you really want to go faster, plan for Fall 2017. It’ll also be easier to get an internship for a full year than for just ~6 months.

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Thank you @juillet ! I think your advice is very helpful and better, I’ll graduate on time and find a full-time job and then apply for Fall 2017. Thank you!