HELP, younger college grad...what to do next?

Parents Forum
1

<p>I tried posting some of these questions on the grad school message board, but there really isn’t much going on over there and I figured the parents here would have better advice anyway.</p>

<p>So, here’s the situation:</p>

<p>I am currently 18yo and will be graduating from a liberal arts university in a few months with a BA in both Literature and Writing. So, obviously I’d be a pretty young grad school applicant, but I’ve decided for sure that I will NOT be applying to any graduate schools for this coming fall (partly because I haven’t taken the GRE yet). I’ve been a very successful student thus far, have gotten good grades, been really involved in on-campus leadership and so on, and all of my professors think graduate school would be a great fit for me. The real question, then, is when to start in on the process. I can think of three options, but I don’t know which is best. </p>

<ol>
<li><p>Take a year off and work fulltime and then apply to graduate (MA) programs for the following year.</p></li>
<li><p>Take two years off, working for one year in the States and teaching English abroad for the second year before applying. </p></li>
<li><p>While working part time, start taking one or two graduate level classes per semester as a non-degree student at a local university and then apply to an MA program. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>I think any of these options could work, but right now I’m leaning towards the last one, though it is the most expensive and wouldn’t actually be a real gap year since I’d still be taking classes. My other question is how that would work out logistically. Is it even possible? Would it help getting a little taste of what grad school is like before I jump in, or is it premature? On the other hand, will taking a real “gap” cause me to lose my momentum? </p>

<p>Any advice is greatly appreciated!</p>

2

<p>You are right that you aren’t ready for graduate school. It has nothing to do with your age. It has everything to do with the fact that you haven’t articulated a reason why you would go to graduate school other than you get good grades and your professors think it would be a good fit for you.</p>

<p>What do you want to get out of this? What do you want to do?</p>

<p>An MA in English Literature is next to useless as a credential. You should not be applying to MA programs in literature, ever, unless you and your advisors believe that you need to develop a better sense of your research interests and better recommendations to qualify for decent PhD programs. (Some of that may apply to you, some not.) And even then, an MA program is iffy, even if it is funded and you don’t have to pay a lot for it (which is the exception, not the rule). Getting a PhD in English – which shouldn’t cost you money out of pocket – is questionable enough as a proposition (lots of people will tell you it’s a complete waste of time with practically no permanent employment prospects, and they have a point), but there are at least some arguments for it, and it doesn’t make you spend money.</p>

<p>Are you talking about an MFA, a writing program? That can be almost next to next to useless, but it CAN have some value if you have clear goals going in. But if what you are doing is trying to be a writer, I would spend some time out in the real world working and writing before getting an MFA.</p>

<p>Are you trying to qualify to be a teacher (below the college level)? Then you should be looking at teaching programs, not literature programs.</p>

3

<p>I agree with JHS, you don’t sound ready for grad school. Take time off, get a job or travel and figure out what direction you want to go. One advantage of being young is you can take a little time now and still not end up “behind” your peers. I got a grant to travel around the US to photograph fire stations the year between college and grad school - best decision I ever made. I had experiences that year I’ll never have again. </p>

<p>Don’t worry about losing momentum. You won’t forget how to write.</p>

4

<p>Perhaps I didn’t express myself very well. I purposely decided not to disclose my exact reasons for wanting to go to graduate school because I am interested in a field that is highly specialized and would easily identify me. Let me try to explain a little better. I am interested in graduate school because I would like to teach at the undergraduate level someday and possibly do field research studying early medieval mansucripts in England or France. I know the market stinks for this kind of thing, but this is something I’ve always been really interested in all throughout undergrad. I want to get an MA first and then transfer somewhere else for a Ph.D, possibly somewhere in the UK. I know those programs are hard for international students to get into, especially straight out of undergrad.</p>

5

<p>Why would you get an MA one place and then transfer into a PhD? Most medieval programs are direct admit PhD. The only people I’ve heard of who got MAs in that field were the ones who left early either because they’d had a change of plans in their personal lives, or because the department didn’t think they could to a PhD and gave them an MA as a consolation prize.</p>

<p>For your field of study you will need a solid command of multiple foreign languages. If you don’t have German/French/Italian/fill-in-specific-language-you-need-here just yet, devoting a year or two to getting them up to snuff is a good idea.</p>

6

<p>I am seeing some of my children’s friends apply to MA programs because they aren’t adequately prepared for PhD programs. For example, they don’t have all the languages they need. This isn’t necessarily their fault. To be prepared in some of these fields the student would pretty much have to know freshman year what they intended to do in grad school, what was needed for a grad school application and also have decent advising. I am seeing this in comp lit, classics, and medieval studies. IMHO it is a rather expensive route to a PhD. And in some of the above fields I don’t think it is unusual for a significant number of PhD applicants to already have MA’s or else already have graduate level course work as undergrads. </p>

<p>OP: What is your professors’ recommendation for getting into the program you want? You can also make appointments to go visit programs in which you are interested, to talk with the faculty with whom you are interested in working, about what is needed.</p>

7

<p>See, you kind of waste people’s time (and tick people off) when you hide the ball on what you really want to know. On the other hand . . . it turns out your situation is so specific I can’t imagine what quality of advice you think you are going to get out of us.</p>

<p>If I understand correctly, you think you need to get a PhD from a British university (I assume there’s a short list), but you don’t think you can get admitted to the PhD programs there without first earning an MA. Is that right? It sounds like, in US terms, you would be a perfectly good candidate for a PhD program, but maybe not under British norms.</p>

<p>So there are really two agendas going on: What do you have to do to give yourself the best shot at the doctoral program(s) you want? And what should you do from the standpoint of personal growth and maturity on the way there?</p>

<p>On the first, you really have to talk to your academic mentors. I don’t know why you HAVE to get your PhD in the UK, and I have no idea how they do their admissions, or which MA programs would be useful in your field and which not. One option, which isn’t very nice but which people seem to do on a regular basis, would be to apply to US PhD programs, start one, and apply to switch to your target UK programs a couple of years later. Or you can pay for your MA, if you can afford it, in which case you can probably go any number of places, if they have terminal MA programs, including Oxbridge. This may make you look like a weaker candidate than you are, but ultimately the work you do will make or break you, not whether you got a terminal MA.</p>

<p>I have a sense that you probably should have been looking for fellowships, or Fullbrights, in England or France for next year, but the deadlines have probably passed. (My kid’s housemate got supported to live in Paris for a year for one afternoon/week of teaching English in a bainlieu – pretty sweet.) Failing that kind of academic half-measure, you are going to have to find something to do. Can you beg for a job, even an unpaid internship, at any medieval archive kind of place, so that you could stay in the world you love while you are marking time, and continue to buff your eventual PhD application? If you did that, you could waitress or retail-sales for subsistence money at the same time.</p>

8

<p>If they don’t have the languages they need the most efficient way to get that is to go to an immersion program in the country where the language is spoken, not by getting an MA. I don’t know anyone in a PhD program who started off getting an MA somewhere else, but I also don’t know any one getting a PhD in Europe who was an undergrad in the US.</p>

9

<p>Probably someone wanting to work with medieval manuscripts will need French, German, Italian and Latin, advanced literature and history courses, maybe some art history. They will be competing for a very few spots with a few students who knew exactly what they wanted to do from day one of undergrad and may have written a senior thesis, using paleographical skills already acquired, on a particular manuscript after spending their semester abroad doing research at the library where the manuscript is located. Sometimes they get nice fellowships to support this undergrad research.</p>

<p>Those that decide part way through college to become paleographers are going to be at a definite disadvantage. ymmv
I know quite a few people at present in PhD programs who got MA’s first. It does surprise me.</p>

<p>Besides MA programs, post bacs seem increasingly popular, imho

  • also an MA from one of those British Unis :)</p>

<p>If the goal is a degree from Oxford, there may be an easier route.</p>

10

<p>Where did anyone get the impression that the OP is inadequately prepared? The vibe I got was that she was one of those few students who knew exactly what she wanted on Day 1 (when she was 15), and I didn’t see anything to indicate that the OP was trying to fill in gaps in her education, as opposed to coping with the fact that she will be 18 with a BA and the programs she wants are oriented towards accepting people who are ten years older and have MAs. And also she really doesn’t want to be out of school but recognizes that she may have to be, and that it might not be completely a bad thing.</p>

11

<p>sorry just haven’t heard any young person discuss the MA option if they were ready (academically) for a PhD program, but know many who have put off their applications for a year to take time off to travel, etc, especially since it is such a time-consuming project for senior year.</p>

<p>I don’t think an MA makes sense economically if someone is competitive for a PhD program. It might make sense as a time filler if the student weren’t still going to be with a much older group- while in the MA program. The very young graduates I know went straight into their PhD programs. They never blinked. They got tenured at very young ages. Of course, my sample isn’t huge. maybe a dozen in 30 years.</p>

<p>and replying to mathmom because this new trend toward MA’s had been a surprise to me, too. I used to think direct admit PhD was the norm.</p>

12

<p>It does seem that spending a few years enhancing one’s language skills would be a valuable asset. It would be easy to take a few supplemental undergrad classes in Latin or German. If a master’s degree is needed to attend a phD program in Europe, one possibility would be to get a master’s in Linguistics (which would help in understanding the structures of multiple languages), finished off with a thesis on some aspect of Middle English.</p>

13

<p>“Early medieval manuscripts in England or France” almost certainly means Latin, not Middle English. Middle English manuscripts, especially of the type that would be considered “literature” (as opposed to “history”) don’t show up much until the late Middle Ages.</p>

14

<p>I think taking time off to either bone up on your language skills or mature personally is probably a good idea. Remember that a lot of people in your grad program will be much much older than you are, they will have a lot of real world experience and they will be using and sharing that with each other during the classes. You will get a lot more out of grad school and be able to give a lot more as well if you have had some more life experience first. </p>

<p>I think if you’d like to teach overseas, that’s a great idea. Why not do that for one year and then look into grad school, or do that for one year and then come back and work for a year (keep in mind that if you’re teaching abroad the second year instead of the first, it’s going to be really hard to get your application materials together so that you would be able to go to grad school in year 3. So I would recommend doing the abroad thing in year 1, the work thing in year 2, then school in year 3). </p>

<p>Or you could consider doing some kind of volunteer thing here in the US for a yeaer, and then going overseas. One obvious idea would be Americorps. That would get you out into the real world, mixing with all kinds of people, doing good service for your country, and probably be a real maturing experience. Afterwards, you could always go overseas. I’ve recommended this column by Nick Kristof before and I think you should check it out to get some ideas of places overseas that you could go and get paid (scroll to the bottom): <a href=“Opinion | Now Grandma Can ‘Win a Trip’ Too - The New York Times”>Opinion | Now Grandma Can ‘Win a Trip’ Too - The New York Times;

<p>As for doing some non-degree courses while working here. That seems like the worst option. It can be very expensive to take courses for credit as a non-degree student, and since most of those classes will meet during the day, it can be difficult to make them work around whatever job you might find.</p>

<p>Grad school will always be there. This is the time in your life when you’re young and you don’t have a lot of responsibilities. It’s a good time to really expand your horizons beyond the classroom.</p>

15

<p>I was trying to read her earlier posts, so I could offer advice. Unfortunately I wish I could have offered it a very long time ago. </p>

<p>She is finished her bachelors one year out of highschool if I understand correctly. That poses all kinds of challenges for graduate school (the least of which is her age per se). Graduate schools could not care less about ‘showing you used your gap year wisely’ (this is not an application to highschool). They also aren’t going to be impressed that you sent in projects and papers to conferences after graduation. And they really won’t be impressed by the short time in college. </p>

<p>What they WILL care about is that you had a chance to develop a mature understanding of your field and skill levels for your field based on long and deep immersion (understandably, you are just ‘leaning’ toward a field at this point). Moreover having not obtained four years of working on research with faculty (and faculty getting to know you over a much longer period, to guide you and write letters on your behalf), or to developing your particular skills (in this case another language you noted you were not yet fluent in but should be). </p>

<p>My advice? Take a low pay research asst job on campus for a few years (or do it as a volunteer while working for pay on something else), and then apply to graduate school IF after that experience you decide you want graduate school.</p>