<p>i've just graduated from environmental engineering and i have both a job and grad school offer. The job is in a related field and will pay around $50000. </p>
<p>I have a national scholarship that will pay $33000 in my pocket as I'm also qualified for a tuition waiver. This for a 2 year thesis based masters.</p>
<p>Should i </p>
<p>a) work for a few years and then go back to school
b) go to grad school in the fall</p>
<p>note: if i work for a few years there is no guarantee i'd get the scholarship again as its super competitive.</p>
<p>You are leaving out the most important part… Do you at some point want a graduate degree (or do your career goals lead you to getting one)? If the answer is yes, you probably ought to do it now.</p>
<p>Even IF you decide to attend grad school using your employer’s tuition reimbursement plan, you may limited to:</p>
<p>1) You job workload at that time
2) When your employer feels that the “finances” are good for grad school use
3) How much your employer gives per calendar or academic year</p>
<p>Unless you are hard up for that extra $17,000…I would take grad school now.</p>
<p>i’m kind of sick of school. The job is in the same speciality that i’d study in grad school but i’m not entirely sure i like that area yet. I took a course in it and it was fine but would it be a good idea to gain experience?</p>
<p>Can you defer your admission to graduate school for a year? If so, you can experience the working world while still having the graduate school option open to you. This would give you some time to figure out what you want to do.</p>
<p>the reason why i got such a good offer is that i studied from 10:00am until 10:30pm on weekdays including classes and 12:00pm-7:00pm on saturdays and 12:00pm - 10:30pm on Sundays. I’d hang out with friends while working on assignments and on saturday nights so i guess it wasn’t too bad…but not very good either. </p>
<p>My life now is pretty good, i work in a lab during the day and can have fun in the evenings. Its much more fun than i would have in grad school. It’d be fun to continue having a day job like this. </p>
<p>Regarding deferring my grad school admission, I don’t think i’ll have too much trouble getting back in but its not possible to defer the scholarship and since its very competitive there are no guarantees for next year.</p>
<p>I’d recommend taking the job and seeing if you like the field enough to get a masters.</p>
<p>You may decide to go a different direction, such as law school or even a slightly different focus within the field, like public policy. You sound eager to try the job. Following your own gut is usually the way to go.</p>
<p>I forgot to mention that I’m in Canada and we have very high income taxes. So of the $50000, around 30% of it will go to tax meaning that working the job would actually pay me around $35000 compared to grad school with $33000 of nontaxable income. </p>
<p>"I don’t know about that. I have a great time in grad school! "</p>
<p>is it the research that is more interesting or that you get to have more free time?</p>
<p>More like I enjoy the subjects I learn, so I don’t mind spending time on them. Additionally, I really enjoy my research. I spend less time purely on classes than I did in undergrad and I absolutely love working in the lab.</p>
<p>Could you attend college without the scholarship?</p>
<p>That question was the choice that DS had when he had the option that you have-essentially fullride MS (he did his MS (Toronto) in a year, fall term to following Christmas).</p>
<p>I’d take the job. If you go to school, there will be a lot of graduates that you will be competing against in 2 years.</p>
<p>That is a really bad line of logic. That is true of every year and everyone who graduates. If he wants to do a graduate degree at some point in time, it is better to do it now than put it off.</p>
<p>Perhaps LongPrime meant that with the economy not recovering that more and more fresh graduates are being dumped into the market and subsequently not getting jobs, meaning the chances of getting a job 2 years from now are lower than getting one now. Of course, if you feel you can get a job in 2 years no problem, then there is no reason to delay graduate school.</p>
<p>I’d take the job. Get some experience under your belt and you will have better chances of getting a promotion/going back to grad school. Plus you got teh monies flowing in, whats not to love about that?</p>
<p>BH
You can take what ever meaning that you want. </p>
<p>OP.
At the time of my son’s graduation, he could’ve had any job that he wanted (ME, CS). He could’ve paid for grad school out of pocket, but was able to secure a funded program. Two years later (2008-09) with a MS, great internships, publications, conferences, job fairs, and LOR’s, he couldn’t find a job. - He also doesn’t know anymore today with the MS degree than if he didn’t pursue the degree. its just that he could go to grad school without regard to funds. </p>
<p>That sounds to me like he was merely a victim of the economy. Had he come out and went straight into the workforce in 2006-07 like he could have, he would have been entering a very favorable job market. 2008-09, as I am sure you are aware, is one of the worst economic times in recent history. Clearly, that had little to do with him choosing grad school over work and more to do with just plain, dumb luck. It is unfortunate, but true.</p>
<p>In the case of the OP here, the economy really has nowhere to go but up. If he goes to a reputable program with connections to industry at all (most engineering programs DO have connections to some industry, even the “bad” ones), then he ought to be fine. Add to that the fact that he is getting nearly as much to go to grad school as he would be at his job, and it seems like a pretty easy decision to me. Having a higher degree and graduating into a job market that couldn’t really be any worse than it is now while still getting paid nearly as much for his grad school compared to the potential job sounds like a win-win-win situation to me.</p>
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<p>No offense, but that sounds to me like he just didn’t have a good advisor in grad school. You have to take multiple extra classes and get (usually hands-on) research experience. If your son didn’t know anything more after that, then either he was already a genius that knew everything before he did his MS, or he had an advisor that didn’t give him the kind of opportunities that he should have had. Given that no one knows everything, I would tend to believe his advisor left something to be desired. There is no way anyone should come out of an MS program without learning anything. At most places, you wouldn’t come close to passing your defense if that was the case.</p>
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<p>Absolutely! There has never been an instance of a student who worked for my advisor having a hard time finding a job afterwards, and most have them lined up before they graduate. One of my good friends who has only a 3.0 GPA during his MS already has a job at Northrop lined up as a flight test engineer just because our advisor’s reputation is good and no one would be awarded an MS by him if they weren’t qualified. This guy doesn’t even graduate until at least December. Of course, I could always get slapped in the face by old man economics, but even throughout the recession, my advisor has graduated students and gotten them into jobs with relative ease.</p>
<p>Honestly, your son sounds like the exception, not the rule. All signs, to me, point to the fact that the OP should take the grad school option unless they just don’t want to do grad school and don’t think they ever will. Otherwise, it is better to get it out of the way now, and with all the other factors (pay, economy, more qualified afterward) pointing to grad school, I would think that unless the OP just doesn’t want to do grad school, then there is no reason not to do it now.</p>