I’m a junior in college earning a B.S. in Resource Conservation with a concentration in Environmental Policy & Resources Planning with minors in Business Administration and Media Arts and a certificate in Sustainable Business Strategy.
I would like to go to grad school at Ohio State once I am done with my undergraduate degree but I’m not sure what to study. I’m interested in the environment and design and would like put my science, art, and business education to good use. I would also like to join the military, specifically the Navy, after my graduate studies and after the military I would like to go into either environmental consulting, vineyard management, or some kind of design field or even into animation.
Ohio State allows you to earn a dual master’s in Landscape Architecture and City & Regional Planning which sounds good because I could earn two degrees at once, however, Environmental Engineering sounds good too because it would help better for the military and the pay would be better. Both would allow me to use my science and design education. Any thoughts?
Graduate school - especially a professional MS program - is a means to an end. You get the graduate degree that you need to do the work that you want to do. For example, if you want to be a landscape architect, you get an MS in landscape architecture; if you want to be a city planner, you get an MS in urban planning. You pick the career first, and then the master’s degree. That way you are more sure that you are not wasting your time and money getting a degree you later realize you don’t need. For example, you don’t want to borrow $50,000 to get an MS in city planning only to realize what you really want to do is be an animator, and you should’ve gotten an MFA (or whatever). You may not even need a master’s to do what you want to do, or you may find your employer will pay for it.
So decide what you want to do first, and then pick your graduate degree. If you need to take some time working after undergrad before you decide what you want to do, do that first!
It’s also not necessarily the best plan to pick the university first and then the degree. You usually go the other way around - pick the degree first, and then pick the school based on the reputation of the program/degree at that particular school.
More degrees isn’t necessarily better…a joint degree program is inevitably going to take more time than a single-degree program, which means it will cost more money (plus the opportunity cost of lost income in however long it takes you to double up). That’s not a problem if you need both degrees to do what you want to do, or one degree will significantly enhance your job prospects or ability to do your job. But you don’t need to get two degrees just for the sake of two, because they look interesting. If you want to be a city planner, a city & regional planning MS on its own is probably just fine.
Also, you probably don’t have the prerequisites for an environmental engineering MS. Here’s what Ohio State says about their civil, environmental and geodetic engineering master’s:
Unless you are taking significant engineering, physics, and math coursework as electives you likely won’t have the coursework they are looking for.
Thanks for your input. I’ve looked into all three degrees and figured I wouldn’t have the prerequisites for the engineering master’s which is why I also included the landscape architecture and the city planning degree. I just realized that these would probably be the best degrees for me because they combine science and design which is something that I always wanted in a degree.
As to why I chose Ohio State, well the Knowlton School of Architecture is one of the best programs for architecture in the United States and it helps that I am an Ohio State fan.
The reasoning for the dual master’s, well I’m pretty sure I’m going to join the military. I talked to a Navy recruiter and he said that the dual master’s would qualify me for the Civil Engineer Corps, but I’m going to get a second confirmation on that, and once I put in my 20 years I will have all of my schooling paid off so I figured why not get two degrees if the military is going to pay for it. If I’m not able to join the military, then I’ll owe quite a bit of money but I’m not too worried because I’ll be able to use my skills in a multitude of fields whether that is in architecture, city planning, conservation, or even business or animation.