<p>I was talking to a recent graduate at my university about graduate school and she mentioned that working or taking a year, or several years, off is a detriment when applying to doctorate programs (getting fellowships, assistantships etc.). The reason being is that professors want students who want to be there and, if they truly want to be there then they would immediately make the jump from undergrad to graduate school. As she puts it: those who do work after undergraduate are less likely to attend school again for an advance degree. Admissions wants students who are hot off the presses, fresh and able, to do graduate work. As a graduate school interviewer for her master's program, she also said that numbers drive funding. The more top candidates accepted, the more funding the school receives. </p>
<p>I am disheartened since I do want to apply to graduate school, but not immediately after undergrad. I want to work and maybe do Peace Corps after I graduate. Since she does have experience in graduate admissions I'm not sure how heavy I should take her warning. Anyone have any advice or a different perspective and/or experiences that's a rebuttal?</p>
<p>Most people would say exactly the opposite. Many people take time off to work, get more experience, or just take a break to avoid getting burned out too soon.</p>
<p>Some of the best advice I got my senior year of college was: Go to graduate school when you are excited about going to classes again. I will have worked for two years between graduate school and college. The work is closely related to my potential Masters degree. I doubt that will hurt my application- I suspect strongly that it will help!</p>
<p>Most people take at least a year off before beginning graduate school, although more than two or three can make the transition back difficult.</p>
<p>Nikara’s advice is excellent: you shouldn’t go until you are excited about going. For some, that’s right out of undergraduate but for others, it takes years, even decades.</p>
<p>It was substantially easier for me to get into graduate school after I had worked for a few years. I wouldn’t have been a very good candidate right out of college and probably would have been a worse graduate student for it. Have a great time in the peace corps.</p>
<p>That’s not true at all. I was the only one in one of my cohorts to come straight from undergraduate to a doctoral program, and in the other one, I was one of very few. Taking time off is now the norm and not the exception. It often happens conversely for a lot of students - after working for 2-3 years in the corporate world they not only KNOW that graduate work and academia is what they want to do; they also have a more focused idea of the research area that they want to get into AND how it operates in the “real world” outside of the ivory tower. Often undergraduates go on to doctoral programs because they don’t know what to do next, and they tend to be a little less focused than those who have taken time off.</p>
<p>In some fields it’s very difficult to get admissions if you don’t have significant work experience - like public health (my first field), despite being a research degree, is mostly applied work. So everyone else in my cohort had at least 3 years of work experience and most had 5+.</p>
<p>Besides, as Nikara said - and speaking from experience, as someone who did not take time off - it’s very easy to get burned out when you drive straight through. Sure, you get done at an earlier age, but at some point you get really tired of taking classes and writing papers. If you want to take the time off, graduate school will always be here.</p>
<p>In many fields (including my own, public health) Peace Corps experience would be a very valuable asset to an applicant. I would completely ignore her and go do Peace Corps or work after you graduate.</p>
<p>The answer depends on the field involved. Work experience is the norm for business schools. Science research fields are different- work experience with only a BS is unlikely to make you a better researcher and gives you more time to forget a lot. If you want to work and join the Peace Corps, do it. Instead of researching grad programs you aren’t interested in at this point spend your time researching jobs, and doing those applications. The GRE is good for 5 years so do go ahead and take it while you are at your academic strongest, a hurdle out of the way later. Discuss your intended field with your advisor/professors- find out what the norm and range of experiences is for their grad students.</p>
<p>OT: The fact that she didn’t know the name of the university that plays/played a prominent role in developing our respective field was in same city she did her masters in made me questioned her. </p>
<p>It seems I’ll be following my original plan to apply to the Peace Corps and search for jobs if that doesn’t work out.</p>
<p>“work experience with only a BS is unlikely to make you a better researcher and gives you more time to forget a lot.”</p>
<p>This just isn’t true. Working as a lab tech does in fact make you a better researcher as you gain practice with different techniques, read papers, publish, present your work etc. I forgot some of what was irrelevant to research while working as a tech, but it was more than compensated by all the new information that I learned while working.</p>
<p>LQTM, I’ve been involved in PhD admissions for two highly ranked humanities programs, and got my own PhD in a third. It was actually rare for people to come straight to grad school at any of these universities. One of the programs was skeptical about people coming back after more than a decade, but that isn’t true at all in my current department; we have PhD students in their 40s and 50s. Certainly nobody would bat an eye at a candidate who’d only taken a couple of years off, especially if they’d done something obviously valuable like the Peace Corps.</p>
<p>People who get PhDs in my field mostly hope to go on to academic careers. That’s where it gets dicey for people who’ve taken a lot of time off. It often takes several years for a new PhD in the humanities to get a full-time, continuing-contract job somewhere. You have to be willing to move anywhere, and often multiple times in successive years or even semesters. It’s generally easier for people to make these sacrifices when they’re in their late 20s/early 30s than later in life. Women who succeed in getting tenure-track jobs at research-intensive universities often find that the job requires them to be putting in ridiculous hours just as they reach the end of their biological fertility. People who are reluctant to make these sacrifices just have to leave the field. I imagine things are different in a less overcrowded, less competitive field.</p>
<p>I went straight to grad school and had a PhD by the time I was 25. The advantage to the “quick route” was that it made combining career and family life easier down the line.</p>
<p>You can get the advantages of both delaying AND not delaying by taking a few years off now, and then–if you plan to get a PhD–being efficient in how you use your time in the later part of the program, after you take your comprehensive exams. A PhD dissertation can take anywhere from 1-2 years to a decade or more to write, depending upon how driven and well-organized you are.</p>