I just stumbled upon a good article and wanted to share this with y’all. Hopefully,
this will help you guys to be more focus in pursuing Grad School.
Click this: http://www.businessinsider.com/there-are-only-2-types-of-people-who-go-to-graduate-school-2016-10
Life is good.
This is a great article! I really like the second-to-last bullet:
Is now the right time for me to go to grad school? Do I have enough work/life experience to make what I’ll learn valuable? (Recall that Conor lived abroad for a year and worked for over three years before realizing that law school would give him the skills he was lacking.)
I am a big proponent of taking a few years between college and graduate school. I didn’t and I wish I had - I doubt I would’ve pursued the same degree I did. You learn so much about yourself, what you actually like to do and how you actually like to work from working in the field. It helps shape your outlook on work and careers so much, and you may even discover that you don’t need or want grad school at all.
I think it’s also worth it to think of the ROI of grad school, especially professional school. Conor’s story is great and inspirational, but quite frankly, borrowing $185,000 for a salary of $50,000 a year is not a great investment or financial decision. There are lots of other ways to work with and help immigrants and people of color that don’t involve being an immigration lawyer or taking on that much debt. Plus, the real question is - will you be able to repay it? You don’t want to be drowning in debt for the first 10-20 years of your career; it makes it difficult to do things like start a family, buy a house, maybe invest in rental property or stock, etc.
I definitely feel like there’s often a pressure to jump straight into grad school, especially for high-achieving students. I was originally planning to go straight into my PhD, but I got a fellowship for a year abroad after undergrad and it completely changed what I wanted to do for my PhD. It’s definitely not worth rushing into it. That few years of difference in timing is not going to make nearly as big of a difference as making the right choice for yourself and your goals.
I like the idea of a gap year, but it seems unrealistic because I want to get a Ph.D. in math.
@halcyonheather - why does a gap year not seem realistic when you’re interested in a math PhD?
I would be glad to hear that it’s not true, but I’ve read that it would be harder to get recommendation letters and that the programs would question whether I was really capable, committed, etc. if I went a year without formally studying math or being involved in research. (I would want to be involved in math if possible, but I don’t know of any ways to do this outside of a university.)
I went right into my MA after finishing my BA and, even though I want to pursue the PhD, I very well may take a gap year or two.
A few of the PhD students in my program did that (they took some time off to teach, work in the “real world,” etc.), and I feel like they have a lot more to offer during class discussions. When we apply rhetorical theory concepts to the classroom, they have a much better understanding of how teaching works and have more experience from which to draw. I feel like the kid who has just been in school her whole life and doesn’t really know much about how things work outside the classroom. I mean, I’m teaching right now too, but it’s not the same as teaching a 5-5 load for years and grappling with all the demands and frustrations of admin. They really “get” how our field works while I can only read about it, really.
I don’t know anything about other majors but the Top MBA schools (sloan, Stanford, Booth, etc), they require you to have professional experiences like two or three years or longer after undergraduate. And it is better that you show a progressive career meaning if your entry level is doing analyst job and after three years, you are doing the same thing without any promotion to be Supervisor, Assistant Manager, etc aka not showing career movement in rank and file (track records) then most likely those top MBA schools will not admit you. However, there is also local MBA schools (profit oriented) that will take any students fresh undergraduates to join MBA as long they pay the bills.
Then again graduate schools in business are for career movement for anyone non business majors or business major into managerial position/competent manager like (CEO/CFO, GM, line management etc) especially if your undergraduate is not business and don’t know how to read/interpret financial statement nor taking any business classes (accounting, management, finance and banking, business law, marketing, etc). Then you need MBA to advance your career.
Anyhow, I believe that going to work after undergraduate is not waste of time and it is valuable as they can have a taste of real work (or real world too) and shape their world to be focus on their career before going to grad. school.
Neither of those is true, although the second one requires some work.
The first one is easy: It’s not harder, not if you made a good impression on the professors that you worked with in undergrad. For an example, I went back to my undergrad a few weeks ago to visit for a recruitment event for my company; I dropped in on one of my professors, who I only took two classes with (didn’t even do research with her). She immediately remembered me. If you work with professors closely in scholarship they will definitely remember you. What you do is after the time off, you reach out via email and let them know that you’re planning to apply for PhD programs, you’d like a letter of recommendation, and provide them with a resume, an update of what you’ve done since college and a draft of your personal statement.
The second one also isn’t true, if all you are taking is a year. You’d be applying in the early part of that year and would only have about 4-5 months between the time you graduate and the time you apply. You don’t even have to mention what you are doing then in the personal statement unless it’s relevant.
I’d say you’d really only have to significantly explain gaps of 3-4 years or longer, and even then all it takes is a little explanation. If you are involved in academic math in the intervening years in some way, no need to explain. If you are involved in a professional job that has ties to math, all you have to do is explain how that job is related to math and how it’s impelled you to further graduate study (“After serving as an actuary for four years, I’ve realized by using [math technique X] on a daily basis that I am really fascinated with [how math technique X intersects with theory Y] and I want to further the field by doing scholarship in that area.” Or whatever).
If your job in the intervening years has nothing to do with math or math scholarship, then you have a little harder job to explain why you are still committed and devoted to math scholarship. Professors will, indeed, wonder whether you taking time away has dampened your commitment or eroded some of your math research skills, and the longer that time is the more difficult it will become to explain it away. But we’re talking about long gaps of the 4+ years range; one or even two years isn’t going to make a huge difference.