Comments on: Grad School: To Go or No? http://studentbranding.com/grad-school-to-go-or-no/ The Student Branding Blog is the #1 resource for career and personal branding advice for high school, college and graduate students. This blog, with the support of experienced college career counselors and recent graduates, will help students capitalize on their own unique abilities. Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:44:21 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Kristina Allen http://studentbranding.com/grad-school-to-go-or-no/comment-page-1/#comment-73 Kristina Allen Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:55:34 +0000 http://studentbranding.com/?p=1106#comment-73 Great post! As both someone who obtained a position post-graduation, and also someone who started grad school the fall after graduating I completely agree with your post. I would also like to add that grad school has very different expectations and procedures, so it's a good idea to talk to professors and grad students about what grad school life is like. Perhaps it's different in an MBA program, but I'm in a communication MA program, and classes are structured completely different at the grad level than undergrad (even though I'm at the same school with the same professors). Generally classes are always three hours long at night, and require you to do intensive reading each week. You can no longer skip out on these readings as you might have done at the undergrad level because your professor is no longer a lecturer but a discussion leader. For the three hours a night that I'm in class, three days a week, I engage in three hour long discussions in which I am expected to participate the entire time. It will be quite noticeable if I don't because grad classes are typically small (5-10 people, maybe 15 in a large class). The director of my program said, "you go to undergrad to get a job, you come to grad school to ask questions that don't necessarily have answers yet... and then you try to answer them." Grad school is definitely not for everyone; you have to be passionate about what you want to study, and be willing to juggle the work world ALONG with the academic world. Great post! As both someone who obtained a position post-graduation, and also someone who started grad school the fall after graduating I completely agree with your post. I would also like to add that grad school has very different expectations and procedures, so it’s a good idea to talk to professors and grad students about what grad school life is like. Perhaps it’s different in an MBA program, but I’m in a communication MA program, and classes are structured completely different at the grad level than undergrad (even though I’m at the same school with the same professors).

Generally classes are always three hours long at night, and require you to do intensive reading each week. You can no longer skip out on these readings as you might have done at the undergrad level because your professor is no longer a lecturer but a discussion leader. For the three hours a night that I’m in class, three days a week, I engage in three hour long discussions in which I am expected to participate the entire time. It will be quite noticeable if I don’t because grad classes are typically small (5-10 people, maybe 15 in a large class).

The director of my program said, “you go to undergrad to get a job, you come to grad school to ask questions that don’t necessarily have answers yet… and then you try to answer them.”

Grad school is definitely not for everyone; you have to be passionate about what you want to study, and be willing to juggle the work world ALONG with the academic world.

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