Where should I go for graduate school?

[kthx]

Yeah just to let you know Squeezer at the risk of sounding like a troll. My wife's sister has been going to college for about.. seven years now and she majored in "womens studies" and after she graduated nobody wanted to hire her because her degree was useless so now she is in post graduate school basically teaching classes for free at a university about womens studies. I mean I know that the degree you have isn't as worthless as that one but you might want to consider branching out some and getting a companionship degree that will help you find a job when you decide it is time to grow up and move on with your life. Start doing some sort of blogging about an activity you like so you can use it as sampled writing for a newspaper or website you want to write for. Or work towards some sort of advertising or marketing degree so that you have something to fall back on in case you get bored doing whatever it is you are going to do. Don't put all your eggs in one basket because in a rare occurrence I am going to agree with genocidal that eventually you are going to want to get married, have kids, which means buying a house, which means having (especially right now) really good credit and not have a lot of debt in your name. Considering you have already put this many years into college I am just assuming that you are between... 24-26ish, just think how long it is going to take to pay off your loans, so unless you don't plan on owning your own house until you are 35 you might want to consider getting a degree that will actually make you some money or start doing things that can land you a job in the near future.

[Galleleo]

Go to OSU! Let's get drunk together! :turned:

Also don't listen to Paradise, the little "artsy district" he's talking about is south of campus, not north. And saying that there isn't academic competition at OSU is bullshit.

You mean the Short North? That place is pretty ace and the Italian place I had dinner at was good. For the rest I would say I prefer Cinci as a city on the whole.

Also, to answer the thread title, outside of the US.

[Scurvy]

I'll be getting a BFA this winter, which is essentially a useless degree in today's market (#6, i think, on the top 10 worst degrees to have in 2010). After which, I'm going to work a dead end job for a year, paint as many naked women as I possibly can, and then move to Italy while my gf pursues a masters in art restoration. Hopefully by then Playboy will have picked me up as a cartoonist and I can email them raunchy sketches from my brand new macbook as I travel the world.

But, as far as your future is concerned, you certainly want to consider UofM over OSU...i mean, come on.

[Ayano]

lol english .. I'd recommend getting a steady job then asking them to help pay for your graduate school; unless you intend to be a professor.

[Soup du Jour]

Have you considered UBC? I know you said you wanted to get out of the Northwest but it's in another country so it will be a change, I promise. To add to that, we have some the cheapest and best marijuana in North America (could be wrong about 'best' since I don't smoke) and it's close to your family.

Since I am going to grad school for Chemistry, I don't think I had the same considerations about grad school that you will but the top two things that are transferable are location (who wants to live in craptown USA for five years?) and supervisor. For the supervisor, you want to firstly be able to get a job from him once you are finished and almost as importantly, you want to get along with him.

Water is boiling! maybe more later

[Pandagirl!]

But, as far as your future is concerned, you certainly want to consider UofM over OSU...i mean, come on.

Maybe if you're a fan of shitty football teams and shitty weather.

[Scurvy]

Maybe if you're a fan of shitty football teams and shitty weather.

Which are the two criteria that anybody looking to get a masters should be concerned with. Thanks for proving my point.

[D1st0rt]

Maybe if you're a fan of shitty football teams and shitty weather.

Wait, which one are you referring to?

[genocidal]

Maybe if you're a fan of shitty football teams and shitty weather.

Well if you can't be a Gator at least you're GATOR-BAIT.

[Fit of Rage]

I'm about a year out from finishing grad school myself, so I can offer a little advice. I'm gonna kind of echo what Gen said. Before making a PhD kind of commitment (read: expensive) you should have a strong idea of what you want to do, like 95% confidence or better.

I kind of rushed into grad school in order to try and make a relationship work (this was the WRONG reason). In the end I'm graduating with a master's in aerospace engineering and my job opportunities will be pretty good. I've been under pressure lately from my bosses to decide if I want to pursue a PhD or not. Right now I'm leaning towards no, because I can probably do pretty well for myself financially with a master's, I don't have any immediate interests to become a professor, nor do I have any vested interest in being Dr. Fit of Rage. I may still wind up going back to school to get my PhD in the long run depending on where my research interests take me (I work in rocket science, forreal).

For you, I think it's a wise decision to try a master's level program first before committing full time to a PhD. If you want to be a prof, that's great for you. If at some point you decide you'd rather get into the journalism side of things, a master's will do well for you to either get a good salary (compared to a BA) or allow you to get a more desirable position (while arguing for a reasonable amount of money). A variety of schools will do what you want in terms of journalism. I can't really make recommendations there as my background is engineering. What I can tell you is that state colleges or universities are the way to go. Unless you're dead set on having a private Purdue/MIT/Columbia kind of name behind your degree, the price point for the amount of time/effort that you'll put in for a master's will not quickly pay itself off.

Don't take your debt lightly, either. In the end you should have a strong enough job to pay it off quickly (within a couple years if possible), so amassing double your debt by picking an expensive grad school only complicates your problem. Nawmsayin, hoss?

[404 Not Found]

Land a job somwhere that will pay or contribute to your further education.

The one thing I have noticed over many years and many friends that have continued attending college, is that once they get that Masters degree, they better have some job experience. Reason being is that you now have made yourself a candidate to be on a higher pay scale noting the education credentials than those with just a BA. You also place yourself in a position of being over qualified for many job positions with no actual work experience.

Lots of people looking for work out there that will create this pay scale problem.

[Galleleo]

404, does the job market really work that different from the European (or at least Dutch) one? I mean in the netherlands it's pretty normal to get your masters right after you've done your bachelors and in my field (Business) you'll usually just end up in a traineeship program, so there's not really any issue with you being in a higher pay grade because you have a masters degree.In fact, having too much work experience is detrimental to your chances because organizations want to shape you according to their beliefs and if you have too much prior experience you'll already have been shaped by other companies and are thus less interesting.

[404 Not Found]

404, does the job market really work that different from the European (or at least Dutch) one? I mean in the netherlands it's pretty normal to get your masters right after you've done your bachelors and in my field (Business) you'll usually just end up in a traineeship program, so there's not really any issue with you being in a higher pay grade because you have a masters degree.In fact, having too much work experience is detrimental to your chances because organizations want to shape you according to their beliefs and if you have too much prior experience you'll already have been shaped by other companies and are thus less interesting.

Depends on what you are looking for in the workforce as well as what you had studied. Personally I would rather have someone with an experience background in the field they apply for from a work standpoint, over some green kid just graduating with a Masters and no work experience other than what they read in a text book. Many colleges offer work-study programs while you are in school, such as Temple & Cincinnati, and many other schools we have dealt with in regards to Architecture and Engineering. An individual coming out with that experience in the field of study rather than in a classroom with a textbook is a big plus for manufacturing/engineering/architectural firms.

When we hire, we always pass over the people that are over qualified due to education w/o work experience. We will pay them to go back to school while working for us if they have a Bachelors degree in the field of study we look for.

This is not Europe and not the Netherlands...on that topic, you are correct.

[paradise!]

Go to OSU! Let's get drunk together! :turned:

Also don't listen to Paradise, the little "artsy district" he's talking about is south of campus, not north. And saying that there isn't academic competition at OSU is bullshit.

Youre right, he should disregard what I said because i put north instead of south. great logic

also: what competition do you speak of? athletic competition, we're loaded. academic, we are probably the least competitive Big Ten school but you maybe wouldn't think so. Take a look at UW, Northwestern, UI-Urbana, Michigan, and from what I've heard even Minnesota ha.

i have friends at Case who are getting absolutely shitted on in the calc series, and i've heard their Analysis courses are just 'fuckin forget about em' classes. None of the real applicable topics are being taught in depth like they are over there. I've done so much plug and chug in my classes, and once anything conceptual gets on the test, the prof has a line-up of people waitin to bitch and moan.

Naturally, I'm talking as far as the classes I've taken though: physics series, chem series, calc series, and the rest.

Maybe if you're a fan of shitty football teams and shitty weather.

shitty football team, shitty basketball team, but pretty decent weather actually, the summers I spent in Bloomington were actually nice.

[Ilya]

she's an actuarial, economics double major. this has been discussed at length on this forum. please pay attention