The Best Advice on Graduate Schools is from those who Left

I work with a number of junior staff who are already thinking about graduate school.  Many are fresh off their B.A.s, most have great jobs that they will later regret leaving, but at 23 they all recognize that at some point in the next few years the will be going back to school.  I thank my lucky stars that I am done with my education and can ensconse myself deeper and deeper into my awesome job on a daily basis.  My co workers don't realize how good we have it, but I do and I am not leaving.

Even though I quit my graduate program, I understand and even endorse them furthering their education because I recognize that my M.A. will secure me a higher salary and provided me with important skills.  But I do have some advice that I wish someone had told me before I applied to schools.

1) Don't just research schools and departments--research the discipline you think you want to go into.  Think you like urban planning?  Look up some course syllabai online and look at what they cover.  Most importantly, pull some journal articles from the major journals of the field and READ THE ARTICLES.  Had I done this, I never would have applied to my program because I would have realized what I only learned later:  that in addition to seeming to speak in tongues, the scholars in my discipline held epistemological and ontological orientations that I did not share.  Instead, I realized in my first semester of graduate school that I had made a huge mistake, but still suffered through four years of conferences,  colloquiums, courses and publications that made me want to scratch my eyes out.

2) Realize that you will pay with either loans or your soul.  If you don't want to pay for graduate school and go into debt, get accepted to a top Ph.D. program that will pay you through a research assistantship or a teaching assistanship.  You will live in poverty, but you will not graduate in debt unless you chose to live in an expensive city.  You will however have a program that is intense, works you to the bone, and likely focuses exclusively on theory, grinding out publications, and becoming a professor.  This is fine if these are your interests and goals, but if like me you envision an applied future, you will pay with your soul.

Or, you can find a fun and interesting terminal M.A. program and actually have fun in graduate school.  You will have debt, and you need to be careful that your program will actually lead to a job and give you the skills you need to do that job.  While a Ph. D. is designed to train you as a professor, most terminal M.A.'s are designed to make $$$$$$ for the University.  The aren't always very rigorous, and the may be expensive overblown post undergraduate experiences that don't actually lead anywhere but student loan land.  And graduating with high debt loads does impact what kinds of jobs you take when you graduate. You may have fun doing your M.A., but it is not so fun having to go work in some miserable but decent paying job for five years in order to get out of that debt.

3) Recognize that where you go to school geographically is likely where your best job prospects will be located.  Especially if your degree program provides internship experience, the community you attend school in is likely to be the place you have the most references, introductions, and networking opportunities.  If you go to law school in Chicago, you will likely work in a law school in Chicago for your internships.  Your professors will have contacts with, you guessed it, Chicago law firms. Now with law many large firms have offices throughout the country.  This is not so common when your professional degree is in museum studies, or Chinese antiquities.  Likewise if you want to do a professional degree in an area with distinct geographic centers, like public policy, you should probably attend a school with a campus in your State Capitol or D.C. You need to go to where the jobs are, and that may mean going to school in the city you want to end up in.

4)  Go to the best program in your field that you can get into.  The reality is that success is in large part who you know and what resources you have access to, not your merits.  It sucks, but the sooner you learn this about life the better.  Going to Harvard helps you not just because you are surrounded by smart people, but because smart people know that being around other competitive smart people pays off.  Who your network of professors are, who can write you letters or recommendation, or refer you to employers matters.  Some of the kids in your classes can be dumber than your friend at another school, but the friendships and connections they forge with their classmates will be more valuable to them than the content of their classes. Everything is about who you know, and you should know that the best and brightest are likely to be attracted to the best programs.

5) Get work exerience.  In your field.  That let's you know what kind of work you want to do.  You really should be able to make the argument in your applications that you love and work in SUBJECT X, and want to do XYZ with it, but realize that to take your career to the next level you NEED to get the training and expertise that a degree in ABC gives you.  Or in the case of a Ph.D. your work and applied experience in SUBJECT X has led you to a point you want to study it.  You need this experience to make sure you know that the investment in your education is worth it, but it is also the secret key to getting into the best programs. You need a narrative about you and your path in life, and in order for it to be convincing you need to show you have taken the first few steps and are already well down the path.    You also need it so that when you have your degree you are not that simultaneously overeducated underqualified person who cannot get hired.

6) You need to work your ass off.  Even if you want to be a professor and crawl into the nearest ivory tower and never come out again, you better keep a foot in the types of organizations you want to study or potentially have as a back up career.  Tenure track positions these days require applying for  securing grant funding, and service, and community involvement.  The connections you maintain to the outside world will either be your life line if things don't work out, or what sets you apart as a junior faculty fighting for the limited pool of funding and jobs.

7) Understand the term opportunity cost.  Even if your grad school is paid for, if it is not moving you forward in life it is keeping you from doing other things. Delaying those other things (relationships, kids, contributing to retirement, being happy ) can set you back in life.  So be 85% sure this is the path for you, and make sure you have thought about where you want your life to be five years from now.

We all know what they say about advice: everyone loves to give it but no one wants to take it.   But hind sight is also 20/20, and for what it is worth this is what I wish someone would have told me.