Deciding whether to go to grad school? Here are 3 tips.

[aum]

By the time I finished college, all my close friends were in grad school, thinking about grad school or applying to grad school. We were nerds who liked to read and write and do math — a motley collective of “conscientious and diligent” students. We loved school, we thought. Why not stay forever?

 

This week, I reflected on grad school decisions with several recent graduates, including some who did not go to grad school and others who did. Their insights (and mine) are below:

 

Don’t rush. Work first.

“Look, the PhD in virtually any field is a terrible economic investment,” says Robert Ziegler, a third-year philosophy PhD student at the University of Virginia. He argues that if people are going to enter grad school, “they really need to find the activity fulfilling. And that’s not something that can be easily ascertained from, like, ‘Did I enjoy my philosophy classes as an undergraduate?’ ”

 

Coming out of undergrad, my desire to go into academia came and went in waves. Working helped me discern my preferences. While wrestling with whether to enroll in a PhD program in economics, I spent a year as a research associate in my university’s economics department. Each day, I did the same tasks a graduate student would do: basic data analysis and data management, sourcing papers for literature reviews, proofreading, etc. I spent much of my workday around graduate students and professors, talking with them about their jobs and imagining myself as one of them.

 

In this role, I built skills and a professional network that helped me access better programs in my field. It also helped me understand what jobs existed, so grad school didn’t feel like “the only option.” In the end, I gained a stronger grasp of what I would have hoped to gain from the experience.

 

In the end, I’m glad I decided against the PhD. But I’m even more glad that I took the time to develop some skills while deciding.

 

This advice goes for grad students in professional fields, too. Reagan Johanson McQueen, a recent law school graduate, says if she could do it all over again, she would have worked a few years before grad school. Employers are looking for applicants with diverse skills, she says. Some of her classmates in law school came from established careers in different fields, which made them more sought-after as lawyers.

 

Johanson McQueen has since started to build up her own complementary expertise in environmental issues, working with the Environmental Protection Agency and taking courses in environmental law. But she still feels as if she’s playing catch-up. Others, she says, entered law school with diverse education as a “prerequisite rather than an afterthought.”

 

A business mentor once told me something similar about his MBA. Getting the credential made sense only after he spent years postgrad building up the ideas, network and industry expertise with which he could use his advanced degree.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should

Many recent graduates conflate wanting to go to graduate school with the familiar desire to succeed academically. Combined with a lack of knowledge of other available opportunities, many rush into grad school when other options might be more sensible.

 

James Venditto, who’s in an MS/PhD program in electrical engineering, tells me his decision to enter grad school “made sense because I did well in the classroom, and I didn’t know what kind of professional career I wanted.” He plans to complete his master’s, but he’s unsure he’ll stay for his PhD. If he had been more diligent, he says, he might have looked into industry employment opportunities immediately after undergrad.

 

Marissa Plante, a legislative aide to an elected official, had similar expectations about grad school. “For a time, my assumption was that I should pursue a higher degree because I would be good at it, even though it probably wasn’t the best decision at that point of my life. It was simply the ‘natural next step,’ especially because a lot of my peers were doing it.” She eventually decided against enrolling.

 

For a lot of people, graduate school buys time — time to figure out what they want to do, to enjoy a lack of greater responsibility a little while longer, to incubate themselves within the haven of a college campus. That was certainly part of the appeal for me.

 

But recent grads should know they can continue to figure things out while working — earning money, gaining skills — without committing to an often expensive and time-consuming course of education so early in their career.

 

But if you must go, get someone else to fund it. Really.

Vicki Johnson, a PhD and creator of ProFellow, which helps prospective students find professional and academic fellowships, reminds grads that many postgrad programs are paid. ProFellow offers this directory, which contains more than 1,000 fully funded master’s and PhD programs in more than 60 disciplines.

 

Having someone else pay for a grad degree can reframe the decision from “Why?” to “Why not?” As Venditto says, “I wouldn’t have gone to graduate school at all if it wasn’t funded.”

 

Ziegler describes being paid to study what he loves as “unreal.” He adds, “If I can’t get that job, then I’ll find something else to do. And I think it’ll have been worth it to grow and develop and know I gave it my all.”

 

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Edited August 17, 2023 by aum