Choosing a Graduate School
Key Questions
- What characteristics and values would you like a graduate program to have?
- What graduate program areas will best help you accomplish your professional goals?
- What have professionals in your intended field said regarding graduate programs?
- What have faculty said regarding graduate programs?
- What programs and degrees do HR professionals and hiring managers recommend?
- How do external criteria such as geographic limitations, family needs and finances impact the scope of programs that you are able to consider?
Exercise
Make a list of desirable traits that you would like a graduate program to have. Include the following criteria (adapted from PATH: A Career Workbook for Liberal Arts Students by Howard Figler):
- Fit of program with your career goals
- Availability of practical/professional experience
- Success of graduates in your intended field
- Program goals and purpose
- Program reputation
- Program length
- Success of graduates in obtaining positions
- Size of classes
- Faculty to student ratio
- Faculty reputation
- Diversity of faculty
- Diversity of student body
- Culture
- Location
- Cost(s)
- Availability of financial aid
Research
Once you have identified what you most want from a graduate program, start researching programs in your field online, in the Hiatt Career Center, in the library, and by speaking with faculty and professionals. Leave no stone unturned.
Once you begin to narrow your list of desirable programs, call each program and speak with the department coordinator or chair to ask if job placement information from past graduates is available and if s/he can recommend a current student (or students) in the program with whom you might speak. No one can speak to the reality of a program like a student in it. If you are extremely interested in a program you might also ask if you could set up an appointment to speak with the chair of the department, or his/her designee, to discuss the program in greater detail than is available online or in print. In such a meeting you may even ask, in general terms, the likelihood that you would be admitted into the program and if there are graduate assistantships for which you would be qualified.
Only you can determine the number of programs to which you should apply. Unlike your undergraduate application process, the graduate process is not a mysterious, closed-door event. The odds of your being accepted into a program are weighted to favor the connection between the program and your intended career path, including the maturity and preparedness the graduate program faculty perceive you to have for that path.