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Topic: grad school instead of experience?
| Author | Message |
| hickory982 | Posted – 3/21/2006 6:05:55 PM | show profile I graduated from undergrad in May 2005, and have applied to (at least) one job a day for over a year now. No bites. Not even one interview. I had an internship and had my resume professionally critiqued, but apparently I just suck. So I'm thinking about going to grad school for publishing, maybe a master's degree will boost my resume enough to get me a job. I still owe $2,000 for undergrad. I hate debt so I went to school full-time and worked 40 hours a week the whole way through so I wouldn't be buried after graduation. Should I take out a crazy amount of loans to cover grad school? Do I qualify for financial aid if I still live with the fam? How are people financing it? Will it be worth it in the end? I definitely plan on going to grad school eventually, but is now the right time? And where the HELL do I NETWORK after college?! |
| alexander_cain | Posted – 3/21/2006 7:00:43 PM | show profile | email poster Not sure how much I can help, but... I graduated in December of 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. I wrote a little bit about what happened to me in this thread http://www.mediabistro.com/bbs/cache/t25697_1.asp * AGE How old are you? I said I was 30 years old. I don't want to be a student at 35 because while in my 20s I was unable to achieve some of the life goals that I had set down (but haven't we all?). Just because I'm not doing what I wanted to do years ago, however, doesn't mean that I won't have the opportunity to try for it in the future. It just means I'm frustrated with myself for not having taken the chance to do it while in my 20s. AGE is a viable factor; the younger you are, the better. I know I saw a figure that at the school I got my BA from, the average age of a graduate student is 34. *MONEY. This should probably be first and foremost, so I don't know why I put it here. I owe at least 12k in student loans from my BA alone...I could easily triple that if I went for my Masters degree. The last thing I need, especially if I'm going for a car soon, is to screw my credit score like that. Therefore scholarships or possibly federal aide for a semester or two would be what I would look into. You could consider the same. *TIME. This really falls in with age. I'm not getting any younger, and with the newsroom job being only part-time, I'm still finding myself with a lot of time on my hands to evaluate my potential career goals and see where I want to be. Do I want to be with this same paper in one year, two years from now? I love what I'm doing...but I love what I WANT to do even more. I could easily move on in a year or less, since the newspaper industry has such a high turnover rate. But how much time would I need for that? Months? Years? How long am I willing to wait or put off to achieve my goals? You need to ask yourself this. *SUPPORT. I have been blessed to have a very supportive family, specifically my parents who have assisted me in paying rent on more than one occassion. If you have such a bond, where money or time or whatever is accessible, and you want to go for your Masters degree, then use it. Example: You need furniture moved to your new apartment or your dorm room but you don't have a truck. Your father knows someone from work who does. That sort of thing. *QUALITY. Masters degrees don't come cheap...and that's for many reasons, among them where you receive them from. Is your school accredited? Do they offer the program you desire? I had a friend of mine who graduated only a few semesters after I did and wanted to stay in the area, since her family lived only about 30 miles away. However, the program that the school she and I graduated from was not offering the specific type of field she wished to work within, nor had they offered any sort of accrediation or pre-work towards it. I suppose one exception would be if you wanted to enter the medical field; as the demand for RNs and MDs increases, colleges ad pre-* programs for these areas. *JOB. JOB. JOB. JOB. This could help you pay for tuition, books (well who are we kidding...I remember the price of books at MY school and they were horrendous...$40 paid, maybe $6 buy back if you were lucky), etc. BUT how are you going to schedule your work between classes? I'll tell you a quick story. I was going to go back to school this semester. I was even accepted. I wasn't surprised, because I was an alumni. It took only 11 days from when I submitted the paperwork to their accepting me in. BUT the program I went into was pre-mass comm, and since that's not technically a degree recognized by the state I live in or the Board of Regents which governs the University system here, I was unable to receive financial aid. So, I didn't go to college this semester. |
| belinda | Posted – 3/21/2006 7:42:34 PM | show profile In newspapers, anyway, school is school; it doesn't substitute for hands-on experience. In fact, more of the same only delays the inevitable job search. Grads sabotage themselves in so many ways: -- They aim too high and won't come down to the reality of starting small and at the bottom. -- They won't move for an entry-level opportunity in another location. -- They don't do any career-related work after graduation, expecting the degree alone to get them a job. -- They apply for jobs indiscriminately, rather than selecting jobs for which a new grad would be qualified. -- Their resumes and credentials don't distinguish them from the thousand of other grads in their field. Seriously, get out there and kick some professional butt now, while you're job hunting, and you'll get noticed. Where do you network after college? Through the professional chapters of industry associations. Look them up on the Web. |
| Snowball | Posted – 3/22/2006 6:32:50 AM | show profile Hi Hickory, I know what you are going through. I graduated last May and the realization is hitting in that it's been almost a year and I don't work in the field I want. Going back to grad school is something that I have been seriously considering as well. During undergrad I completed several internships, got good grades, etc, and still no real luck. I owe quite a bit more in student loans than you, so going back to school full-time isn't something I am going to consider right now. Have you thought about going to school part-time during the evening? Considering how much (or how little) jobs in the media pay, I don't feel it's worth it to get a Masters degree in something that is related to what your undergrad is in. BTW, you don't suck, the economy and the amount of competition does. |
| fourfold | Posted – 3/22/2006 7:55:49 AM | show profile Hickory, listen to Belinda You don't say what kind of job you're looking for, but I'm willing to bet that a lack of a graduate degree is NOT the reason you're having trouble finding a job. I used to hire EAs for a magazine at Time. When looking through stacks of resumes, relevent experience always trumped more education. In fact, the one time I did hire someone with a graduate degree in journalism from Columbia, she was a disaster. Couldn't spell, showed up for work late, spend literally an hour a day on personal calls. We laid her off after a few months. It's tough out there, I know. But going into more debt, and taking yourself out of the job market for another 1-2 years, isn't going to help your situation. You ask where the hell you are supposed to network. Do you go to alumni gatherings? Association meetings? You don't say where you are, but here in NY there are a bunch of groups you could get involved with where you could meet people: New York Writer's Union, MediaBistro events.... Belinda's advice is sound. If you have been applying for a job a day for over a year and have had no response, you need to change your methods. |
| voxdixit | Posted – 3/24/2006 5:00:01 PM | show profile | email poster I graduated with a grad journalism degree from NYU in 2002, and practically, I don't think it's helped me at all. I've never been assigned an article because of it (I don't even mention it in query letters), and I think it may have even worked *against* me while trying to get an entry-level job of any kind (it can make you seem overeducated, overqualified, etc.). Frankly, I've learned more about the actual business of writing from places like Media Bistro and simple trial and error. I enjoyed grad school immensely, but I will literally be paying for it for the rest of my life (barring any lottery wins) and those monthly student loan bills are a huge financial burden. If you go to grad school for journalism, don't do it because you want to break into the journalism or communications field. |
| clairezulkey | Posted – 3/24/2006 5:16:46 PM | show profile | email poster You know, eventually you could do both. I work full time and freelance and go to Northwestern University's school of continuing studies to get my Master's in creative writing. I take one class a week, at night. Takes longer but it fits my life. ------ Editor of MBToolBox |
