Feeling like have to go to grad school ASAP

[dave134]

For some reason I am putting a lot of pressure on myself to get to grad school ASAP. I am 25 and I am finishing undergrad at the end of this year. I want to go to grad school in Cali so I have to move there and spend a year to establish residency so the earliest I could go to grad school I'd be 27. I would be okay with that. However, I have a possible job opportunity later this year in DC and I'd want to stay at that job for at least a year so that would push my relocation to Cali back 1 year and I'd be 28 when I started grad school. For some reason I feel like this is waiting too long to start grad school cause I feel I am behind. It seems like most people around here already have a master's and I know I shouldn't compare myself, but I sorta do. Moreso though I don't feel satisfied with a bachelor's as I feel I am someone who should have a higher degree at this point. It's not like I won't be able to be paid well with a bachelor's though...it's just this internal pressure I feel like I need to have a master's degree.

[winneythepooh7]

IMO, I think it's good to work a couple of years before going straight to grad school. It makes your job prospects even better once you get your Masters. Before I get hazed for saying this, that's the way it has become in social work. Otherwise you are pretty much stuck in a Bachelor's-level job. I also started grad school around age 26. I seriously was like one of the youngest people in my classes.

[capella]

I have to agree with Winney. I am 26, 27 in January, and I'm just now starting grad school. I graduated 4 years ago and I can't imagine what I would have wasted my money on for a master's if I had gone straight into grad school.

Are you perhaps nervous about starting the real work world? What do you want to study? If you had asked me 4 years ago (or heck even 2 years ago) I would have had different answers. It takes a few working years to really figure out what you want to do. Not everyone sticks with what they studied.

[winneythepooh7]

Yeah, you really need working experience under your belt, especially if you want any kind of management position in my field, which is where the decent-being-able-to-live salaries are. It's pretty apparent that someone who only has degrees in my field, yet, really hasn't actually worked in it, is going to have a pretty rough time dealing with complex problems SW managers are faced with on a day to day basis. It's even a struggle in a basic SW position if you've never worked in the field before. I am just being completely honest because they don't tell you this stuff in grad school since they are primarily money-making institutions. They tell you you can get any job once you graduate. Not really.

[beeblebrox]

I did opposite of what's been said on the boards. I went straight through from undergrad in 2002 to graduate school. I graduated in 2004-2005. It was tough but necessary in my field because a Master's is considered a basic requirement to get any job it seems in records management, archives, libraries. I've been working a year now full time with lots of internship and temping experience behind in my belt. I will say that it was difficult to go through graduate school after undergrad. I was supremely exhausted and itching to make some money to support myself. Right before I finished graduate school, I met my boyfriend of almost 3 years, so that made the finish line much better. Before that, I dated a little, but nobody really worth my time.

Now, I'm considering another Master's degree to further build up the education and marketability.

[cheshrcarol]

I completely agree with winney and capella. I am 29 and just started grad school last fall at 28. I worked for 6 years before really finding what I want to do. I think that in most cases it is much better if you're able to work for a few years first and figure out what you want and like in a career, a job field, and an employer.

My job experience also helped me land an amazing internship, which will likely lead to a job with the same company. They said they really liked my maturity and professionalism. So much so that they increased my offer by 1/3 in order to get me on board.

And I know that if the 22 year old me, instead of the 29 year old me had interviewed for the position, their perception of me would have been much different. I have learned a lot about how to function in the workplace and gained a lot of confidence in myself and my work over the past 6 years.

[wordsmith]

My brother and my sister in law went straight into master's programs, because both needed to to be employable for their fields, collegiate coaching and speech/language pathology and therapy. They couldn't work the positions they wanted in their fields without the master's degrees, so they went straight through from bachelor's to master's. But not everyone needs to do this. In my field, pay does not change, and neither does employability, with the addition of a master's degree.

[AshleyJordan]

I went straight through to graduate school and finished my Master's last year at the ripe old age of 24. While it's an awesome feeling to have it all "done" so quickly, I do wish I had waited. I like what I studied and the work I'm doing, but I think it would've really, really behooved me to have taken some time b/n degrees to explore my other options.

[analogman]

There are some quality of life advantages to starting grad school right out of undergrad. Only do this if you are sure you know what you want to do though.

I graduated and worked for five years before starting grad school. In those five years I also got married. I am working full-time and going to grad school part time. It's rare for me to have leisure time outside of school and work. If you wait to go to grad school, life generally gets more complex and makes grad school more difficult.

Finally, depending on what your field of study is, residency can be a non-issue. You can be a TA or GSR and have your tuition paid for by the professor or school.

[arrow]

There are times where I wish I went straight through, because then I would have been able to take better advantage of TA/assistantships and I would have come out of all of it with a master's rather than just a bachelors. But back then I was so sure I wanted to do grad school after I had some work experience, and I wanted to go somewhere new instead of stay in my college town another year. I've had those thoughts usually on the days when doing full-time work and part-time school is most stressful, but usually I'm grateful for the choices I've made and I'm happy to be having the school experience that I'm having now.

It's amazing, though, the difference in the knowledge and experience I brought into graduate school compared to what I took away from undergrad. I have an entirely new, and in my opinion better, foundation for learning after being out in the world for a few years.

And like words' industry, my current industry doesn't require a masters degree and most people I work with don't have one. I'm more or less doing it for personal fulfillment. But if I ever change careers I may need it, so you never know.