Grad School Hunting: The Beginning

The hot topic of my week was graduate school. Since the beginning of the quarter, I have really started to take a dive into searching for different programs and considering my options. Although I was caught in the middle of taking a gap year or going to grad school immediately after undergrad, I figured the best compromise would be to start in Winter or Spring.

When considering my options, my main factor was if the school had an Education program for Counseling or Higher Education since I want to work in the higher education setting. Also, I learned that sometimes the Master’s itself could be offered along with a  PPS (Pupil Personnel Services) or  as a standalone program. I attended the Career Center’s Graduate and Professional School Fair and I learned so many more acronyms and left knowing more than what I came in with knowing previously.

The fair really helped me dip my toes into searching for schools and I now have a stronger sense of which school to apply to. Another thing I really enjoyed about the fair was that I had the ability to filter the schools by a certain radius. So, since I would preferably stay in SoCal, I was able to add that to my search filter.

Before the fair though, I made sure to do my research about the programs and have a list of questions or comments ready. I attended both one on one sessions and group sessions. Honestly, it was a long day. I attended the fair almost in its entirety, so I was sitting down for about two and a half hours. On the bright side, I was finally able to do a full face of makeup and dress up for once! This really was a confidence booster since it was draining networking for so long.

Despite my first grad fair being held online, I really enjoyed it since the sessions were fast and I didn’t have to worry about being late. I was able to talk to some helpful people who shared about their schools in a humble manner. Even if the schools I talked to didn’t have what I was looking for, they still offered me good advice about grad school applications in general. I was also a little nervous about my family being too loud or technical issues occurring. Thankfully, nothing too embarrassing or frustrating happened and all went well!

I’m really happy I went to this event since it helped me think over schools I want to go to and opened my options up for plans after graduation. It is a super intimidating process to me still, but some progress is better than none!

• college
• grad school
• lifestyle