Answering the Question: Should I Go to Graduate School?
Not sure whether or not to go to grad school? I’m in a similar situation.
I know I don’t need an MBA to open up and run a coffee shop. The time and monetary expense of grad school would only delay that plan. However, since graduating college way back in 2000, I’ve had the expectation I’d being going to grad school. After all, I was a psychology major, and I pretty much knew that I wouldn’t make good money without an advanced degree. Nearly seven years of letting this unmet expectation linger is like seven years of hitting the snooze button of an alarm clock. I’d like to settle this issue once and for all.
Since taking a class in finance, the idea of going to B-School has been on my mind. Through work experience and further studies, I’ve ruled out the possibilities of law school, a PhD in clinical psychology, and an MFA in creative writing. An MBA is my last shot at joining the 10% of the U.S. population over 25 with a Masters degree or higher. But that’s not one of my reasons for considering B-School.
I believe I have some business savvy, and a genuine interest in money, particularly behavioral finance. I’d say the main reason I’m considering B-school is a personal vendetta. Yes, a vendetta! One of my big regrets in life is missing out on going to an Ivy League or Top 20 school. Not exactly the best reason to go to grad school, or is it? I did some research and found links that will help anyone seeking to answer the grad school question.
Critical Questions
When car shopping, you’re not going to buy the first car you see, right? You’d do some research, take some test drives, figure out how you’re going to pay for it, and then you’d buy one. Grad school is more expensive, so why not take much greater care in considering it?
Quintcareers.com presents five vital questions you should answer before deciding. These questions basically are:
1) Why do you want to go?
2) When should you go? Straight from undergrad or after some work experience?
3) What’s the best degree for you?
4) What’s the best school for you?
5) Can you afford it?
The great thing about this link is that specific points support each of the questions you should consider, and they are followed by further questions that dig deeper. For instance, Question 1 discusses how people usually consider graduate school for one or more of the following reasons: meet career goals, greater compensation, staying marketable, or a career change.
This forced me to consider how an MBA would fit with my career goals. It’s not exactly clear. I just want to have a coffee shop so that I can have reliable income as I pursue my great joy of reading and writing in cafes. I also love the idea of being my own boss, and I love good coffee. Besides my vendetta, I’d want to have an MBA in case I get bored with my coffee shop and want a different challenge, or in case I want to make more money and travel through work. There’s also a possibility I could want to own several coffee shops, at which point, an MBA may help me manage that task. I don’t have enough information. That brings me to my next point:
Evaluate Your Career Goals
It can’t hurt to make sure your graduate studies of interest are in line with your career goals. If you’re not clear what career best suits you, or what career goals you have, take some assessment tests to help you out.
About.com (one of my favorite websites) has a great page on career tests. There are a number of links to career personality and aptitude tests, as well as links to information about self-assessments and career planning. A few of the assessments require a fee. I have not tried the fee ones, but I’m familiar with many of them from my psych undergrad days and I know they are well-respected assessments.
One of the free links is the Princeton Review Career test. Like all other career tests I have ever taken, this test suggests I would enjoy a career in writing. My knowledge of writing careers is that they are not very lucrative except for a lucky few, hence why I want to have more reliable income with a coffee shop. I’m not making a good case for my MBA interest. I still don’t have enough information. Next point:
Gather Opinions and Talk to People
You will hear all sorts of stories about whether or not you should go to grad school. I say, ask anyone you can who pursued the degree of your interest and take everything you hear with a grain of salt. What works for some may not work for others. In the meantime, check out these samples of what you may hear.
MSN Encarta presents some reasons to go, and reasons not to go. There are many points in this link I never considered. Also, the cost issue was raised in a manner that brought me great worry: “I love my work, but I’ll finish up in a couple of months carrying $40,000 in loans. I’m only beginning to realize how long it’s going to take me to pay that off.”
Epinions.com provides a personal account from someone who was glad to have gone to B-School. Of course, this person’s company had a tuition reimbursement plan that made B-School free. If my firm would reimburse me for B-School, I’d consider it a bit more heavily.
You Are Not Alone
There are many other people stuck with the grad school question. About.com has another great link with real Questions and Answers about all types of grad school pondering situations. You can even participate in a grad school forum to get feedback specific to your situation.
The Verdict?
Grad school is not going to be a snap decision. I’m going to stick with my priorities for now, which is paying off debts and saving money. In the meantime, I’ll keep up with the writing and see if my interest in behavioral finance gets any stronger. I don’t want to go $90,000 in debt for an MBA just to satisfy a vendetta.
The snooze buttoning continues.
John,
Greetings from the rarified airs of Cambridge, MA. Well, actually the Somerville line. You have no idea how much more it can cost to literally live right down the block in Harvard-town. Not worth it. I’ll stick with the cute Brazilians up the hill any day!
First off, I think the prestige motivation is common and certainly something that–whether we care to admit it or not–brought many of us to this place, whether deep in our past or when we placed the application in the mail or both. More likely, it’s been one of many in a mish mash of desires and motivations along the way. As natural and common as the desire is, I don’t think it is the best reason to go to grad school–especially if you’re going to get yourself in a lot of debt. Perhaps that goes without saying but I am a big advocate of being honest with oneself, even if in potentially painful ways, if this allows us to gain more control over how we choose to act and with what level of awareness.
The truth is that the people who are self-impressed with themselves for being at Harvard tend to be the most wooden and uninteresting both as people and as thinkers.
When I was younger (guessing when I was your age), I went to law school for a year. On conscious and unconscious fronts, I did it to find an instant, ready made place in the world, to acquire a badge of instant self-justification (as a “responsible” young man or a reformed life-of-the-mind kind of guy who made the decision to “get practical”) and looking ahead to the kind of financial stability such a career could offer. In theory, I had rationalized for myself that I wanted to do public interest law work (which on some level I honestly did want to do) but when push came to shove, I found that I was unsure, lost and, therefore, prone to settle for paths that seemed easier. That was an “existential” moment of crisis for me; the proverbial “fork in the road” moment. I felt like I had one foot through a door my best self knew I should not go through.
I decided, with the support of God, friends and family (for which I am forever grateful), to leave and cut my loses. I still need to deal with the sizable debt of one of year of law school so the experience is still with me, as perhaps it should be because when I think about who I was then/where I was then and who I am now, I am, again, eternally grateful to be in my shoes today. But, as you can imagine, with the decision came more uncertainty and the feeling that people and my own super-ego, if you will, would judge me for being less than “together”. Coming out was much, much easier than coming into my own professionally and in an occupational sense because I am such a generalist and a curious person about the world and the other people in it, generally. There were also specific pressures to “move up” economically given my working class background. But, I also think the late 90s were a difficult time to be working on these issues at all because of all the hype about the new “information society”. Thankfully, the reverie seemed illusory to me, philosophically, emotionally and politically. I could tell that certain issues I care about (like the poor) were being pushed out of mind. And the allure of yuppy blissdom tempted me at the time in ways that suggested that I could more easily than I had wanted to think become part of the problem. This is not to suggest that academics can’t turn their back on suffering and injustice but that’s a topic for a different day.
There is no proscription, easy plan or ready-made blueprint. We make choices along the way and, sometimes, circumstance makes choices for us and we somehow manage as best we can. I’ve been on a lucky streak for a few years and that can change (like when I hit the what can be brutal higher ed teaching market). But, I am content in a very deep way these days because I love what I do, am challenged on all levels and I have found a way to bridge for myself my theoretical and practical interests by focusing on religion and society and the status of religion in our consumer society, in particular. This happiness has been hard fought and not something an Ivy league university brand name bestowed onto me as if through the grace of some magical talisman (that’s commodifying learning to a very dangerous degree). I’ve also grown into my skin a bit more and am more able to resist the temptation to do things just to give myself instant credibility points in the eyes of others and, more important, myself.
My advice is maybe a bit corny. But, continue to think a lot about this decision and look into both the important instrumental issues (like how concretely the degree would help you with goals you can honestly and lovingly own) and turn your keen interest on psychology on yourself. With the help of your partner and others close to you who can remind you about who you are for them, continue to struggle with this. Consider this as decision as one that could be something akin to a possible impulse buy if you don’t stand back and consider what it means to you and why and what powerful emotions and reasons are compelling you towards this point.
All the best in this…good luck and try to remember how much good you are doing for yourself by not jumping into this because half the world seems to think an M.B.A. is what any “good” person in your shoes *should get*/*should want*. We learn in life that many things we think we *should want* we actually do not want, in the end. The line between “need” and “desire” is never clear yet bourgeois capitalism works by making us rationalize our desires in certain ways. And perhaps there is no final escape from this process but, like I said, the ethical freedom we do have to make decisions along the way means the world.
You don’t -need- an MBA to be successful. It’s a big decision and obviously depends on your individual circumstances, but I think an MBA will help keep your options open down the road.
Best of luck with whatever you decide. I am fairly certain I’ll go to b-school within the next several years (certain enough to shell out $1k for prep classes, at least). 😉