Towards the end of my junior year of college I got an email from the registrar's office prompting me to fill out an "intent to graduate" form. This immediately brought about many emotions for me. My college experience would be over in just one short year. It feels like just yesterday I was wandering around campus stepping on people's shoes and awkwardly bonding with friends over mismatched socks and the general confusion about college life. While filling out the form with my adviser we went over all the classes I've taken the past three years and good and bad memories flooded my memory as we checked off each requirement I've completed. Once the final box was checked and my emotional level was severely unstable (due to the memories and an extreme lack of sleep) my adviser leaned back in his chair, smiled, and asked "So, what's next for you after graduation?" a simple question but one I hadn't thought about previously. What was I going to do after graduation? Run away to some far off country to escape the bonds of paying back my student loans? Work at a coffee shop the rest of my life? Cry? Do something useful? Maybe go to grad school??
Grad school is a scary topic for me. I see grad school as this golden opportunity for really, REALLY intelligent people who know 100% what they want to do in their life and have the funds to do so. I never in a million years saw me as the type of person to even conceive the idea of going to graduate school. Until I found out that you can get PAID to go. Apparently there's this magical thing in the grad school universe called a "fellowship". Schools will give you a fellowship (up to full tuition remission) and a stipend to go to school and teach a few undergraduate classes every semester. Grad Schools also accept FAFSA so you can expect to still have some of that nice federal government help that you've grown to know and love.
Getting paid to go to school pretty much sold me on the idea of grad school. Also, getting paid to write all day long - what English major could want anything else from life? So, free school, paid to do what you love, what's the catch? Well. Let me tell you what my brief googling brought up about the grad school dirt.
You have to take a test to get in. Remember taking the ACT/SAT and how literally everyone was super stressed out because your entire future depended on getting good test scores? Well, my friend, that stress isn't over yet. Most grad schools require you to take the GRE and if it's not required it's strongly suggested if you want one of those nice fellowships. The GRE has three parts: verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and analytical writing. It costs about $200 for the test alone and prep classes can be as expensive as $1,000. Now, as a poor college student, there's no way I'm affording one of those prep classes let alone the test itself. Grad school dreams, boom, flushed down the drain. Kind of.
If you really love what you do, be it writing, painting, history, philosophy, math, science or sleeping, I say go for it. In this day and age getting a job with a measly undergrad degree is hard. And if you really love your craft isn't it worth $200 to see if someone believes in your talents as well? Maybe don't pay an arm and a leg for a GRE prep class. Just grab an old ACT or SAT prep book and read that. From what I've seen they're pretty similar, the GRE is probably just a little more sophisticated. But if you're not tired of school altogether after you earn your BFA go ahead and get that masters degree. It won't kill you, it might briefly kill your bank account, but hey, you kill your bank account every time you go on an unsolicited shopping spree to the mall. So go on a shopping spree for your future.
