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Undergraduate BS in journalism, pursuing an MS in outdoor recreation with a focus on park interpretation.

Wow, this thread is full of win and lulz. I start a thesis-option MS in a month and work for the government as a part of a student-to-career program. My advising professor is highly interested in my research ideas and, in fact, I'm the only new student he's funding this year. In my discipline (natural resources/heritage interpretation), every professor I've met has spent years working as a professional in the field before returning to teach it. You need to be very careful about generalizing academia-vs.-real-world, because whatever divide there once was is crumbling as we speak - just ask all the Ph.D holders who can't find tenure-track jobs.

I think it's pretty important. My freshman/sophomore years were stretched out over a number of years at a community college, and only a zillion major courses kept my GPA barely above 3.0. I didn't do so hot in junior/senior either... until I realized that I was killing any hope of graduate school and pulled a 3.81, Dean's List performance in my final semester that resulted in an "academic turnaround" LoR from the director of the journalism school. Ended up getting accepted virtually everywhere I applied.

My undergraduate degree is in journalism, and I'll be starting a master's program in outdoor recreation at Indiana University this fall. They may seem like completely different fields, but my specific specialty will be natural resources interpretation, which is a field directed at creating meaningful experiences for park/historic site visitors, by helping them understand the significance and meaning of the site's resources. That's a long and complex way of saying, park interpreters create communications tools (both person-to-person and mass media) that inform, educate, enlighten and entertain visitors. With journalism jobs being few and far between these days, I accepted a communications-based internship with a federal land management agency last fall. That experience exposed me to working as a park ranger/interpreter, and led to a federal job program that was contingent on pursuing a graduate degree. I developed a research pitch that leveraged my extensive new media journalism experience, proposing to study the potential uses of social and mobile media platforms for parks. Then I pounded the electronic pavement, contacting professors at a number of schools and applying only where I received expressions of interest from faculty members. I ended up being accepted at 7 out of 8 schools I applied to, and after a visit trip to the most promising candidates, was offered varying levels of funding at three of them. I accepted a fully-funded research assistantship at IU's Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Studies.

I pretty much had the reverse of bhikhaari. Horrible quant (540), excellent verbal (800). Accepted and funded at several schools for a master's program in natural resources.

I'll be joining the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Studies this fall, pursuing an MS in outdoor recreation. Visited Bloomington and fell in love with the town, plus my prof is great and secured full funding with a TAship. Looking forward to this fall!

If you have to cover the entire cost of a graduate program with loans, and it's not law or medical school, you pretty much shouldn't do it. You'll be saddling yourself with enormous debt that will take a decade or more to pay off. Even borrowing $75,000 will leave you with a $900-per-month student loan bill. Those payments are due regardless of whether you get the awesome $80,000-per-year job or whether you're stuck as a Starbucks barista. It's a cash cow for the school and a way to drive students into penury.

It's not, unless you listen to USNWR's bullshit rankings. By the Carnegie Classification, it's a RU/VH (Research University/Very High Research Activity).

jblsmith, if you don't want advice, why did you start this thread? Did you really expect everyone to just say "Oh yeah, borrowing a cumulative total of $200,000 for college is a brilliant idea, go for it?" If you want real advice from real graduate students/applicants, don't get all pissy when that advice isn't what you want to hear. On the other hand, if you want validation, go ask Stuart Smalley.

Anyone else heading up to Orono? I've been accepted and funded for a master's program in Forest Resources.

Within academia, nobody cares about "Tier 3" or whatever USNWR calls anything. If you want to take out six-figure loans for a Ph.D program on top of the six-figure undergraduate debt you're already carrying, knock yourself out. I just hope everything goes perfectly as you planned - otherwise, you're in for a world of hurt when those loan bills start coming due.

None of the programs I've been admitted to have asked for deposits.

That language is usually just to cover the department's butt in case of a serious program change - a budget cut, etc. Not an insubstantial risk in this day and age. If they contractually promised, unconditionally, "five years of funding" and suddenly saw their budget cut by 1/3, they'd be in some serious trouble. And of course, "student performance" is a standard clause - you're not going to get funded if you're about to flunk out.

Oops, I meant four-figure... brainfart Starting assistant econ professor salaries are not $100k, unless you're talking about starting at Cal or Harvard or something. I wouldn't base your financial planning on the assumption that you'd get one of those jobs right out of the box. Not impossible... but obscenely competitive. Based on a quick salary database check, places like UTK and U of Hawaii start around $70k, which is still not bad. SLACs generally start even lower. I am facing a similar dilemma, between first-choice unfunded (so far) and backup, funded. I choose to think of it this way: how much money would loans cost me in the long run (add in interest...) and what is the opportunity cost of having so much debt to pay back over the next 10 to 20 years? What opportunities, vacations, whatever would I have to forgo because of how big a loan check I have to cut every month? I would dearly love to go to my dream school. I would not dearly love adding $50,000 in graduate debt to my $15,000 in undergrad debt.

If you're already $100k in debt and you're accepted without a funding guarantee, you could be looking at another $100k piled on top of that. It doesn't matter how lucrative you think the degree will be - that is an absolutely impossible debt load that will see you crushed by mid-five-figure monthly payments