Chiefs_Fan

Institutional Research is one of the fields I am interested in in the realm of Higher Ed. I actually just emailed the Office of Institutional Research on my campus hoping to set up a job shadowing situation for 2 or 3 hours a week. It's not much, but I figure it could at least lead me to another avenue for a letter of recommendation when the time comes. I'll keep this topic updated as I hear from them!

Thanks for the reply! Basically, I want to go to grad school straight after undergrad because I turn 25 next month. It's taken me longer because I went through some personal problems when I was straight out of high school and school took a back seat for a time. I just would like to get my career started, you know? I'm not getting any younger. Also, I'm going to have to start paying back student loans after I graduate and with my meager income, it will be a major struggle. I guess I will have to find some way to get experience in the next year. I honestly don't know how I'm going to do it. Between a full time job, 5 classes, and studying, I only sleep 5 hours or so a day. Anyone know a way to function with 2 hours a sleep a day?

The only thing I could possibly do is set up some sort of job shadowing for two or three hours a week in the mornings. Don't know how that would look in applications, but I guess it would be better than absolutely nothing.

Hello all, this is my first time posting here so I apologize if these are common questions that have been answered! I went through a few pages to look for some answers, but couldn't seem to find any. I will be applying to grad school this December in hopes of starting in Fall of 2014. I'm hoping to be admitted to a higher education administration program in order to have a career in admissions or career counciling. Currently I'm looking at three schools in particular; Missouri State, University of Oklahoma, and SIU Carbondale. I've got a few issues that might hinder my application. First off are my grades. Overall, my GPA is 2.92. Not good at all, and I take full responsibility for it. I didn't take my education seriously in my early years of college and I'm paying for it. The programs I'm looking at give more importance to the last 60 hours of undergraduate study and I've done better in that regard, GPA of 3.28. Not great, but better than the 2.92. I still have 30 more hours to complete before I apply, and in the absolute best case scenerio, I would have a 3.48. My question is are these numbers competitive at all for higher ed programs? The three programs I'm looking at require a 3.0, 2.75, and 2.7 respectively, but I'm unsure where I stand against other applicants. My second concern is my lack of experience in campus activities. I work a full time job in retail just to survive; I have no financial help from my family. Thus, I have little to no time to join clubs or volunteer at institutions on campus. In my efforts for an assistantship (I want one solely for experience, the tuition factors are just a nice bonus), will my lack of experience completely shut me out of being considered for these? My current boss says she has no issue writing me a recommendation highlighting my dependability and ability to be a leader, but this is all in retail and not higher education. Thank you all so much! This worries me on a daily basis and I just want to get a view on whether my worries are justified or not.