ZeChocMoose

When I sat on my admissions committee, we used a rubric on 5 key areas to evaluate applicants. To be honest, I can't remember all the areas now as it has been several years but I think they were knowledge of higher education, interest/experience in higher education, program fit, ability to do graduate level work, etc. That being said, I would make sure that you are able to secure great recommendations and write a well thought out personal statement. Also spend a paragraph or so talking about what interests you in that particular program. It may be helpful to speak with current students and faculty so you will be able to do this well. Also as studentaffairsgrad mentions your assistantship may be a large factor in which program you attend. I agree with this. I know that this was the determining factor for a lot of individuals (even myself!) when deciding between programs. In retrospect though, higher ed/student affairs programs can be very different from each other and you want to consider a lot of factors especially program fit. I did dodge the bullet so to speak when I selected against one program that would have been a terrible fit for me. Thank goodness the assistantship offer did not appeal to me! If neither UVa nor Tech fully funds their master's students, I would really recommend searching for other programs that do so. There really isn't any reason to go into debt especially since starting salaries can be low (in the 40Ks). Lastly, you want to graduate from a program that is respected in the field. It makes it much easier to get a job and generally the alumni network is larger. I would also talk to higher ed professionals at your undergrad institution who are working in college access and first year programming (I believe those are your areas of interest) to see if they have program recommendations. These individuals will be the type of people on the search committee for your first job so it will be good to get their professional input as well.

I have known several people who have done their master's and PhD part-time. I would say it depends how flexible your job is, how heavy your work load, and whether your boss will support this or not. That is not generally something you know until you start working in that particular job. On the other hand, some of this is also going to depend on what program you attend. Some programs are more part-time student friendly than others. If this is something you want to do then I would ask current part-time students how supported they feel and whether classes are offered at night. There are so many factors in play here that it is hard to determine whether this will be an option for you. The people that I know that attended part-time would not have been able to pursue graduate work as a full-time student due to finances. It did take them longer to get a degree and it was tricky juggling school and work, but in general they valued their experience and would do it again.

This struck me as a major "yikes" and a red flag. I hope this doesn't come across in your interviews that you think your interviewers will be "jealous" of your accomplishments. This is highly unlikely especially since you are starting out in your career and academic awards don't tend to make normal, well-balanced individuals jealous. Not having seen your interview style but based on your post, it may be that you are coming across too strong and are trying too hard to sell yourself. This can be very off-putting and I speak from experience having had to painfully sit through multiple interviews when the interviewee tried this tactic. Someone who constantly mentions their accomplishments unsolicited is going to be labeled as "difficult to work with" and not a "team player." The interviewer is also going to think you are always tooting your own horn and will not admit when you failed or made a mistake. Instead, I would only mention accomplishments that are relevant to the questions that are being asked. I would also refrain from mentioning every single academic award that you have received. In general, gauge your behavior by the tone and body language of your interviewer. They are trying to find a good fit for the position in terms of personality and experience. You also should be interviewing them to see if you think they will be a good teacher mentor for you and give you the support that you need for the next year. Good luck!

It looks like studentaffairsgrad and slave2phd have already answered all of your questions. I would agree with most of what they said. To give you some background, I sat on the admissions committee for my higher ed program when I was a master's student. I don't think anyone looked at the applicants' major GPA. The cumulative GPA was what our admissions committee was concerned with. It is also important (or at least it was to us) that you have at least one academic reference talking about your ability to do graduate-level work. In terms of research experience, I would agree that it is helpful to have, but not all applicants have the opportunity to gain that type of experience. If you are interested in a PhD in higher ed at some point, your best bet is to attend a program where you can gain research experience. Some comments I had after reading your post. Is there a reason that you are only looking at Virginia schools? If you are not geographically-bound, I would expand out my search to look at other programs in other regions of the country. I would also say that one year programs can be tricky if you do not have any full-time professional experience. I know some universities consider a one year assistantship to translate into 0.5 years of experience since it was only part-time. Usually, I recommend for people with limited to no professional experience to look at 2 year programs because you gain more time in your assistantship and it gives you time to change your interests as you get exposed to more areas in the field. Lastly, I would take the opposite approach that studentaffairsgrad did in regards to assistantships. The great thing about assistantships (IMHO) is that they are temporary, part-time positions. Therefore, it is a great way to get experience in an area of higher ed that you haven't previously been exposed too i.e. if you have admissions experience, trying academic advising; if you have res life experience, try student activities, etc. It makes you a more well-rounded student affairs practitioner and it gives you a better understanding of how a college or university works.

Since you said that you are interested in education reform, I am assuming that you are interested on the K - 12 level. Usually with those types of jobs, you'll need to have a sufficient level of practical experiences in the field of education before anyone is going to pay you to "reform" it. I am not sure if there is a lot of value in pursuing a law degree if you are interested in education reform. It would be more helpful to have an education policy MA or MPP and some relevant work experience. If you rather work in education law than go with the JD. Otherwise, I would rethink especially since law school tuition can be expensive.

I assume you only have one year left of your program so it probably doesn't make sense to transfer at this point. Can you take your electives outside of your department to see if you can get rigor that way? Since your classes are easy, I assume you have a lot of time on your hands. I would speak to my professors and look for outside projects/research to get involved with. Perhaps it would make more sense to do an independent research project. It would provide rigor and help you when you apply to doctoral programs. Also where do master's students typically end up for their doctoral degrees in your program? That might also help you gauge the likelihood of gaining admission into certain programs or at least provide you with a starting point. Good luck!

This is not necessarily true. Universities try really hard not to fire tenured professors due to budget cuts, but sometimes if the circumstances are very dire then they will have to let go of professors with tenure as well. There is a lot of great research on this in the higher ed realm about how administrators make these hard decisions and what are the repercussions to the university for having to go this route. I agree with whoever said it up thread that once you sign on the dotted line, I stop worrying about what could happen. Although I suppose it never hurts to start gathering information for internal and external fellowships that you can apply to.

You couldn't do both? My last semester of my master's I did a 20 hr/wk assistantship, 15 hr/wk internship, and took a normal load of 3 classes. I also was preparing for my comprehensive exams and writing my seminar paper. Granted it was a bit crazy at times and required a lot of long days but it was really helpful as my assistantship paid my tuition and gave me a stipend and my unpaid internship gave me the experience and network that allowed me to secure a job when I graduated. It's one alternative, but you would have to know yourself well and whether you can handle juggling all those responsibilities.

I'll PM you to answer question 1. Question 2. Yes, I think it's possible. People with a master's in higher ed don't necessarily pursue a PhD in higher ed. Just from my N of 1 experience, the master's graduates that I have known that have pursued doctoral programs not in higher ed went into counseling psychology, library science, education policy, public policy, and even engineering! I assume they made a coherent argument about how their past academic and professional experiences led them to this particular doctoral program. That being said, my impression of comparative education is that it focuses mainly on the K - 12 system. Are you interesting in bridging K - 12 with higher ed? If you are more interested in K - 12 issues, I don't think you'll be particularly happy in a higher ed master's program. And for pursuing a career not in the field if you get the master's in it? I suppose that is possible as well I just don't know many people who have done it. Higher ed can be a pretty broad field so if you don't enjoy student affairs, I have seen people transfer to academic affairs, administration, or research/policy work (just to name a few). If you are unsure whether you want to pursue this as a career, I would suggest finding an entry level higher ed job before pursuing the master's degree. That way if you find it isn't what you hope it to be, you can resigned from your position and start making steps to pursue another career path. It gets a bit messier if you have this realization half way through your program.

I think the point that was trying to be made is the cost of healthcare is often divided between the university and the individual. If your individual contribution is $0, then no you won't see a difference in your stipend if you decline the university's health insurance. If your individual contribution is > 0 and you decline the health insurance, then yes you will retain that portion of money that they would have deducted for healthcare costs.

My master's program was very research intensive. I took three courses in statistics and one course in research methodology. I also completed an internship in the specific area of education research that I wanted to secure a job. Therefore, I would say it was a combination of academic course work and practical experience that helped me secure a position in education research. My one comment would be unfortunately you tend to compete for these types of jobs with graduates in other disciplines i.e. psychology, sociology, public health, etc. Sometimes these graduates will have an easier time because their programs are in general more research-intensive whereas usually education master's programs emphasize content over methods. Therefore, if pursuing education research is something that you think you want to do, I would just make sure that you take the necessary courses and get some hands-on experience.

I have a couple "business" Dell computers and they are good for about 3 years. After that they start to slow down and need to have parts replaced. One of my laptops had to have its battery replaced every year and it was costly. Another one the monitor and graphics card died. Given that your average doctoral program is longer than 3 years, I cannot recommend them. That being said, I recently have begun looking at Lenovo Thinkpads either the W- or T-series for my doctoral work. I read a couple comments about them upthread, but I was wondering if anyone had any additional thoughts. I am particularly looking for a machine that has a fast processing speed, can handle multiple applications running at the same time, has a decent memory capacity, and will last about 5 years or so without major repairs. If you don't think Thinkpads will work, I am open to other PC suggestions! (I can't do a Mac since there are a couple statistical software packages that won't work with it.)

Good luck on the start of your semester! I pursued education research with my master's in education. I worked in education research for 3 years and now I'll be entering an education doctoral program for the fall.

If the ultimate goal is to get a PhD in higher ed, you would be best served going to a master's program that emphasizes research methodology and gives you a strong grounding in statistics and research design. The problem with some programs are they are so focused on practical experiences they often overlook that higher ed is a social science discipline and it needs individuals who are able to consume and judge the merits of research studies even if these same people do not find themselves conducting these studies in their professional lives. My other comment would be that there are a sufficient amount of master's programs that fully fund their students so there is really no reason to go into a sufficient amount of debt for this degree especially when your average starting salary with no professional experience and only a master's degree will be low. Good luck!

The question would be what do you want to do with the degree? If it is industry-- there is usually some flexibility. I work in education research and we hire quantitative methodologists from education, psychology, sociology, public health, etc. Typically a lot of the social science research positions that I see request one of these types of degrees. If you hope to be a professor, you would probably need to be more strategic about what type of classes you want to teach and what type of research you want to work on. I assume if you want to work in straight psychology departments you would need to be able to teach some intro psyc classes as well as stats and methods classes. For educational psychology, I assume you need to be able to teach foundations of education, cognition, or human development classes along with statistics and methods courses.

I think roommate situations are always a crossing the fingers type of thing as you never know how well it will go until you start living with the person regardless if you knew them before hand. I think you have to be honest with yourself to determine whether you'll be relatively chill when you are stressed out with school and your roommate does something that you think is annoying, rude, confusing, etc. If you think a roommate will add more overall stress to your life, I would probably try a studio at least for the first year. I have learned that living with roommates when I am not in school is a good experience for me, but living with roommates when I am in school is painful as I need relative quiet to read and write and I dislike going to libraries/coffee shops/etc to do those activities. I guess it depends on your study habits and your preferences.

Although it probably doesn't seem like it now, the majority of them will get over it. They will start their own assistantships, enjoy them, and can't imagine having another position. They will find off campus housing and start loving their apartments. They will bond with members of their cohort and make new friends. Their initial disappointments will fade away into the excitement of starting a new program. I honestly won't stress about how they will react. For the reasonable, it will be a non-issue. It is possible that a couple people will let it fester, but there is not much you can do about it. Some people are not happy no matter what the situation. If they let this defeat them, it's sad-- but it is not your problem. Surround yourself with people who will be happy for your successes and return the support/accolades when they are successful. That is how you survive grad school and build a strong professional network. Good luck!

Since you said you were interested in Higher Ed Master's programs, some are research intensive and you do work on research teams with professors so it would be important to make sure there is a decent research fit between yourself and 1-2 members of the faculty. That being said that are some Higher Ed Master's programs that are more management and admin based and do not have a focus on research methodology or even require any basic understanding of statistics or research design. It would depend on what type of program that you are interested in attending. That being said-- it is still important to look at faculty interests to make sure there are elective courses that you would like to take.

Since you are graduating in December, you will probably end up paying a couple months on your student loans before they go into in-school deferment. This assumes you have Stafford Loans. If you have Perkins loans, you will get a 9 month grace period so you might not have to pay anything between this gap period. If your school participates in the National Student Clearinghouse, they will report your enrollment to your lender. Assuming that you are attending at least half-time, you will be eligible for in-school deferment. In the majority of cases, your in-school deferment is automatic and you do not have to do anything. (It may take a couple months for the school that you are enrolled in to report your enrollment. It depends how frequently they update their enrollment records to NSC. I would check at least by October to make sure the loans are in deferment.) However, there are some schools that do not participate in the NSC and some lenders who will require you to fill out their deferment paper work. Your best bet is to call the financial aid office or registrar's office at your graduate school and ask them how previous students have handled this in the past. You can also call your lender or read their website. Edit: You also need to keep on paying on your loans until they go into deferment. Usually if you default on your loans, you will not be eligible for in-school deferment.

Not true for federal loans. As long as you are attending half-time, you can receive in-school deferment even if you have been previously paying off your loans. The only time when you wouldn't be able to get in-school deferment for your federal loans if you are in default on those loans. Private loans, however, are very different. It would depend on the terms and the conditions of the loans whether your lender allows in-school deferment.

I am not familiar with WUSTL's program so I can't help there. I will say that higher ed/student affairs programs can be really different-- some focus on counseling and student development issues while others focus on policy, research, and administration. Depending on what you hope to get out of the program can help you decide what type of program is better for your professional and academic interests. Your best bet is to look at the core curriculum and the other requirements (internships, comprehensive exams, thesis, etc) that you need to complete to get a degree. I would also look at what the faculty are researching to see if it interests you. Typically those interests are the available elective courses. Lastly, I would contact current faculty and students to get their perspective on the program. Also I would look at the funding situation at the programs that you are interested in. As there are a fair amount of programs that offer full funding to their master's students, I would hesitate to take out loans for the degree. Good luck!

Not to split hairs, but FERPA doesn't say faculty cannot have access to students' transcripts. It says that institutions must use reasonable methods to ensure that school officials obtain access to only those education records in which they have legitimate educational interests. Also there must be an effective and compliant administrative policy for controlling access to education records. See http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr;sid=6b7e313020dfabb7caa0216830b2a7d8;rgn=div5;view=text;node=34%3A1.1.1.1.34;idno=34;cc=ecfr#34:1.1.1.1.34.1.138.2 for more information. How colleges and universities chose to implement these requirements can range from no access to limited to full access depending upon the responsibilities of the faculty and staff.

I just read the IU website too. They didn't provide much information on the background of their EdD students (or really any of their students)! After reading the website, my understanding is that a bachelor's with work experience OR a master's degree is the minimum requirements you need to meet to be eligible to apply. The problem with minimum requirements is that they are not helpful in determining what type of experience you need to have to be a competitive applicant especially since (in my experience) competitive Higher Ed PhD programs admit only 5 - 15% of the applicant pool. (I don't know the acceptance rates for EdD programs.) I would talk to some faculty members that you are interested in working with and ask if they can shed some light on what is a competitive applicant for their program.

Are you in IU's master's program currently? If you are interested in higher ed admin (and are not going the tenure track route), I would highly suggest that you take some time off between your master's and doctoral program to gain some full-time experience. I also don't know how IU's EdD program works but some EdD programs expect you to work full-time and attend on a part-time basis. Personally that might be a good option for you since you will gain a higher level of experience than a traditional graduate assistantship position. In general, higher ed admin is concerned with your experience in the field so not having any is going to put you at a *huge* disadvantage especially since you are interested in an administration position. Typically people in higher levels of administration will have 10+ years of experience after their terminal degree. So, no you will not start off as a dean (!) and it may take several years or a decade or so to reach that level. I am also not sure if "dean" should be the title you should be reaching for here as they typically come up through the faculty ranks except of course dean of students and perhaps dean of undergraduate admissions. You might be more interested in a VP position or something that is not directly tied to academic affairs. To be honest, I haven't seen people who go straight through that are interested in the admin track. Usually that happens if the person wants an academic or research/policy position and then their research is more important than their years of full time employment. To go the admin track, you need to show years of experience with increasing levels of responsibility so that the president/provost/etc will be confident in your decision making skills. You cannot demonstrate that through a degree alone. Good luck!

That is not necessarily the case. For the university that I earned my master's degree, I was technically an out-of-state student, but I was reclassified as an in-state student because I was offered a graduate assistantship. If other schools have this policy, RAs/TAs/GAs are typically reclassified as in-state students. Then the department or office just pays the in-state tuition rate for the student. If that is the case, then being an in- or out-of-state student won't matter to the adcomm for overall costs.