ZeChocMoose

Usually, I agree with hesadork - but single page resumes for entry level positions post master's is going to look a little light - at least it would at my former place of employment. I would hope that you would have at least two experiences in your master's program that would be relevant and then hopefully at least 1 - 2 experiences before you entered that would be relevant. That combined with your education section and your service section (and possibly your skills section if you are applying to research jobs) is going to be over a page. I think it is reasonable to be around 1.5 - 2 pages after you finished the master's. The only caveat is that if you are just filling in "fluff" to get it to that length than keep it to one page. Also - the program that you end up going into will hopefully help you with your resume, prepare you for the sometimes multiple day interviews, and provide you information/strategies on how to negotiate salary/start dates in your final semester of the program.

It is much, much more important to have relevant experience within the particular subsection of higher education that you want to go into. I would strike any program off that list that is not going to offer you professional experience in the field. If you have limited experience in the field already, you are going to want to maximum the experience you can gain by attending a 2 yr program over a 1 yr program. One year programs in higher ed only work really well for people with sufficient full-time professional experience already or people who attend school part-time while working in the field. Would LSU allow you to do an internship in assessment/admin? My assistantship in my higher ed master's was in admissions and I ultimately decided that I wanted to work in educ research so I took an internship in institutional research which helped me to gain those experiences. For assessment work, you are going to need to take classes in methodology and statistics to gain the necessary skills. Does LSU offer those type of classes? In general, 40K seems a bit high to attend a "prestigious" program especially given that the entry level salaries range between 35 - 45 K. Perhaps if you were only taking out 10 - 15K and they were also offering you an internship/assistantship in your field of interest - assessment/admin, I would say well that sounds reasonable since that is not too much debt to be burdensome on your entry level salary given that you said you don't have any other huge financial obligations and you will gain direct experience in your subfield of interest which is fairly critical. In the majority of cases, prestige in itself is not particularly helpful in higher ed if you don't have relevant work experience. I know that when we were hiring for new analysts in my former office, we often got three types of candidates. (1) Master's/PhD from well known school but with limited to no relevant, professional experience, (2) Master's/PhD from lesser known or unknown school with sufficient, relevant experience in the field, and (3) Master's/PhD from well known school with sufficient, relevant experience in the field. Usually, we would interview type 2 and type 3 candidates (type 1s would automatically get thrown out) and then it would come done to an assessment of how well they did in the interview process and data writing exercise. If I was you, I would see whether you could work with the LSU program to get everything you need out of it especially since they are offering full funding. Where do LSU students go after they graduate? This will give you some information of whether former students were successful in gaining jobs in assessment/admin.

It's not an education/student affairs thing. I think it is just a UConn thing. (I'm assuming that's the school you are talking about.) I haven't noticed any other higher ed/student affairs program with the hand written notes culture.

What is stopping you for applying for those type of jobs now? Most people that I knew that had those type of jobs didn't have an MEd as an MEd is not going to prepare you for finance, marketing, or strategy. I do think the sticking point is going to be that you don't have any higher ed experience but a MEd is not going to solve that unless you do it full-time and try to get internships/assistantships that the program offers. The simplest solution seems to be to apply to the jobs that you want at a university and see how you do. If you are unsuccessful then I would think about other options.

I believe you said costs are not a concern so I would recommend a longer program. Two year programs give you more time to build up experience as some hiring managers will equate a 20 hr position for a year as six months of full time experience. Two year programs will also give you more time to explore your interests than shorter programs. I know I changed directions from what I wanted to do in my first year to what I wanted to do in my second year in my master's program. I also don't recommend one year programs to people with zero to limited full-time professional experience (1 - 2 yrs) in the field. You also want to think about where you want to live when you graduate. Schools have much better networks in their local areas compared to non-local areas. And pay attention to when you visit both programs. More than reputation - you want to be able to like or at the very least be able to work well with your classmates. Your classmates will be important because they will also serve as your network for the future. You also want to pay attention to the student-faculty interactions at both schools. Do the faculty seem to know the students? Do you think they will be good mentors to you? For placement rates - you want to know the placement rates in your subfield. How well do they do in placing students in your subfield of interest? What are the opportunities to get experience in your subfield of interest? This is key - higher ed as a field values experience more than reputation. In my own work life, I have seen graduates from these programs get thrown out in the hiring process because they don't have the necessary experience compared to graduates at lesser known schools with sufficient experience. Don't bank on name of the school alone in securing you a job. You really need to make sure that these programs will provide you with the necessary experience to be competitive for the jobs that you want when you graduate. Good luck!

I am not convinced you need a MA in higher ed/student affairs. Usually, those degrees are for people who want to work with students which it doesn't sound like you want to do as you listed "VP of administration and assistant dean of another function." As you are currently not eligible for those jobs and won't be eligible for straight out from a higher ed master's program either - what job do you actually want to do at a university/college? If I knew that I could offer you better advice on how to achieve it. I am not sure if you are aware but usually assistant dean positions are academic appointments that tend to be offered to tenured faculty members unless it is in small subset of areas like admissions, enrollment, institutional research, etc. You won't be able to reach them usually with master's degrees.

I had a similar situation during my master's application season. Since my campus visiting spanned about 6 weeks, I got offered assistantships before I had a chance to visit other schools. To make a long story short - I ended up declining one fully funded offer before I had anything else yet on the table. (They gave me about 1 week to decide if I remember correctly.) I am not sure if I recommend that for you as GVSU seems like a viable option but I knew that I didn't want to attend this school as the program was focused too heavily on practice and I wanted experience with research and theory. A couple weeks later, I got another fully funded offer from another school. They wanted me to make a decision before I ended up visiting my last school. I was really torn because I really enjoyed the visit at this school and the assistantship offer was one that I wanted, but I felt something pulling me to visit my last school. What I did was, I called the director of the program at school #1 and I explained my situation. He was very understanding and told me that I could make a decision after I visited my last school. There was about a 2 - 3 week gap so this was extremely generous. Thankfully, I did call and ask for extension because that last school ended up being the one that I chose to attend. Thus, my recommendation would be if you do get an assistantship offer from GVSU call to see if you can get an extension. I would also then call up UConn explain your situation and ask when they are making decisions on assistantships. Hopefully they line up so you'll hear back from UConn before you need to decide on GVSU. If not, I recommend the suggestions offered by hesadork. For MSU - do they have any assistantships in transfer admissions? I did that for my assistantship in my master's program and it was extremely similar to academic advising. In transfer admissions, I was constantly evaluating transcripts and advising students on which classes to take and the process of admissions. The transfer admission office also handled internal transfers to particular programs/majors as well as regular external transfers so I got a similar skill set as an academic advisor would have. I also did academic advising position as an internship too so usually there are other avenues to get the experiences that you seek if you don't get offered an assistantship in advising. And finally, I know this is stressful and kinda a crazy time. If it helps - think of this as practice for when you start applying to jobs and get offers back intermittently. Usually job offers also have a small window of time to allow you to make a decision. If you practice now with calling up your schools and having a discussion with them you will be in a good place for when you need to do this for your first job after your master's degree. Being able to proactively advocate for yourself professionally is a great skill to begin building early. Good luck!

Not exactly. It is the study of colleges and universities as organizations (typically). The field is very interdisciplinary so you also have people studying policies around higher ed (financial aid, accountability, etc) or about faculty issues (adjuncts v. tenure track) or student issues (access, retention, development). Sure some people might study accreditation, but not most. My favorite is a master's in peace and justice studies.

This seems really atypical of what I have witnessed at working at a couple of R1 institutions. Are you attending a non-research university? Did these people have terminal degrees in other fields? If that is the case, it seems like they are leaning more on the terminal degree than the 1/2 completed education doctoral degree. And how are your cohort mates who (if I understand you correctly) are full-time faculty members also completing a full-time EdD program? That seems extremely taxing... Higher ed admin has all types of jobs (as I am sure you know). Typically, people choose a particular area and then stick with that area for their career. I think trying to simultaneously prepare for IR and a curriculum development job is going be extremely difficult as these are completely different skill sets. Does your program allow you to do internships? I would suggest completing an internship or two in different offices that you would like to work in so you can better figure out what direction to move in.

I do have to say that not all Education PhD programs are going to allow you to transfer in that many credits from your master's degree. I know my Education PhD program only allows at maximum 9 credits to "transfer" in from a previous master's degree so you can't really assume that your master's degree even in the field is going to reduce your time to degree for the doctorate. Different schools have widely different academic policies on this.

Teaching is really unusual for a master's student in higher ed program. In my master's program, I taught a 1-credit class but as far as I discern from my other colleagues in the field those opportunities are not typical. There are definitely better programs out there if you want to be competitive for a funded higher ed PhD program (which I am assuming is your goal and not a doctorate in another field or a program where you work full time while attending part-time.) Ideally, you want to look at the curriculum and make sure the program focuses on having you learn how to read and consume research. Ideally, you'll want to take at least one stats class, one research design class, and one qualitative class. You'll also want to attend a higher ed program where the faculty are involved in research that interests you. This will make it more likely that you can get involved in their research as a master's student which will put you in a better position when you apply. Also - you want a program that has a good placement rate in your area of higher ed - student affairs, policy, admin, etc and that offer useful internships/assistantships in those areas so you can gain experience. Typically, you'll need to work in the field for several years after your master's degree to gain enough experience in the field to make getting a PhD in higher ed an useful endeavor. The last important item is cost. Since the typical entry-level salary for a master's degree holder in higher ed is 35 - 45K, you want to make sure that you are not taking out more in loans than what you expect to make in your first year. There are definitely some fully funded programs for master's in higher ed - but it sounds like those programs are becoming increasingly more competitive. If you do need to take out loans - you'll want to attend a reasonably priced program that has a history of good placement in the field.

I don't think you are overqualified for an entry-level position in institutional research. I worked in IR for 3 years before my doctoral program and the typical applicant that we would see for entry level positions are people who had just graduated with a graduate degree (either a master's or PhD) that had no experience in institutional research. Usually they have very strong methodology backgrounds and writing skills. What they lacked was the knowledge of IR and the nuances of the federal reporting requirements that typically IR offices handle for their institutions. In order to become the director - you are going to have to secure a position at the bottom and then work your way up. There are generally no shortcuts in higher ed admin because the field really values experience. If you are in a part-time EdD program, I would just start applying to entry-level IR positions. If you have several years of full-time professional experience in IR before you graduate with your doctoral degree, you'll be able to apply to a mid-level position in IR when you finish. You will also be able to determine whether that area in the university is for you as it isn't the greatest fit for everyone.

I would narrow your list down to maybe 5 schools as applying to 15 schools is a bit much this late in the game. Are you sure you haven't missed any deadlines yet? In order to narrow - I would look at the required curriculum at each of these schools and make sure that they offer at least one course on college access or equity issues since that is what you are most interested in. Ideally, I would also look to see whether they offer assistantships/internships in offices that serve low-income students. Sometimes you can figure this out by looking at where the current students are placed or even better - some programs will post a list of placements for next year but it might be a bit early for this. I would also think about where you want to live after you graduate at most higher ed programs have better placements in their region (East, Midwest, West, etc) than outside of their region. As for whether you'll be competitive - hard to say. Part of that depends upon how competitive the applicant pool is for this upcoming cycle and how popular your interests are compared to everyone else's. No program wants a cohort of people who all want to work in the same subarea because it is extremely difficult to find advisors or internship/assistantship opportunities for all of those people. I would spend a good chunk of your time securing great letters of recommendation and writing a stellar SOP. The good news is since you are interested in admissions - it is relatively easier to find an entry level job working in undergraduate admissions as these positions have a fair amount of turn over. Right after you finish your applications, I would also start looking for entry level admissions jobs to cover all of your bases. Personally, I think you get more out of a higher ed master's program if you have some full-time professional experience under your belt. You'll get to add more to discussions in class and generally have a more naunced perspective of the field than the people who come straight from undergrad. You also get to apply to non-entry level jobs when you finish because you'll have experience plus the master's degree.

Your comments just remind me of a friend who use to say similar things when she was around your age. Unfortunately, she had such low confidence and so desperately wanted a relationship, marriage, and children that she got involved with men who treated her extremely poorly. It took it an extremely long time for her to break the pattern of choosing the wrong men and realizing that she did not deserve to be treated like that. She's over 30 and not married, but she is a much happier person now because she took the time to work on her self-esteem, develop her independence, and figure out why she was settling for these men who didn't value her or her opinions.

What is so many interviews? 5? 10? The economy is still recovering - it is going to take longer in some places than others especially if your area was hard hit by the great recession. What type of jobs are you applying for? You could be applying for jobs where the competition is particularly fierce - it is hard to know by what you have written. And you don't need grad school to move out and be an adult. Believe me - people do it all the time. Sure, it might be scary in the beginning, but people make it work. What is the closest large city to you? I would start there for searching for jobs because younger, single people tend more often than not to live in or near the city. Do you have any friends that live in cities that you could visit and see if you would potentially like to move there? I also suggest for you to look at applying for some AmeriCorps programs. The pay isn't wonderful but usually the job experience is great and it would give you a chance to live in a different area and be independent. You will also have a lot more time to socialize than you are going to have in grad school. What is about social work that interests you so much? Interaction with people? counseling? Or are you thinking that you want to do more macro-level activities i.e. policy or community building etc. There are other fields that you could look into that have these components to them and have a better gender balance, but we need to know more about what interests you about social work in the first place. I am over 30. I have lived with a lot of random roommates when I was in my 20's. You win some and you lose some when it comes to roommates. And it is honestly hard to tell how well you are going to get along when you first meet them and decide to live together. She may also get a boyfriend fairly early on and not be around much. Or drop out of the program in the first year. There are too many factors to really know. It is better to go in with fairly low expectations of roommates you don't know very well - hope that she will pay the rent on time, clean up after herself, and being willing to communicate with you when needed. If you end up socializing together or becoming friends - great. If not - no disappointments either.

If you are serious about the finding a husband thing - which it definitely sounds like you are, Pinkster, and you think having a husband would make you feel more fulfilled or happier with life than getting a graduate degree, I would change your strategy. Most likely, you would be more successful in getting a husband by either (1) moving to a fairly large city, working in a service industry where you can meet a lot of different people, and living with a bunch of roommates -or- if you still are set on grad school - I would (2) select a graduate degree that has more equal gender balance as MSWs tend to skew towards women. I am not sure what attracts you to a MSW program - but if you mention some characteristics, we can probably brainstorm a set of programs with a better gender balance. I personally think (1) is the better bet if you are seriously prioritizing finding a husband. You can always work/live in the city for a couple years and if that doesn't pan out to go back to school and try option 2 given that you are so young. Grad school as a backup choice to starting a family is an odd choice that is why a lot of people are having trouble reconciling your strategy. Working will also give you more life experience in general and a better idea of what type of characteristics that you are looking for in a partner too - which is win, win.

Be really careful with allowing the name to sway you. More important items to consider are whether the program is a good fit for your particular interests, how accessible are the faculty to master's students, what types of jobs do graduates receive, cost of the program in relation to your financial situation, whether the assistantships/internships offerings are in areas that you want to go into, etc. The part about certain programs being more represented among the faculty is not something you really need to worry about at the master's level. If you were pursuing a PhD AND you wanted to be a faculty member - then yes, you might want to factor that in - but that is not the case at the moment. My last comment is if you want to secure a entry-level education research position after your master's, I would not suggest a one-year program in higher ed. You'll need to pursue a longer program (ideally two) so you can take the necessary statistics and research design courses to make you competitive for jobs in the field. You also want to have some type of research experience whether that is through internships/assistantships/or whatnot. Another suggestion that I tell people who are interested in higher ed research is to also look at social science methodology master's programs at universities with higher ed programs. This way you can get the necessary methodology base that you'll need and you can take your electives in higher education. The problem with most higher ed master's programs is they tend to be very practitioner orientated as JBums indicates which is not going to serve you too well in trying to get a research job. (There are some exceptions of course.) And I just saw your reply about policy - also look into schools that have both MPP programs and higher ed programs. You'll want to gain as much quantitative skills/expertise as you possibly can in a master's program. These skills will make you highly marketable in the future.

I have a EPSON Workforce 635 which I bought in September 2011. It prints double sided without having to manually do it which is a huge plus! It also is a scanner, copier, and faxer if that is important to you. I have never had a problem with the WiFi connection to my computer either. It does have the same ink system that ion's Canon printer has though. If one color or black runs out, it refuses to print which is unfortunate. I don't use it a ton - as I mostly read articles and annotate them on my iPad or computer - but I have been pleased with its performance when I do need it. Like most 3-in-1 printers, it is fairly large though so you'll need some room for it.

This x 100. This cannot be stressed enough. PhDs are not useful degrees unless you are going to conduct research. In general, PhDs are not set up to train you in practical administrative skills such as managing direct reports or balancing a budget or coming up with long term goals for your department. You might be able to gain these skills in your assistantship depending on where you work, but a PhD curriculum focuses on being able to consume and conduct research. It does sound like you are more interested in learning administrative skills - so an EdD would probably be aligned better with your career goals.

Sure send me a PM and we can discuss. In general, most of the top programs in higher ed offer funding for their students. Granted that the packages range a lot on how many years they guarantee, stipends, and work obligations - but there is support available. I guess then the question becomes whether you are a competitive applicant for funded programs.

I wouldn't apply to programs until I could answer this question. It is essential and basically determines your fit with the program and who you would like to advise you. The areas that you cited - HE finance, gender, curriculum planning, adult education are really all over the map. I would at first start reading recent journal articles in these subareas to see whether you are truly interested in them. I honestly don't know how you would really tackle all these subfields in one program as finance would require you to learn economics - maybe some political science and policy whereas curriculum planning would require you to learn more about learning and development, organizational structures (perhaps), and pedagogy. That is a tall order - and we haven't tackled gender or adult education yet. It's okay to be sorta unsure now while you are in exploring stages - but in order to write a convincing SOP you need to present a more narrow, coherent focus on what you want to research and how this meets your career goals. This path seems extremely unusual to me. Non tenured track faculty generally do not have the option to be academic administrators (i.e. deans, provosts, etc). Usually, you need to gain tenure and then you work your way up from dept chair to dean to perhaps a VP or a provost title - but you need to be a tenured faculty member first. The only exception to this that I have seen is there are some administrative positions such as the director of undergraduate academic advising of either a college (within a university) or maybe a specific department if it is large enough. Those individuals didn't start as faculty members though. They worked their way up by being professional academic advisors and then over a decade or so of gaining more and more supervisory experience they might land that type of position. Is this what you are thinking about?

There are a bunch of these discussions on the Chronicle forum. Generally, consensus seems to be that an EdD is not as valued as much as the PhD. Not sure if this sentiment changes depending on the education subfield, but I would say that this is generally true in the field of higher ed. But more important than if you pursue a PhD or an EdD - I notice that you never discuss what you specifically want to study. Is it higher ed? Is it educ leadership? Is it another education subfield? This is arguable the most important item in selecting which schools that you are going to apply to. If the program doesn't have professors teaching and researching on topics that you want to pursue, it is not going to matter whether their program is a PhD or a EdD. Once you narrow your set of schools depending on your interest areas AND if these schools are a mix of PhD and EdDs programs, then I would start doing the PhD v. EdD comparison. Right now, you are asking the questions out of order and it is too difficult to compare theoretical nebulous PhD program v. theoretical nebulous EdD program.

At the school in question, I could see how this could happen actually! The undergraduate college is the core of its identity and it is usually what you think of when you think of the school (with some exceptions for the Law and Business school). Then for the PhD part, this is the degree that brings the prestige to the institution. Also professors would want to prioritize them because they are seen as colleagues-in-training and are being funded by the school. For non-terminal master's degrees, I could see how they could be deprioritized since the other students get most if not all of the attention. There is actually some great research that looks at this phenomenon but that is a bit off topic. Is the OP being discriminated against? Sorta hard to tell given the evidence that the OP presents. Have you talked to older master's students to get their take on your two professors? That might be helpful to learn how you can better manage your relationships with them.

It is hard to tell whether you are looking for an intermediate book or an advanced book? Advanced books tend to get organized around which models that you are interested in: causal, longitudinal, categorical responses, multivariate, etc. I am also having a hard time figuring out how comfortable you are with quantitative methods in general. Since your advisor is qualitative, I am assuming that you'll do a qualitative dissertation? That being said, is your goal just to become proficient up until multiple regression? It would be helpful to know whether the motivation to learn quantitative is for your own self knowledge or you hope to do research or teaching in this area in the future. Edit - just saw that you want to do your own work. I honestly would recommend taking classes. Self study without having basics or intermediate level could be really disastrous especially if you have limited to no experience in these methods. I would say that about qual too! I have seen some really terrible qual studies as well!

I hate to be the bearer of bad news and I am not sure how much you have worked outside of academia, but there are "petty politics" in all sorts of industries. You just have to learn either how to ignore it or how to navigate the waters despite of it. I recommend the later. Also - something else to think about. How is the job market for tenure track positions in philosophy? Even if you can get into a PhD program - are most graduates getting jobs in academia? It could also be that your advisor and reader don't think you'll be competitive enough on the market to get a job given the pools of candidates that they are seeing.