anthropos

Britt32011: The key question is what do you want to do with your PhD afterwards? After PeaceCorps, when your graduate training is done, what do you imagine you want to do with that training... what kind of job? are you thinking academic research faculty? public health interventions through an NGO/not-for-profit? do you want to go into development work with a government agency? the answer to these questions then leads to thinking whether you want a program with a more applied focus or a more theoretical concentration? do you want to stop with a masters or do you really need a doctoral degree? Your thoughts about graduate education should not be "what are programs looking for?" unless you have already asked, "what am I looking to get out of a graduate education? how will an advanced degree help me do what I want to do next?" once you've decided that, and consequently narrowed down your options to a set of school programs that can give you that, you can begin to think about how best to represent yourself in applications to those specific schools. Another user posted a similary query asking about whether s/he should go to an Ivy or a State school, having been admitted to both. The answers were unfortunately only about debt versus reputation... but what I thought s/he needed to hear about was the relative strengths of the two different programs, how their graduates have secured funding, what jobs their graduates go on to hold.