Being hard in a decision making situation.

[Lena Xu]

Hello, I am new here. I hope to seek some advice from you guys if possible, and I would be very grateful for your help, and also, thank you very much for sparing me the time!

I am an international student. I have received several offers from American universities. Now it is near the time to make my final decision. I will do a TESOL program. Among the offers I have got, I am most interested in 3 universities: NYU, Rochester and Penn State. 

I am interested in foreign language teaching and research, and also, applied linguistics. I hope to pursue a doctoral degree in the future. I haven't had any language teaching experience and my undergraduate major is English and Psychology. 

The TESOL program in NYU is a MA degree. It stresses more in practice, to equip students to be professional in teaching. Therefore, it provides abundant fieldwork opportunities. However, it doesn't have paper or thesis requirement. In my view, thesis experience is an important factor in application for a PhD program, right? But students could take extra electives or attend Post-Master program which will prepare them to apply for a PhD program in other schools as the PhD program at NYU is very competitive. That means I will have to spend more time and more money in it. Does it worth? The good thing about it is the overall ranking of the university and its education department are at the top level. Their faculty in this program also are very great. Is it an advantage to my future studies and career? Does it worth to pay a lot of money to do that? Is it helpful to my future application for a PhD program?

The program at Rochester is at Warner school. It is under Education and Human Development department. The department is unranked. It is kind of a theoretical orientation program. It confers a MS degree and requires students to complete a thesis. But it doesn't provide internship. The school offers me a scholarship which will cover 1/3 of my tuition. So if I went to Warner school, I would spend less money. But should I worry about the quality of the program? If I found that it would be too hard for me to do a PhD program, would the lacking of teaching training and experience hinder my career？Like hard to find a teaching job?

The program at Penn State is in Applied Linguistics department. It requires a paper which according to a professor of that program is acceptable in application for a PhD program. The program also provides internship opportunity. However, it is also impossible to apply for a PhD program at that school, as the professor I mentioned above told me so. But he told me I could apply to other universities, such as Ohio State university, Hawaii, etc. But I don't have previous storage knowledge about Applied Linguistics. The only field in it I have known is Second Language Acquisition. I am interested in knowing how people learn second language and how to make people learn a second language more effective. But sometimes when you delve more into a field, you might find that it is not what you imagined. I think I am scared of this idea.

One of my concerns here is that I am not sure whether I am PhD bound. I have not had experience in studying abroad. I can not imagine the future graduate school studies in a foreign country would be how stressful. I also know that there are very few chances to be accepted into a PhD program, and I want to be in a good one. I am even not sure about whether I would have passion for teaching.  But I know I would do well at it if I had to, as I have strong sense of responsibility for my work and others. This is my second chance to choose my future career path. I think I desperately want to make sure that the decision I make is wise or suitable for me. I am also not sure about my future life. Whether I could find a job in America, what kind of jobs I would find, and whether I should come back my country, etc. Things just are so uncertain which cause my anxiety. I really hope I could get some help from people with more information and good at making wise decisions.

Thank you very much!

[Warelin]

I think there are a number of different factors you have to consider here. 

Let's start with the simplest of them all. You have to think not only about the schools but about their location as well. NYU is in a huge city and it's likely that a fair amount of places will always be crowded. I imagine that rent here will be the highest and the odds of finding an affordable studio close to the university is lower than the chances of finding it in Rochester or Penn State. How do you feel about living with roommates? How do you feel about very big constant crowds? How do you feel about not being able to partake in the entire culture of the city? On the opposite end, Penn State is located in rural Pennsylvania. As such, I imagine a fair amount of life in there revolves around the College. Depending on the time of year, there might be a lot to do, but if it's like other college towns, it might mean that there's very little to do during the summer. Are you able to handle quietness when there might not be much to do. Rochester is somewhere in between the two but doesn't have anywhere near the transportation system that NYC does. A car in Rochester may or may not be needed depending on how far within it you want to go.

I don't think graduate programs consider where you obtained your Master's from as something they give much weight to. I also don't think having thesis experience is something they consider important either. There are plenty of people that have accepted into a Ph.D. program without any thesis experience. However, as someone with a Master's degree, certain programs might have higher admissions standards they set for you. They might expect you to show your interest in the profession in certain ways. This might mean that they could expect any, some, all or none of the following: teaching experience, higher test scores, experience related to the major field you're interested in, conference experience, etc. The thought process there is that you've had 1-2 more years to develop your interests and as such, they want to make sure that everyone is on level playing grounds.

What are their costs? Are there opportunities to obtain a fee waiver by doing work on campus? What are their total costs including living expenses? Is it a number that you'd feel comfortable paying back?

What about the culture of the programs? How does studying under each of these professors make you feel? Do the classes that have been recently offer excite you? I wouldn't consider rank here because Master programs aren't ranked. A school that is ranked highly for their undergrad programs might not be as highly regarded for certain PHD programs and there are programs that might be incredibly well regarded in certain fields for their Ph.D. program but might not be as highly regarded overall. How do you feel about doing an internship vs completing a thesis?

Jobs are a bit more tricky. It's likely that you'll need to obtain a Ph.D. in order to stand a chance to obtain a tenure track position. However, these jobs are relatively rare and will to some extent be based on the experiences you obtain while going to obtain your Ph.D. I think it's wise to consider this now, but I wouldn't bank on obtaining a specific job in a specific location. As such, I think this might be a better question to ask if you do decide to continue on to obtain a Ph.D. later on in life. If you decide that a Ph.D. isn't right for you, there are a number of jobs that don't require more advanced studying.

 

[Lena Xu]

On 3/17/2019 at 2:27 AM, Warelin said:

I think there are a number of different factors you have to consider here. 

Let's start with the simplest of them all. You have to think not only about the schools but about their location as well. NYU is in a huge city and it's likely that a fair amount of places will always be crowded. I imagine that rent here will be the highest and the odds of finding an affordable studio close to the university is lower than the chances of finding it in Rochester or Penn State. How do you feel about living with roommates? How do you feel about very big constant crowds? How do you feel about not being able to partake in the entire culture of the city? On the opposite end, Penn State is located in rural Pennsylvania. As such, I imagine a fair amount of life in there revolves around the College. Depending on the time of year, there might be a lot to do, but if it's like other college towns, it might mean that there's very little to do during the summer. Are you able to handle quietness when there might not be much to do. Rochester is somewhere in between the two but doesn't have anywhere near the transportation system that NYC does. A car in Rochester may or may not be needed depending on how far within it you want to go.

I don't think graduate programs consider where you obtained your Master's from as something they give much weight to. I also don't think having thesis experience is something they consider important either. There are plenty of people that have accepted into a Ph.D. program without any thesis experience. However, as someone with a Master's degree, certain programs might have higher admissions standards they set for you. They might expect you to show your interest in the profession in certain ways. This might mean that they could expect any, some, all or none of the following: teaching experience, higher test scores, experience related to the major field you're interested in, conference experience, etc. The thought process there is that you've had 1-2 more years to develop your interests and as such, they want to make sure that everyone is on level playing grounds.

What are their costs? Are there opportunities to obtain a fee waiver by doing work on campus? What are their total costs including living expenses? Is it a number that you'd feel comfortable paying back?

What about the culture of the programs? How does studying under each of these professors make you feel? Do the classes that have been recently offer excite you? I wouldn't consider rank here because Master programs aren't ranked. A school that is ranked highly for their undergrad programs might not be as highly regarded for certain PHD programs and there are programs that might be incredibly well regarded in certain fields for their Ph.D. program but might not be as highly regarded overall. How do you feel about doing an internship vs completing a thesis?

Jobs are a bit more tricky. It's likely that you'll need to obtain a Ph.D. in order to stand a chance to obtain a tenure track position. However, these jobs are relatively rare and will to some extent be based on the experiences you obtain while going to obtain your Ph.D. I think it's wise to consider this now, but I wouldn't bank on obtaining a specific job in a specific location. As such, I think this might be a better question to ask if you do decide to continue on to obtain a Ph.D. later on in life. If you decide that a Ph.D. isn't right for you, there are a number of jobs that don't require more advanced studying.

 

Hello, Warelin, thank you so much! Thanks for giving me such good advice, and these questions are really thought-provoking. After I read through your reply, I spent my weekend thinking about the questions you put forward to let me think about. I haven't finalized my decision yet, but I have decided to make a sheet and consider those factors you mentioned above. Again, thank you very much!