Past Grad Experience: Help or Hurt Admission Chances?

[ElizabethWV]

I entered grad school directly out of undergrad back in 2005. I spent one year in the program then left for a variety of reasons. I did very well, had a 4.0 GPA and held a research assistantship. It was the pilot year of the program at a small state school in Louisiana and Katrina hit a few weeks after I moved down. The program lost some funding and professors, and was just generally not a good fit for me, so I did not return for a second year. It was a historic preservation-type program, and I am currently applying to MSW programs (undergrad in Sociology). I explained in my SOP my reasons for leaving the past program, including realizing that I was more interested in the actual people than their material culture. After returning from my year of grad school, I did a year of AmeriCorps in the area that I am applying for my MSW.

I feel like this could kind of go either way. It shows that I am capable of graduate-level work, but might give the impression that I can't commit.

What do you guys think?

[fuzzylogician]

Reading your post, you've managed to convince me that your previous experience should not hurt your admissions chances. If your SOP presents events in a similar fashion, I think you should be OK. The reasons you give for leaving, the sequence of events following your leaving and your new interests sound very reasonable, so I don't think adcoms have a reason to think that you are not serious or that you are likely to drop out again.