PEACE CORPS - Masters International or post-grad?

[SunWukong]

I was recently accepted as a Masters International student at Antioch University New England. I am starting to have second thoughts about that, though. These are my options:

 

1. Masters International - do a year of my masters, ship off to peace corps for two years of service (gives me 9-12 free credits and an $8,000 bonus when I get back) then do the last year of my Masters/my thesis.

 

2. Do 2 years of my masters all at once. Pay more upfront, but I get 3 more electives to gain skills, I graduate with my cohort, and I do 2 internships. THEN do 2 years of peace corps service; miss out on the free credits but still get the $8k.

 

Thoughts?

[rising_star]

Why are you having second thoughts about the Masters International program? You don't really say what your concerns are about the program. Also, what are the 3 additional electives you could/would take if you did the master's all at once?

[SunWukong]

My concerns are that if I do Masters International program, instead of getting my Masters and THEN doing the Peace corps, 1. I wouldn't have the 2 internships I'd have otherwise, 2. I would get one less elective, and 3. I wouldn't graduate with my cohort.

If I DO the Masters International bit, I get 4 electives. If I don't, I get 5 electives. There are already more electives I want to take than fit into my program. These are the ones I am interested in:

Vertebrate Ecology - Ornithology
GIS
Proposal Writing and Project Management
Qualitative and Quantitative Research Design Techniques
Comparative Ecological Analysis
Science Teaching Methods
Avian Nesting Ecology
Environmental Law
Natural Resource Inventory - Wildlife
Wildlife and Forest Management

[rising_star]

1) Why is it so important for you to graduate with your cohort? 

2) Are all of those courses offered on a regular basis? I ask because there are typically many more courses in the academic catalog than are offered during the course of a two year degree. In all honesty, I don't think you should be choosing a degree based on whether or not you get to take one additional elective.

3) You should be thinking about outcomes, that is what your career will look like with each degree.

[kasbah]

I would advise against doing your Master's and immediately joining Peace Corps. I think you will lose a lot of the momentum and networking that you will have coming out of a graduate degree program. Your Peace Corps service will undoubtedly have a slow start -- between staging, pre-service training, and those first few awkward months in site, everyone's does. I'm a current PCV now, and I just think it would be hard psychologically to handle that. 

As far as the electives you want to take, you can definitely learn "Proposal Writing and Project Management" and "Qualitative and Quantitative Research Design Techniques" on the job in the Peace Corps. 

I would recommend either doing the MI or doing Peace Corps first and go to a grad school afterwards on a Coverdell Fellowship. Does Antioch have a Coverdell program?

[irapplicant1776]

On 3/6/2016 at 6:17 AM, kasbah said:

I would advise against doing your Master's and immediately joining Peace Corps. I think you will lose a lot of the momentum and networking that you will have coming out of a graduate degree program. Your Peace Corps service will undoubtedly have a slow start -- between staging, pre-service training, and those first few awkward months in site, everyone's does. I'm a current PCV now, and I just think it would be hard psychologically to handle that. 

As far as the electives you want to take, you can definitely learn "Proposal Writing and Project Management" and "Qualitative and Quantitative Research Design Techniques" on the job in the Peace Corps. 

I would recommend either doing the MI or doing Peace Corps first and go to a grad school afterwards on a Coverdell Fellowship. Does Antioch have a Coverdell program?

Agreed. Additionally, my Peace Corps experience has shaped my goals for my Master's degree, and has helped me get into better schools with significant financial aid.