Taking a year off before grad school?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Okay, here’s the situation: I’m 25, dropped out of high school when I was 15, got my GED and started college when I was 19. I’ll be getting my BA this spring. It’s taken six years because I went part-time for the first two years and I’ve switched majors a few times. What I want to do, ultimately, is to teach college. I don’t have really high aspirations with this - I think I’d be pretty happy teaching community college (based on my experiences as a student at one, and the professors I knew there), but I really want to get a Ph.D., eventually.

I’ve been working full time supporting myself the entire time I’ve been in school. My family is not supportive at all. They think that I’m wasting my time in college and even trying to talk to them about my future is like pulling teeth. Since no one else in my family has gone to college, their idea of useful advice is “Well, why don’t you just drop out and try to become a manager at a big box store?” Riiight. Anyway, I’m doing pretty well in school and my academic advisor is pushing me pretty hard to just go straight to grad school - she’s suggesting that I apply to places like Columbia and NYU and other big name schools. But I’m really thinking that it might be best for me to take a year off first. I’m pretty burned out right now, and I miss being able to have some sort of a life that isn’t just work-school-sleep, work-school-sleep. I was laid off at the beginning of the year, and my finances are still pretty rocky - I’m not sure I can even afford to take the GRE right now. I’d like to take a year off, work, save some money and then try grad school. On the other hand, all the professors and advisors I’ve talked to at my school say that if I wait it’ll be really hard to go back, and I shouldn’t “waste time just working a bad job” in between.

So what are your experiences? Is it hard to take a year off and then go to grad school? Did you do it? Was it worth it? Or is it best to just suck it up and plow straight through? Thank you all in advance for any advice or wisdom you’ve got to share.

2

I took two years off before starting grad school, and worked a pretty shitty job during that period – mostly I was just hanging out, smoking dope, and reading a lot. Of course, I was only 21 when I graduated from college.

No regrets, though. If you’re burned out – give yourself a chance to recharge.

3

Good on you for not letting your family discourage you.

I took a year between undergrad and grad school, and I didn’t find “going back” all that difficult. It does take a while to get back into the “academic” mindset, but as long as you don’t let your brains rot in the year inbetween it should be fine. And it is nice to get out of academia for a bit. Particularly since grad school is a lot more intense than undergrad. One of my friends did come straight to grad school and she was pretty burnt out by the end of the year; wouldn’t touch PhD applications with a barge pole (we were in an MA program). I taught for my interim year and it was fine - and the experience I built up then definitely helped me get a job after getting my MA.

4

Based not on my own experiences ( I spent 13 years accumulating ~240 semester units and no degree :wink: ), but on that of several friends, I’d generally recommend plowing through. If finances and burn-out are severe enough, that might have to be the deciding factor. However inertia is a powerful force for most folks and right now it will help you continue in academia. A year from now it will be actively working against you.

5

If you wait a year, the schools you are applying to will want to know what you’ve been doing since you graduated. If it’s not a worthwhile job, and particularly if it isn’t related to your field of study, they may worry that you aren’t serious about that field.

Keep in mind that graduate programs are very different from area to area. What are you planning on studying? I’m basing my response off of experience with chemistry grad school.

Also, if you want to teach at a 2-year college, many just require a master’s degree. (This amuses me slightly because many master’s degrees are a complete joke.)

Also keep in mind that you’ll have the whole summer to unwind a bit. You won’t need to be gathering money for the next year of school. Grad school (usually) pays (if you’re getting a Ph.D). It’s not a lot for the amount of work you put in, but for me a $25,000 stipend seemed huge.

6

I took a year off. I don’t regret it, but I had a lot of stuff I wanted to do that didn’t involve school. The only problem I had was that it was very difficult to shift back into the academic life. But if you’re burnt out now, grad school is going to make it much, much worse. Ultimately, I come down on the side of taking a year off. It sounds like you have the dedication necessary to get back to work when your year is up.

Also, you shouldn’t go to into a graduate program that doesn’t provide you some sort of stipend. I’m in a MA program right now, and I’m a TA. It pays for my education with a $12K/year stipend. What are you interested in pursuing? I know that my experience as an English tutor at various academic/age levels helped when I was being considered…

7

Thanks for all the responses. I’m an English major and that’s what I plan on teaching. If I do take a year off, I plan to get a temporary teaching certificate, which will allow me to teach in public schools for 3 years before I have to get any further certification. If for any reason I can’t teach for that year, I’m not sure exactly what I’d do. I know that a lot of companies in this area are looking for English majors to work in their marketing departments. Ads for these jobs come into our career services center on a regular basis, and some companies like Disney come to our campus recruiting English majors twice a year. I have two years of experience working a job that required a lot of promotional and some technical writing, so I hope that experience would help me if that’s the route I had to take.

8

This is true. I have an MA and am currently teaching at community colleges.

Depending on what field you’re in, a lot of the top-tier schools no longer have seperate MA programs, but will suck you in for a 6-year MA-PhD program. UChicago, for example, got rid of all their seperate MA programs in the humanities and instead created a 1-year intensive MA in the Humanities program. The individual departments now just have MA-PhD programs.

I will also say it definitely pays (in my experience) to have an MA from a better-known school. Most community colleges around Chicago will only hire you if you have the specific degree in the specific field you are applying to teach, but they make an exception for Humanities MAs from UChicago. This is why I’ve been offered classes such as “Western Civ” when my major is English literature.

9

Why not get a job teaching English as a foreign language abroad? You might be able to save some money to help the finances; live in another country, which would likely help with the burn-out problem; and have something on the resume that’s connected to your eventual academic plans, which you can point out on the applications for grad school, to show that you’re still focused on the teaching aspect.

Me, I’m a big supporter of the year away (rather than the year off). If you can swing it, I’d do it. I wish I had, instead of ploughing through 10 years straight university.

10

Most of the people in my program took a year or more off before coming to grad school (I didn’t, though). I’d say it’s a fine thing to do, as long as you’re doing something relevant or useful during the year.

11

Since your eventual plans focus on teaching, and you could teach during your year off, that sounds like a pretty good plan. It will also help you be in a more secure financial position for the long trek to the Ph.D. Without family support, it will make your life easier if you start grad school with a little money in the bank.

12

I took two years off. I couldn’t afford to go to grad school yet, and I got engaged right after graduation, so we got married and I worked while he finished his BA. Then he got a job where I wanted to go to grad school (Silicon Valley) and basically put me through it. This worked out great for me, because it was so expensive to live there–I could afford to get a part-time job in my field that paid very little, and concentrate entirely on school, while we lived on his salary.

However, I was getting an MLIS–a degree where currently relatively few people are coming in straight from an undergrad degree. Most of the people in my program were older than I was.

It worked great for me; I was very ready to jump back into an academic environment, and I discovered that somehow or other I had become much better at writing papers and so on. For a lit major at an eminent university during my undergrad years, I had not been very good at what I was supposed to be doing.

13

I had been planning on going straight into grad school, but I’m going to have to take a year off so that I will have finished my honors thesis when I apply (I’m probably going to go for musicology, and I don’t have any other examples of research papers that are any good). I have no idea what I’m going to do next year; I really need to find something useful to do.

14

You might be able to apply now, get accepted, then defer enrollment for a year.

15

I took a year off between my MS and PhD to work in engineering consulting. I felt like it was a great move for me for several reasons. First, having a 9-to-5 job for the first time really put into perspective how strange the “undergrad lifestyle” that you get accustomed to (for example, working at all hours of the night and napping during the day) truly is. Getting on a schedule that the rest of the world used was defintely a plus. Second, the money helped. Third, I really didn’t like working for a consulting company that much, but that’s where 90% of the jobs in my field are. It was good that I found out early, that way I know I want to stay in academia.

I think taking a year off to teach is a great idea. I can’t imagine any admissions committees looking down on that. BUT, if you really want to impress that crap out of them, you should consider applying for Teach for America. It’s the new Peace Corp, without the granola types. (I don’t mean to sound cynical here. It’s both a great program *and * a way to impress others.)

16

Of course you can take a year off before grad school. Many graduate programs want their candidates to have a few years’ experience working in their field before they apply, anyways–it demonstrates that you are serious about wanting to work in that field.

I can relate to a lot of your OP. I came straight from high school as an emancipated minor to college as a financially independent student, and it took me six years to get my Bachelors as well. Now, I’m freaking exhausted. Not only that, but up until I graduated with my degree, I had a really narrow idea of what my options are. I now realize the sky’s the limit.

Before I commit myself to any particular program, I am going to explore my options and find out what I can be truly passionate about. At the moment, I’m doing a bilingual job for a nonprofit, and that is to prepare me for a human rights/public policy volunteer internship I want to do in Ecuador next year. Why? Because I’m curious what a human rights or public policy job would look and be like.

That way, when it comes time to hand in those graduate school applications, I will know that I can be committed and excited about Field X, without a shred of doubt that it is what I want out of my life.

I think this all comes down to a broader issue, which is that our society thinks in a very linear and unflexible way when it comes to education and careers. It is anticipated that you will study to do X, then you go to graduate school immediately so you can hurry up and ‘‘get on’’ with life.

Well, I’m 24 years old, I JUST got my first degree, and I don’t think my life will have no meaning until I have my final degree. There is so much good I can do right now, just playing around and exploring my interests. I’m making $13.50 an hour which is more than I’ve ever made in my whole life, and I know enough wealthy people to know a raise in your paycheck doesn’t mean jack shit when it comes to personal happiness. If I never made more money, I would be content, as long as I feel like I am bringing some good to the world each and every day. My life does not begin with my Ph.D. or my first kid or my first house–my life is now and I’m happy just experiencing it as it comes.

My point is, there is no right or wrong decision for you here. If you feel like taking a break, take a break. You don’t owe anything to anyone but yourself, and this is a decision that’s yours to make. If you make your employment choices well, and it sounds as though you will, your time off will only help your long-term career and graduate school prospects.

17

Going straight through is a good plan… if you are sure you know what you want to study and you’re sure you want to teach.

Taking some time off is a good plan… if you are taking the time off to do something you believe it is important to do. It sounds like you are motivated to teach, so pursuing that sounds like a good idea. The marketing thing to me sounds like you view it as something just to fill up a year or two. It doesn’t strike me as being a very fulfilling thing to put everything you’ve worked so hard to accomplish – and will hope to accomplish – on hold for a decent amount of time just so you can do a marketing job that you don’t really want to do.

It is apparent that you’ve learned that settling for the adequate doesn’t really lead to great rewards. I can only say that if you do feel you need a little bit of a break from school, you actually do something to put that time to its best use.

18

I took 4 years off to have adventures in Asia before going back for an MBA. In retrospect, going back a year or two earlier would have probably been better. Regardless, taking that time off was great.

Some grad schools will accept you but defer the start date by a year. That way, you can apply, GRE’s, etc while still in the mindset, and also have a fixed plan for your time off.

The trouble with just taking time off is not necessarily inertia but you just might miss the test dates required or program application dates for the next cycle, and have to wait a year because of missing the window.

19

I took a year off before grad school to retake the GRE and hone my grad-school applications a bit. It was a hugely worthwhile experience. I stayed in the area where I went to college, so I continued the volunteer work that I enjoyed and was good for my resume. I also took some classes through university extension, to keep my hand in the academic world and to take the developmental psych class I never got around to as an undergrad. This turned out to be hugely beneficial for grad school, since the classes were three hours long and in the evenings, just like most of the classes were in my master’s program. I got to to know early what it felt like to work a whole day and then go to class.

20

Some schools will defer admission, but many will not. It is rare for the better chem programs to allow it except in extraordinary circumstances (i.e. you got a Fulbright.) Best to find out beforehand.