This Spring Break, I spent some time researching graduate school programs, and visiting graduate schools. Ever since I started my service learning class at the middle school, I’ve been more and more interested in Educational Psychology masters programs.
I started my research by exploring the U.S News & World Report Best Graduate School Rankings online. This site shows you the top ten programs, organized by field of study (i.e. Business, Education, Medicine, Social Sciences, Law). After I got the names of some top rated programs, I visited the websites of each specific program, and read a little bit more about what each program entails.After exploring a few different schools and their programs, I began to examine their locations-- cities, states, weather, population, etc. Although this helped me narrow down programs I was interested in, I still felt that I didn’t quite have a good vision of each program.
I started to think about how I made the decision to come to IU; at the time it just made complete sense to me. The campus, community, and programs just felt like home-- I fell in love with the culture of being a Hoosier, something that you cannot quite experience from a website, or map quest-- you have to see to understand.
I think in the graduate school search, it’s really important to visit the actual school, to get a feeling for the culture. Although it is really important to be in a top ranked program, I also think that the cohort and community you are surrounded by has an equal impact. After all, those two factors are what can shape your experience. So, I have decided that my goal by the end of this summer is to visit as many schools I am interested in as possible-- stay tuned!
Posted by Anne
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