When Should You Consider Grad School?
You’re holding your diploma and swinging around your graduation cap, ecstatic to have made it through your undergraduate years with a bachelors degree, but considering jumping right back into the fire to get a masters or PhD. Or, you’re still looking for your first college, and you think your career path will require more than the usual schooling out of you, so you’ll need to have a grad school plan too. Maybe you’re already a working professional, but you think you need to go back to school to acquire more skills.
Any of those scenarios might be a reason you decide to stick around in academia longer than normal and attend a grad school. While grad school is a large time and financial commitment, it can be very beneficial in a lot of scenarios, such as:
- Career Advancement: You need a higher degree to move up the ladder to positions you want.
- Changing Careers: That midlife crisis hit and you want to try something different, so you need to go back to school.
- Research: If you want to be on the forefront of research in your subject, then grad school could be the move.
- Personal Growth: Maybe you just want to learn more for the sake of learning!
- Career Necessity: Some career paths require you to get advanced degrees that are only attained at grad school.
- Resume Building: It might help you on the job market or within the job you’re working to have a grad school degree.
What Grad School Should You Choose?
So you’ve decided that you want to go to grad school. Now what? There are a lot of options out there, and it can be intimidating to know where to start.
First you need to decide what subject you want to study, and evaluate how it will help you achieve your life goals. Once you’ve decided on your subject area, then it’s time to see what grad schools have the best programs for that particular field.
Looking for grad schools is different from looking for colleges to get your undergraduate degree. There are more particular programs, more specialties, less faculty, and smaller class sizes. While there are grad schools that are great in numerous subjects, it is more important that you find a school that is going to help you achieve your goals in your subject area.
So if you decide that grad school is the best move for your future, but don’t know where to begin, then you’re in the right place! We’ll be taking a look at the best grad schools out there, organizing it by 3 of the most popular subject areas for graduate students.
Top Grad Schools
Psychology
Stanford University
Location: Stanford, California
Graduate Student Population: 9,300
Acceptance rate: 5-7%
Stanford University’s grad school is one of the best out there, especially for the field of psychology. Getting admitted is very difficult, but the college’s psychology program has performed groundbreaking research and contributed a lot to the field.
Their interdisciplinary connection between neuroscience, behavioral science, and cognitive psychology is noteworthy, and students have access to the Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory where students can examine the connection between physiological processes and psychological states.
University of Illinois
Location: Urbana-Champaign, Illinois
Graduate Student Population: 17,600
Acceptance Rate: 16-20%
The University of Illinois is highly regarded for its psychology grad school because of its expertise in areas like quantitative psychology and industrial-organized psychology. You’ll be prepared to use statistics well and understand how psychology plays into the workplace.
Illinois also hosts the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, where students work together on projects that cross different fields like psychology, engineering, neuroscience.
Duke University
Location: Durham, North Carolina
Graduate Student Population: 9,000
Acceptance Rate: 10-12%
If you’re interested in the intersection of psychology and health, then Duke is a great grad school option for you. Their grad school is known for its health psychology focus and how their research integrates into the health sciences. Duke’s prestigious medical school and hospital are just down the road, providing great opportunities for research and real applications.
The Duke Institute for Brain Science is a place where students can help research brain function and how it impacts behavior. You can be a part of new research on anything from high-resolution brain scans to autism screening apps.
Business Administration
University of Virginia
Location: Charlottesville, Virginia
Graduate Student Population: 900 (MBA program)
Acceptance Rate: 26%
Virginia hosts the Darden School of Business, which has a strong case method teaching approach that instills critical thinking and practical problem solving skills in students. You’ll be molded into a good leader if you attend this program, and you’ll have a small, close community to do it with.
Darden has an intense first year of the program that provides real world experience. Students are split into teams, and then they are tasked with solving real business problems to get hands-on experience they can apply to real situations.
University of Chicago
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Graduate Student Population: 3,500 (MBA)
Acceptance Rate: 23%
One of the top places to learn business in the nation, the University of Chicago’s grad school is a great choice for an MBA. Their program emphasizes analytics and data-driven decisions and opens the door for students to find jobs in a variety of fields like finance, consulting, and technology. Their robust alumni network and career services help with that as well.
The Booth School of Business also has a unique, mandatory leadership course called Leadership Exploration and Development (LEAD). This helps students develop their leadership skills through experience and outside critique.
University of North Carolina
Location: Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Graduate Student Population: 1,200 (MBA)
Acceptance Rate: 45%
The MBA program at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School is a place of collaboration and leadership development. The unique STAR program (Student Teams Achieving Results) gives MBA students practical experience by pairing students into teams that work on consulting projects for actual companies.
Biology
Johns Hopkins University
Location: Baltimore, Maryland
Graduate Student Population: 20,000
Acceptance Rate: 11%
One of the top names in medical research in the world, Johns Hopkins University is the place to study biology and biomedical sciences. Their world class hospital and Applied Physics laboratory give students wonderful opportunities to research, collaborate, and gain hands-on experience. The biology program at Johns Hopkins is especially known for its contributions to biochemistry, molecular and cellular biology, and neuroscience.
Because of the name recognition, the proximity to top research institutions and biotech companies, and unparalleled funding, Johns Hopkins gives students a great chance for rapid career advancement and meaningful employment.
University of California – San Francisco
Location: San Francisco, California
Graduate Student Population: 3,100
Acceptance Rate: 10%
UCSF is dedicated exclusively to health sciences, meaning it is a leading grad school for biology and biomedical research. They are especially known for their work in genetics, genomics, and cell biology.
Their Mission Bay campus has state-of-the-art facilities and equipment for students to research and learn. The thematic areas of study for their biomedical sciences program are:
- Cancer Biology and Cell Signaling
- Developmental and Stem Cell Biology
- Human Genetics
- Immunology
- Neurobiology
- Tissue/Organ Biology and Endocrinology
- Vascular and Cardiac Biology
- Virology and Microbial Pathogenesis
University of Texas – Austin
Location: Austin, Texas
Graduate Student Population: 11,000
Acceptance Rate: 32%
UT Austin is a great biology grad school, and it is especially strong in the areas of:
- Ecology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Molecular Biology
- Molecular Biology
- Biotechnology
They are a large school, with a large research community in a diversity of fields, meaning that there are a lot of possibilities for students interested in biological research.
UT Austin houses the one-of-a-kind Brackenridge Field Laboratory, which is an outdoor research laboratory that lets students get their hands dirty (so to speak) in ecological and environmental research. It has an incredible diversity of habitats and ecosystems, making it a fantastic research facility.
…And So Many More!
We only covered three subjects in this article, but there are countless more degree opportunities out there for students looking to enter grad school! As you research, you’ll likely see some of the names on this list appear for more than one subject, but every grad school has different specialities that can help you achieve your dream job.
We hope that this helps you begin planning for your life post-undergraduate degree. Happy school hunting!
