The thing with grad school is that it’s fun before and after, rarely during. The joy of getting accepted and the anticipation of starting a new chapter can surely make one feel optimistic; so can successfully ending said chapter. However, in order to reach the finish line, the student typically has to spend countless hours and sleepless nights working towards their goal.
But if grad school is nothing but torture, why would individuals choose to endure it, you might wonder? Well, needless to say, their reasons differ with each person, but experts believe that some are more valid than others.
"A poor reason for someone to choose graduate education is because they loved undergrad and they want to continue being a consumer, rather than a generator, of knowledge," the dean of the University of Washington Graduate School, Joy Williamson-Lott, told the U.S. News, pointing out that college students typically focus primarily on absorbing the existing information rather than conducting research and contributing to creating it, which is what grad students do.
Other poor reasons to start grad school, according to experts, include staying on the path of education just because a mentor said that one should or doing it for the sole purpose of seeking career exploration opportunities.
However, as president emeritus at Missouri State University, Mike Nietzel, pointed out to the U.S. News, there are professions and occupations that not only favor candidates with a graduate degree, but require them to have one. “For individuals who are convinced and determined that this is what they want to do, not only is graduate school a good choice, it's a necessary choice for them to pursue,” he said.
Once the decision to start grad school has been made—hopefully for all the right reasons—another one follows of choosing the right one to attend. The factors that can influence this big step also depend on each individual, but, according to an online survey carried out by a student loan provider, the main ones are the school’s quality and convenience of its location.
Roughly 86% of respondents chose their grad school based on quality and convenience, pointing out that the school’s prestige, its academic program, and flexible coursework all play important roles, too.
When it comes to the list of schools to choose from, the top options really depend on the field of one’s interests. According to the U.S. News rankings, the top business schools, for instance, include the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and University of Pennsylvania respectively.
For those seeking a medical education, the top choices reportedly are Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, or University of Pennsylvania, while for people interested in law-focused studies, it’s Stanford University, Yale University, and University of Chicago that comprise the top three.
For those willing to relocate and move cities or even countries, the global statistics of top universities propose two main destinations—the US and the UK. Based on the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2024, seven out of ten of the world’s best universities are located in the former, while the remaining three are all in the latter country.
The top five, according to the list, are University of Oxford (UK), Stanford University (US), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US), Harvard University (US), and University of Cambridge (UK).
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A report—though, a roughly 15-year-old one, which is important to note—found that when it comes to graduate degrees, women and men tend to opt for different directions.
For instance, when it comes to master’s degrees favored by men, the list was topped by Business Administration and Management (22.3%), followed not-so-closely by Electrical, Electronics and Communication Engineering (2.8%), and Education Leadership and Administration (2.7%), Business and Commerce (2.5%), and Education (2.2%).
For women, the number one was also Business Administration (11.4%), but it preceded Education (5.1%), Social Work (4.2%), Elementary Education (3.8%), and left Curriculum and Instruction (3.6%) fifth on the list.
Since then, over the decade between 2010 and 2020, the top five subjects for a master’s degree remained the same with business, education, health, computer and information sciences, and public administration together with social services lining up respectively. (The list remained the same for the following—2020/21 school year—too; that year, more than 200,000 students got their master’s degree in business.)
Individuals taking it one step further and seeking a doctor’s degree reportedly chose health, law, education, engineering, and biological or biomedical sciences as their go-to options.