02/22/16
Parents,
Mid-semester grades will soon be posted. In some cases, these grades are based on a small percent of the final points in a class. In these cases, students have a lot of opportunity to recover. But I have also seen students do the same thing this semester that they did last semester. Unfortunately, these students are likely to get the same results. I teach a recovery class for students in academic difficulty. Every class, 10-15 percent of the class doesn’t show up and loses two-thirds of the points that week. I wish I knew why students don’t seem to care and are wasting their futures.
You should ask your student if he/she has made an advising appointment. Although registration is still some time in the future, getting an advising appointment now will be much easier.
Students should have elected their major by now. They really need to make this decision before they register, because they will need to sign up for classes in their major next fall.
A number of you have asked about graduate school, so I thought I would spend some time on this topic this week.
Students can get a very good job with a bachelor’s degree in engineering. Most of our students start their engineering careers directly after they receive their bachelor’s degree.
Virtually every company will help their engineering employees receive a master’s degree while they are working full time. Companies will pay most if not all of the cost of a graduate degree. These programs consist of evening and weekend classes.
When our students graduate, they will move from a community of 29,000 people their age to an environment where they have few opportunities to interact with others their same age. As a result, a master’s program catering to full time professionals becomes a social, as well as an academic experience.
My advice to our graduates is to find a master’s degree program that will offer the strongest personal networks. Most part-time master’s programs function as a cohort. Students take classes together over a three year span of time. Students in the cohort become very close. As a result, a student’s classmates can become a valuable network if the program has a strong acceptance criterion.
Students may also wish to continue their graduate work immediately after their bachelor’s degree. There are several reasons students may want to go this route.
■They want to specialize in a specific area.
■They want to pursue an academic career.
■They believe that additional course work will improve their engineering skills.
■They want to use their engineering degree as a platform for a profession (e.g. medicine, law).
I have seen students stay on to graduate school, because they just don’t want to get a job. This is not a good reason to go to graduate school, and these students are wasting their time and often don’t get their degrees.
Students who do stay in college for a graduate degree can expect to receive an assistantship which will pay for most of their graduate education. Assistantships require 20 hours of work per week, generally on a research project. If a student doesn’t receive an assistantship, that might be a good indicator that the student should not pursue a graduate degree immediately after graduation.
Master’s degrees can theoretically be done in one year, but most students take two years to complete their degrees. Engineering master’s degrees generally require a thesis or problem report.
Should a student go to graduate school directly, their undergraduate GPA will be critical in being accepted. Generally a 3.00 GPA will get a student into many graduate schools. Students with lower GPA’s may be accepted on a provisional basis. Students who go to graduate school on a part-time basis while working full time will find that their work experience and test scores will be more important in the acceptance decision.
Should students want to get a PhD and go the academic route, they will probably want to go to another school for their graduate work. In many cases, a student will go directly into a PhD program.
I hope this helps. I predict that most of our students will eventually get a master’s degree. Most of these will be completed while they are working. However they get their master’s degree, they should not need much support from you.
Let me close with the story of Jeff. Jeff is from New Jersey. He came to WVU not knowing anyone. What made it especially tough for Jeff was that his father died unexpectedly just before he started classes his freshman year. Just imagine how tough it was for him to leave home.
Jeff adjusted quickly to the open, friendly environment of our campus. He quickly made friends. During his sophomore year, Jeff was elected as a Student Governor. He also became very involved in the Mountaineer Maniacs. Throughout college, Jeff became very good at managing his time. He will tell you he thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of college life. But he also excelled academically. He graduated with a GPA of 3.98.
Jeff went on to graduate school in health care management. He completed his master’s as the top student in the best graduate school in the nation. Now a year out of graduate school, Jeff is a senior healthcare consultant. His salary is over $100,000. Jeff’s graduate work was critical to the career path he has chosen.