Grad School or Bust

As a senior in college I've struggled with the fact that I will be graduating in May and must begin to make big kid decisions. Do I join the workforce? Do I go to graduate school? Should I put grad school off for a year?

After much debate, I have decided that I want to go to grad school and being in the Fall 2010 semester. One decision down...many more to go. Next step: what school do I want to go to? My top two choices are Georgetown and American in Washington DC. I have my eye on these schools for several reasons. One is the curriculum. I was immediately drawn to Georgetown's Master's in Public Relations and Corporate Communications. There are many courses to choose from and many sound very interesting, like the crisis communications course. This would definitely be a useful class.

American has a good reputation as well. My internship advisor from this summer completed his master's degree at American. By talking with him and hearing his opinion of the university I became interested. It is always helpful to hear from someone who has firsthand experience and give both positives and negatives for me to consider.

The DC area also hold another draw for me. Over the summer I met with the Vice President of Corporate Communications and Creative Services of Altegrity, Michael John. He is a very accomplished man, having spent many years in the Navy, some of which were spent in public affairs. He was also a speech writer and has worked with John McCain. He spoke with me about the communications field, grad school, etc. He basically offered me a paid internship if I end up coming to the DC area for grad school. I am extremely interested in this internship because I would have an opportunity to learn more about the communications field. I feel that Michael John would be a fantastic person to learn from. This would also help me get my foot in the door and hopefully lead to a job opportunity at some point (fingers crossed!).

But back to grad school. In October I am taking the Graduate Record Exam (GRE). Hopefully that goes well and my scores are fairly good. It is going to be a stressful semester because of studying and taking the GRE as well as trying to come up with a list of schools I want to apply too. And of course the application process will not be easy.

I am trying to remain optimistic about everything and hope that I will get into at least one of my top two schools. Ideally, I would like to know what I am doing before graduation so I can breathe a little sigh of relief.