Grad School? Will it Ever End? | The Reschool'd Podcast

Welcome to the Reschooled Podcast, the show that discusses all the things that schools

may have missed with your hosts, AJ Couttee and Jason Gordon. Hey everyone, we're back. We are the Reschooled Podcast, the show that discusses the things

that schools may not have prepared you for. As always, I'm AJ. Across from me, Jason. Jason

How are you doing today? Doing great, AJ. Man, it is coming down to that time

I'm excited for the end of the semester, beginning of the next one. But what about you? Yep

I've already, you know, I'm being proactive this time. I'm already arranging my next semester syllabi

So, yeah, I'm getting in that zone. Yeah, well, that would make sense because I'm definitely not

I usually wait until probably the few days before class starts to get all that stuff together

Well, I've learned some things since COVID and since we're going back into the normal semester, the normal face to face classes, I've made some corrections to my syllabus, implemented some of these techniques I've used during COVID and certainly gotten rid of a lot of them to try to make it a little better

We'll see how it works out this semester. Well, you know, we are on episode what, 23, 22, somewhere on there

I can't remember what it is, but I think it's 22. We are on that and we've done 21 previous to this and we've listened to most of them

Is there something that you've learned about yourself during this process? Absolutely

I talk slower than I thought I did, which I already knew I talk slowly, right

I mean, by virtue of where I grew up, but I talk slower than I thought I did

So I've tried to pick that pace up just a little bit. I say um too much like I just did

I'm getting a little better at that. But that and I've realized I really enjoy this

This is so much fun. I'm astonished at how many times we say absolutely in a podcast

I mean, and the listeners don't get to see much of it because I typically cut some of them out, too

But we say that a lot. Yeah. And I constantly think, do I say it that much in real life

That's what I'm afraid of is like in class to actually say it that much. Well, I warn my students always because I do follow that model that I mentioned about

I always tell you what I'm going to tell you, tell you, and then tell you what I told you. And I warn students, I repeat myself a lot because this is my way of delivering information

And I find myself doing it here a little bit too much. No, it's good for the listeners, though

I mean, I love that. I told my wife about that the other day in the car

We were talking about it. I said, yeah, he said this thing about you tell him what you want, you're going to tell him, you tell him and he tell him what you said

I was like, that's a really interesting kind of concept because you don't think of it in that way. Well, before we jump in, I do want to remind everybody, please, we want to hear from you guys

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Yeah, man, that's what we want to hear. We want to hear from you

That's the whole purpose of doing this. Remember, we said that from the very beginning. Our goal is to just minimum help one person

And the more we can hear back from you all saying that we did some kind of help, that's all we ever need and that's all we ever want

Because like Jason said, we're having fun with this. We're loving this. This is so much fun to us

Today's episode, we are going to be talking about something that may be on the mind of a lot of college students

may not be on the mind of some of them. We're going to be talking about graduate school

What comes after finishing up undergrad? What comes after getting your bachelor's

Does that sound good to you, Jason? Sure. I'm excited about that one

Well, let's jump into our quick question real quick. And this one, I want you to think back

I want you to think back to when you were in graduate school. How was life different in graduate school than it was in undergrad

Oh, wow. It was way different, I would say. See, I've been to three different graduate schools

So you have a lot of two things. Right. And it's been at different points and times in life

You know, during one of them, I was married with children. One of them, I was married without children

And one of them, I was single. I met my wife at the end. Right

And they were varying lengths. One was three years. One was two years

One was one year. So that being said, they were quite different

And the initially when I was single, it was it was more professional in nature than undergraduate

It required a lot more time, a lot more dedication to, you know, what you're doing later on

I would say business school was way more involved. The work was nowhere near as difficult, but or as demanding as far as like just level of comprehension

But it required so much time. There were a lot of diverse subjects, that type of thing, and a lot of teamwork and stuff like that that you didn't have during undergraduate

And then later on, my transactional degree was more independent. It was more, I don't know, just a very specific topic

So it was just that all of them were very different, but very different indeed from undergraduate, which was more, I don't know, there was less structure to it

you had more ability to craft your classes and your degree path and things like that

In graduate school, that just goes down, right? I mean, in graduate school, you picked a program

So it's like you're all in the same major. You all have very similar classes to take

You all know the same professors. It's more of a tight-knit group. So, I mean, that's my perception of how it was different

I think that would be different for everybody. What about you? Yeah, mine was different, definitely different from undergrad because undergrad, I wasn't

married grad school. I was married. I mean, we got married in the summer of me going to grad school

So, and then it was also in a different town. So I moved with my wife and also had a stepson

So that was, you know, not only was I learning how to be a husband

I was learning how to be a father and I was learning how to go to grad school and actually have to take this stuff even more seriously than I was doing in undergrad

provide for everyone. And it was, it was rough. It was definitely rough for me just because of all those learning things

I wouldn't change it. I learned a lot from it, but it was it was tougher because you're at a different level

And it was it was just it was different. It was it was a struggle. Yeah

And I mean, honestly, just to echo that, that's the way you should go into it

Looking at it like it's going to be something different. It's going to be more challenging

It going to add things to your plate because as we talked about in you know in prior episodes like that last year of college things become more real life you know moves on you have relationships you move to a new city things like that Things pile on So graduate school can be extremely stressful just because all of those

factors come together where oftentimes earlier on you're 18, 19, 20 years old, you may not have had

all those responsibilities come together at the same time. So how do you manage life, work, family

social activities along with the school and work required there. Yeah, I will say I was I did feel like it was it was more stressful to me because I took it more

seriously than I did in undergrad. Like I cared so much more about my grades in grad school

because I know what they had to be that I got that anxiety, that stress over

Oh, am I going to do this? I pulled more all nighters. Still didn't learn when I was an undergrad to do it early

but I pulled more of them trying to get, you know, still didn't learn not to do that

You know, that's one of those factors we talk about throughout each episode, that level of engagement that helps you get more out of the learning experience. You were in graduate school that you knew what career path you were taking. The classes meant more. You were more engaged in it. You put more effort into it. You cared more just because of that. And it was, yeah, you cared about grades, but you also cared about learning

Yeah, I will say one big difference is that I noticed when I was in grad school is the people around you in grad school were just as serious as you were in grad school

Like it wasn't like you had this this some people didn't care. Some people cared a lot like they were all there to study hard and get it

So you can actually get a lot from them because they were all in that kind of same boat as you were

Yeah. And we talk about that in a different episode when we talk about the benefits of graduate school and we talk about the students sitting beside you and how you can learn from the students beside you

So in another episode, and I want to bring this up, too, we talk about this colleges matter, right

Does the name of the college and things like that? What do you study? Well, lots of times when you go to one college versus another, the demographic of the student is going to change in terms of how much they care about school, right

Their performance before coming to college, how much drive and motivation, how much influence outside they have to do well in classes and things like that

And so who you're sitting beside in class makes a huge difference as to how much you care about the material, how fast you go, what you want to learn, the output you have in your group projects and things like that

And you see a lot more of that in graduate school than you do undergraduate

You have to be careful with that, too. Oh, yes. I will say this

And again, this is one of those stories I can't believe I'm saying. I feel like I'm the screw up on the show

Like you're the one that's like the good one. Like you're the good brother and I'm the screw up brother that, you know, but I remember when I was in grad school, I was taking one class and the teacher, you know, you all have your student ID numbers

And so they would put the grades up on the projector that says, okay, this is what the class grades were

Here's all the A's, here's all the B's, C's, D's and F's. And they would put them in columns

And so I would look at the F's. I remember one test. I would look at the F's

I'm thinking there are five grades in the F's. And then I saw my student ID number there

I'm like, oh, crap, I'm one of them. And I looked to my buddy who's sitting next to me. I was like, dude, where are you at

He said, I'm on the F column. I said, me too. And I looked at my right and another guy, I said, where are you at

He said, F. And then the two guys behind us were the F. We were the five that sit in a cluster in the class that we were the Fs

Everybody else and everywhere else got an A through D or whatever. We, us five, and I know the teacher was like, uh-huh

They either studied together or cheated together. And if they cheated, they just did a lousy job at it

See, I would have made up an excuse for myself. I would have said, you know, the professor just threw them down the stairs and the papers that landed on this step got an A, B, C, D, F

and I just happened to land at the bottom, right? I did actually have a professor tell me that when they graded tests

like when they graded research papers, when they had papers due, that whoever the first one on the stack was just got an 80

Like that was the median grade, and so they just gave it an 80. I was like, you don't even read them? He's like, no, that's the median grade

I was like, that's just, that's lousy because, well, granted, if I was the one on the top, I was like, yes, I got an 80

But if you're somebody that put a lot of effort into them, like that's crappy. Oh, see, I would have called them out on that because, you know

if I would have gotten that 80, I went to other people and I wanted to read their paper to see

what they got. And I would have taken it to the professor and be like, what in the world? How did

I get an 80 and this guy got a 90? Look at the difference in our papers. I'd have had two lines

on it. I got an 80. You'd have 14 pages. Well, let's get into the main topic. Let's get into

grad school. Let's talk about grad school from the listener's perspective and some of the questions

that they may be having. The first one I think is probably the most common one, maybe. And that is

is it a must to go to grad school directly after graduating undergrad? And is there more benefit

to do that or waiting? Well, I have pretty strong opinions on this one. And I'm a little bit slanted

in that opinion because I've come from a business school background, but I also have a law degree

So I see both sides of the coin. In many scenarios, it is beneficial to go immediately to grad school

When is it beneficial for that? When graduate school is integral to getting the certification or the credit or the credentials necessary to follow whatever career path you're looking for. Like for you as an accountant, right

If you go on to get a master's of accounting immediately after undergraduate, that's a natural follow on

Right. You need those additional credit hours to take the CPA exam

Also, it qualifies you for more jobs, particularly like your big firm accounting jobs, your your big four type jobs

If you want to do that type of thing, the Mac master's of accounting is going to help you a ton

So it is a natural follow on to your undergraduate degree. Law school, the same way, right

If you want to practice law, there's no prior knowledge you need coming into law school

It's just you have a degree, you take the interest exam, you do all that, and they teach

you everything you need to know in school, right? So in law school

So that being said, right, it's a natural follow on to say, I want to practice law

I need to go on and do this. I think the same way with medical school. Now, can you take time in between

Of course you can. And it's not going to hurt you to do that, right

It might actually help you rejuvenate, you know, that type of thing, get ready to study, get your life in order, build up some finances, things like that

So there are life reasons that you would wait, but there's no negative aspect to going on as long as you're ready, as long as you're not burnt out

And we can talk more about that later. But there are certain programs where you definitely should not go on

I would say number one would be the MBA program. And I, you know, it shocks students when I say this, that getting an MBA right after undergraduate can hurt you more than it helps you

Have you ever heard that? I've never heard that. No, that's a really interesting take on it

I'm interested to hear. Well, the reason behind it is this. So an MBA program, the courses you take are very similar to the courses you take in undergraduate as a business major

Right. The MBA is designed to be a finishing degree. meaning that you've got some level of professional experience in a given business field. You go back

to the business school for an MBA, you get a well-rounded education that's primarily focused

in teamwork leadership and communications Now you have a concentration and you take skill classes but many of those skill classes are very similar to what you would have taken in undergraduate right An MBA is also great for people who didn major in business in undergraduate They go out and they join the business world and

they find themselves doing business activities. So they need that knowledge. And that's why they

repeat a lot of those classes, the accounting, the economics, the finance, the marketing

those general education classes that you take other than your concentration. But if you go straight to an MBA program out of undergraduate, you don't have the years of experience, one, that they're looking for to let you in

So a really good MBA program, a top 25 MBA program is not going to let you in unless you have several years of experience because their business model was focused on placement

Their ability to place you with firms at a $100,000 salary with a 20 to 40 bonus in the top companies

That is their objectives. That is how they rank. If you look them up in the, you know, top ranking U.S. News and World Report, Princeton Review, things like that, that rank these schools

Those are the two primary factors that they look at. Right. Employment within three months and those salary and bonus factors

And then where you're being placed with firms. Right. That type of thing

If you go straight out of undergraduate to a business school, you they're not going to be able to place you with these firms

You don't have the requisite credentials for these firms to hire you into those positions. Right

you're still going to be competing for entry-level positions. So to think that you're going to go to an MBA program and step into a higher-level role

like that, you won't, right? So you go to an MBA program, you're going to be competing again for those entry-level

positions, ones where the MBA did not help you earn more money, right

You've paid all this money. You're not earning any more money. You're competing for undergraduates for the same position

But the thing is, as part of the natural growth in an organization, the evolution is that eventually once you've been a professional service provider in whatever field, accounting, operations, finance, marketing, for a certain number of years, you're going to then go to an MBA program or something like that as a finishing degree

That will help you then move to be a manager of sorts of professional service providers, right

You'll be the manager of the accounting floor. You'll be the manager of a group of marketers, that type of thing

If you've already got an MBA, right, and that helped you or was your stepping stone to even get into the organization, you can't go back again. No school is going to allow you to come get a second MBA. It's just they won't. Right. I've talked to career services about this

So you have effectively paid for a school that didn't necessarily help you and you have blocked yourself off from the ability to go back in the future when it can really help you

All that taken together, you've actually hurt your career potential by going to an MBA program directly out of undergraduate

So anyway, you know, it's a it's a very interesting scenario, but that's just one example that I can illustrate that says, you know, in some scenarios, particularly where professional experience is required, you can harm your career chances or potential by going directly to a graduate school program

Huh. I've never thought of it that way. Again, my take from my situation was I was going to go directly into grad school, not thinking about it the way you talked about it, but thinking about it from, again, my perspective

We talked about in a previous episode where I felt like I needed to do that continuous go from one school to the next, because if I had that gap year, if I had that years of experience, I would get out of this mindset of studying or get out of the student mindset

And I know myself, I could get out of that pretty quickly and it would severely affect my grades going back to school. And so that was mine, but I never thought of it that way. And I think that's a great, it's really important for the listeners to understand this is something I need to take into consideration. This is not how it's always going to be. It's not going to be from my situation, but I need to take that into consideration

And you're really smart for thinking of it that way. So if you've eliminated that hurdle of saying, you know, you need that professional experience that going right on is not going to hurt you, then all of a sudden you do the calculus that you're doing. Right

personally, is this right for me? Do I need some time to build up financial resources to get myself

ready for school, that type of thing? Or would doing that in some way cause me to lose motivation

to lose steam, to put it all further and risk not going back? So in your scenario, you were worried

it would interrupt your flow. You needed to just go directly on to graduate school and make that

happen. Other people need to take that gap year. In many ways, I wish I had taken a gap year because

when I got to law school, because of my very tedious schedule in undergraduate, I was very

burnt out. I kind of, I'm not going to lie, my first year of law school, if there was a year in

my life in school that I kind of phoned it in, that was the year. Well, that leads us to the

next question too. That's a great segue because the next question is, is burnout in grad school

a bigger issue. Well, it's a huge issue for many people, right? If you go to a program

immediately after undergraduate, you have no break, right? So hopefully you have a head of

steam built up and you're ready to go into graduate school and study. I didn't. I went

to graduate school and I was burned out. I was ready to stop. I mean, I caught my second wind

a little bit after that first year and I was ready to study again. But again, I was thinking

of doing a JD MBA program. And I just dropped the idea of doing the MBA program and adding a year to

law school simply because I'd run out of energy. There was burnout, right? So it's real. It happens

right? And law school was a three-year program, right? Some other graduate school programs are

one or two or some. Yeah, my Mac program was one. Okay. Yeah. So sometimes you don't have to have

as much steam build up to get through the full program, right

So I think it's about measuring where you are, right? I mean, that calculus that you were talking about of

am I ready financially in my life and things like that? But also, do I have the motivation and willpower to get in there

and do the work necessary? Because, you know, particularly your shorter programs

like your one-year programs are very intensive from the very moment you step out of the gate, right

Right. So you really have to be ready. Yeah, it is a big difference from undergrad to grad

Is there a different way to think when it comes to which graduate program to apply for and ultimately go to

Like different in the ways that we would for undergrad. So like, is there a checklist for grad school that's going to be different than undergrad

Well, I would say so procedurally. Yes. And generally thought process. I would say yes as well. Picking a graduate school was very similar to picking a major in college, but it's even a little more serious than that, right? Oftentimes people choose a major that, well, they may not continue on in a career path with that major, right? You might study accounting, but you go into business management, right? Or you might go into a completely different field. You study psychology, but you go into business. That type of thing happens all the time

If you are going to spend the money to go to a graduate school program nine times out of 10 that going to be the career path that you follow So you need to really do some soul searching up front and understand what a career looks like in that field

It's a, you know, I meet people all the time who go to a particular graduate school program

and then don't continue on in that career. And honestly, they incurred a lot of debt or at least paid a lot of money for education

and training in a given field that they don't use professionally. And more often than not, the graduate school program is structured in a way that you are going to use it

It is made to help you professionally, not just in personal development, right

It's made to take you down a career path. So you have to do that ysis first

Do I want to go down this career path? Do I fully understand it? How would this graduate degree help me

What will that mean? What will be my next steps after that? If you understand all those things fully, then you can make the decision

I do think that, because we mentioned this in a previous one before, but I do think name recognition of the grad school is a bit more important than what it is in undergrad

Because again, if you're going to put this on your resume or you're looking, they're going to look at the last place that you studied from

So if you went to a very small college, not a whole lot of name recognition, but in a graduate program you went to an Ivy League school, then it's going to show that you had enough to get into the Ivy League school as your last college

And it's going to hold a little bit more weight than it would if it was just your undergrad

Would you agree with that? That's absolutely true. I will say this

There are Ivy League programs even that are not difficult to get into

They're expensive, right? They're extremely expensive, and that's the hurdle. And oftentimes they do want some background or some demonstration that you're going to be a good fit for the program

But by and large, you know, graduate school in particular, if you're willing to pay the money, there are some really prestigious schools out there that will allow you in

Now, does that name recognition help you in job opportunities? Most certainly

They aren't all created equal, right? Harvard Business School is going to give you a lot more opportunities than Harvard School of Underwater Basket Weaving

I don't know what they have. I like that. I like that degree. I use that a lot. Right? I don't know what

But there are. I was looking at some research the other day that showed the cost to income ratio, right

The cost of a school to the beginning salary or income level of graduates

And Columbia University scored extremely poorly because it offered several graduate programs where, you know, the debt that students incur is $200,000, $300,000 sometimes for the master's program

And their starting salaries are abysmal, right? $25,000, $30,000, $35,000 after incurring that much debt

They can't even pay their debt, their graduate school debt, based upon the salaries they start

It was shocking to see this, and you can Google this. There are a lot of Department of Education information pamphlets out there that show you the cost return on education and things

That's particularly an issue now with student debt rising so quickly in the U.S

But that being said, right, you've got a prestigious name, but it doesn't necessarily help you get a job in a field that will compensate you the way you want to

Now, but back to your original point, does going to a graduate school allow you to acquire some credentials and a name brand that would otherwise not allow you to, if you went to a smaller or lesser known school undergraduate, that you wouldn't otherwise have those credentials or that name recognition to get a job

Yes, absolutely. I've seen it with people that I'm very close to or know very well, where they went to a much lesser known undergraduate institution. Then they went to an Ivy League graduate school, ones that weren't necessarily difficult to get into. They were very expensive, but luckily these people had the money to go to those schools

And then afterwards, they did have the opportunity or job opportunities that they otherwise would not have had. Now, they may not have made a ton of money in those job opportunities. Right. But at least they had the opportunity to start down that career path. Right. It gave them the name recognition because they had a prestigious institution listed on their credentials

And then, you know, there is an alumni base that helps you. There's the third party perception about them. So all of that taken together, it can be a huge benefit, but you still do need to do the cost benefit ysis. It costs a lot of money, right? And if you're paying for it yourself, that's a big deal. You know, most of the people I knew, they had a lot of help, right? They either came from families with money, they inherited money, partial scholarships, that type of thing

Fun fact, there are colleges that offer underwater basket weaving courses. Really

Yes. Since 1980, Reed College in Portland, Oregon has offered underwater basket weaving classes

And there's some other ones. University of Arizona was another one. So I definitely wouldn't want to get a master's degree in that topic

Yeah, you probably wouldn't get a lot of return on that one. No, no. Well, what advice do you have for students thinking about applying to grad school or wondering even if grad school is right for them

Well, I would say first figure out what you really want career wise

You know, we've talked about the life plan in other episodes. And if you don't know what we're talking about, please go back and listen to that episode

I think it's a decent one. One of our better ones. Yeah. I mean, if you want to understand what it takes to get where you want to go in life in all of these different areas, not just career wise, professionally, personally, socially, anything

all the places, all the things on the outside of that circle that you want to achieve

A step in one direction can move you forward towards any of those end goals, right

So you have to understand when is graduate school right for you

When will it fit in your life, given everything that's going on, but in a way that will move

you towards more than one of those goals, right? Where it will move your life forward in the direction you care about

And it's not always the case that that will happen. Right. So figure out first what you want and what it what will move you forward. And if you do that, then you are in the position to make the decision on is graduate school right for me? What graduate school is right for me? When is going to graduate school right for me? Those types of things

I would say my advice is from the strategy side, because that's more on brand with me

But I've had a lot of students, and this is the examples I'm going to be using is very specific

to my situation. Again, I teach accounting. So it's more specific to my students who are in my

accounting class or some of them, but it can be used for other things as well. But it's looking

into possibly getting a master's in something or going to grad school for something that is

different, but similar to your undergrad degree. And so, for example, what I'm talking about is

I've had students say, I'm not sure if I wanna do finance or accounting

Now, for those who don't know finance