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I just graduated from college and I will be attending grad school in the fall to get my M.Div. I was wondering how is life as a grad school student different from life as an undergraduate? I will be living in graduate housing in the dorms. How are dorms in grad school different from dorms in college? Also how are classes, professors, etc different in grad school? Thanks for the input. I'm really excited and nervous about the transition.
The biggest difference I notice between undergraduate and graduate school is that the work is more project-based and you often times work together in teams. You spend a lot more time writing and reading. Although the work load is higher, I do find graduate coursework more interesting and you really learn to work for your grade. Contrast this to undergraduate work where most of the time, your grade consisted of tests.
My experience in grad school was probably a bit different because I went to school in England, but the class schedule was very different (seminar once a week instead of shorter classes 3 days a week) and the students have more of a life outside of school. You rarely find students having crazy parties because most people go home (not the dorms) at the end of the day. Several of my classmates had spouses and children, and the dorms mostly contained students with no friends/family in the area (I was in the international student dorm) because most local people lived in houses.
I'm going back to grad school in September, and this time I won't be living in dorms because I already have an apartment near the school. Since I also have a part time job off campus, I'll pretty much only be showing up for class and to work on projects. In undergrad, when I lived on campus, my life revolved around the school.
It's very different, but don't worry. Who wants to live like they're 18 forever?
Can't speak to what graduate housing is life (I live off campus), but I found graduate life to be more "adult." People still did stuff on weekends but it wasn't to the level of college (i.e. no random house parties till the wee hours of the morning). I was in the minority in being straight out of college in my graduate program--many were married, some had kids etc. As for academics, classes were smaller and more seminar-style in their approach, and the actual work consisted of more reading and usually a mid-term short paper and a longer final paper. Though fwiw I went to undergrad at a large "party school" in a college town, which is difficult to compare to grad school at a private university in a major city.
The graduate program I transferred out of had so much group work that it was stunting my intelligence and critical thinking. Professors rewarded a lot of group-think, class discussion, and collective decision making (communism). All of the classes seemed the same. They all blurred together and the students were incredibly self-absorbed, catty, and arrogant. Not fun at all.
The graduate program I graduated from offered a lot more independent assignments. I was graded on my own abilities versus how well I could do group-think. I was also able to pick and choose my classes with flexibility.
Get into a program where you can pick and choose your classes with flexibility. That way you can avoid group-work. Also online courses are excellent ways to learn. I advise you take a mix of online courses and on-campus courses. It's worth it! The pressure is on you to study and complete assignments on your own agenda. I firmly believe that as you get more mature and intelligent you should be graded on what you know not how well you fit into an academic clique.
It all depends on what you're going to grad school for. I am currently going for a Master's in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and it is a lot tougher than undergrad. It is more in depth. They expect you to remember and know well the concepts you learned in undergrad and how to apply them. The classes are still heavily based on test grades and homework. There is rarely any team projects. I have had a couple individual projects with presentations and papers I had to write. The average age range of the other people in my courses was definitely over 25. A lot of them are married and have families so there was not a whole lot of partying either (plus I go to a tech school anyway).
Overall will vary from school to school and major to major. Some will be easier and some will be harder.
I'm going to seminary to get my Masters of Divinity so I guess my experiences may be a little different than most graduate programs but I hear that the workload at the school I'm going to can be pretty rigorous and they are known for academics. But I'm pretty excited about grad school overall.
My undergrad vs. grad experiences were night and day from each other. I graduated from a large impersonal university with over 26,000 students. I transferred from another large university with 17,000 students and I never felt like I could quite fit in with any group...made me feel like I was meant to be a loner. Classes in undergrad mostly were not very hard--it was like an overgrown version of high school, I felt, but with much bigger classes, no lockers, and dorms and the like. I did have a good time in undergrad, but I didn't feel like I had the ultimate experience that so many speak of.
Grad school was a ton different. I just graduated earlier this month and I miss parts of it. I was in a cohort, so I took the same classes with the same people the entire 2 years. The work was not hard--it was just more in-depth and we had to do a ton of groupwork, which I got away with in undergrad quite a bit. My colleagues varied in age from early 20s and straight out of undergrad to late 30s/early 40s with families and teenage children. I loved grad school a lot more because of the intimacy and the maturity levels of my colleagues. My department was very small. We only had 3 full-time professors and we got to know a lot about each other and felt very comfortable around them as a result. I think grad school, though more demanding due to the coursework, was more enjoyable than undergrad, but it depends on the program and all, as others have said.
I agree. I know Seminary is going to be totally different than most grad school programs.
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