Here you have it, we decided to help all the lazy and procrastinating college seniors out there who have delusions of grandeur about world domination in the future, by facilitating them with a review and analysis of their current Grad School options.
Grad School Options For Lazy College Seniors: Business, Law & Medical
A couple weeks ago, I was helping my lazy sister do some of the astounding, overwhelming and somewhat worthless stuff that you have to do in order to get admitted into college. She’s transferring from a college in California to one in Puerto Rico, since she’s coming back to live in PR.
Anyways, I bore you with that story, because it sort of reminded me of going through all that crappy process myself when I was in high school, and then through it once again – in a much more complicated manner – in my senior year of college while trying to figure out if/where I should go to Grad School, and which one of the next roads in front of me would give me the highest potential of making a lot of money, so that I could later use that money to try to buy me a continent or something.
You see, both the College and Grad School application processes – in and of themselves – are not that complicated, really. The thing is that if you’re the older sibling and first individual in your family who’s attended college outside of Puerto Rico, then there’s no one who can help you through that process or even give you some solid pointers as to which things to do, and which to avoid. It is at that point that you realize that your family is comprised of proud townies who live in a bubble. But then again, whose family isn’t?
With all that in mind, I figured that the high-season of the Grad School application process is coming up. However, most of the responsible college students who wish to continue the boring phase of life that is inherent to getting yourself further educated, have probably already been admitted to the Grad School of their choice – because, that’s what they are, responsible… and boring… and predictable… and, well, I think you get my shallow and judgmental drift by now…
As such, I decided to help the rest of the college seniors out there who have delusions of grandeur about doing some world domination in the future, but who are still unsure as to what is the next step they should take – or even the one they want to take. In order to do that, I will enumerate and explain in mediocre detail some of the general choices that may still be available to you, if it is indeed the case that you want to attend Grad School and continue educating yourself by acquiring a graduate degree (and you should you lazy sloth).
So here they are, in no particular order:
Business School: Get an MBA
For those of you that are on par with Forrest Gump on an intellectual level, let me facilitate this for you and reveal that MBA stands for: Master of Business Administration.
Yes, you can go to Business School and become one of those top Wall Street executives who get yelled at and insulted on their way to work by the Occupy Wall Street protestors – I mean, really, what more can you ask for?
Here are the basics of Business School:
Business School: The Right Fit for You?
Well, it’s pretty evident that an MBA is predominantly oriented towards those students who majored in some sort of business endeavor in college.
In terms of previous experience, none is required.Yes, having worked at something, somewhere, sometime before, will give you a bit of a practical knowledge as to the basic aspects of any sort of business.
However, it’s not it is an indispensable element to carry with you as you make your way into the world of greed.
Business School: Tuition Costs
Well here’s the verdict, according to an article from About.com titled, How Much Does It Cost to Earn a Business Degree:
Although the cost of an MBA degree can vary, the average tuition for a two-year MBA program exceeds $60,000. If you attend one of the top business schools in the U.S., you can expect to pay as much as $100,000 or more in tuition and fees.
So there you have it. Start checking out them Stafford Loans, if Business Grad School is something that you wish to partake in…
Or just try and take out all the money in the savings account your parents currently have for your sister’s future wedding. After all, you know that no man will ever be able to stand her, and as a result, the money will be wasted in worse ways if you don’t use it to pay for your education – Make it happen!
Business School: Salary & Career Prospects
If it consoles you in any way, chances are decently good that you’ll end up working for your loan holders in the banking and finance industry when you graduate.
So that may neutralize the feelings of suffocation you might feel at some point; which arise out of the amount of money you have accumulated in accrued interest and principal balance debt of your student loans.
Business School: Academic Difficulty
I don’t believe Business School to be the most difficult of the Grad Schools. Though that’s just my outside impression.
Another impression? In terms of Business, you either have it or you don’t…
Yeah, you might become the solid professional – an outstanding mediocrity if you will – but to reach the highest peaks and rank up there with the top executives, your brain has to be wired in a special way towards business and financial undertakings. And you can go ahead and take Warren Buffett’s brilliant business wisdom as the best example of that.
Business School Test: GMAT
The GMAT is the one you’re looking for in this one, as in the Graduate Management Admission Test.
I never took the GMAT, so I don’t know how difficult it is. Having said that, a good buddy of mine took it like 8-10 times (no joke), and never quite got the necessary scores to get into Business School. And he’s no dummy, though he sucks at test-taking – particularly this sort of testing.
The thing is, that for these sorts of Grad School standardized tests, even though having above-average brain capabilities and problem solving skills will surely help you, there are just some parts where you need to familiarize yourself with exact type of test that you’ll be presented with and then master the numerous strategies that exist for that particular examination, so that you can then use them to tackle these funky Grad School tests more effectively and achieve the best possible score.
And there are plenty of organizations out there that specialize in this sort of test-taking training. Trust me, take a test before one of these Prep Courses, and then take another one after the course, and you’ll see quite the noticeable difference in your score – unless of course, you’re either really freaking smart or really freaking stupid.
In terms of which GMAT test-prep out there you should take, I’ve heard some good things about the VeritasPrep GMAT classes. They have a solid reputation, and what I really like about them is that – according to an Entrepreneur.com article-slideshow called Forward Thinkers – it was two students from the Yale School of Management who came up with the concept of Veritas Prep for an entrepreneurship class project they were assigned:
Co-founders, Veritas Prep Veritas Prep started off as a project for an entrepreneurship class by two students attending the Yale School of Management. In 2008 the test prep company raked in about $10 million in sales in 2008. At $1,500 for a GMAT course, their price point rivals their largest competitors Kaplan and Princeton Review. The twist? Veritas Prep offers about 50 percent more class time. With the advanced-degree market hitting 50-year record highs, co-founder Chad Troutwine’s outlook on Prep’s future is bright. “We’re just a rare business that will continue to do well in this economy.
Talk about entrepreneurs teaching entrepreneurs.
Business School Advice:
Go to Business School if you graduated with a business major in college, if you have some background experience in the financial world, or if you were a member of your school’s College Republicans organization.
Also, it is quite helpful if you like money a lot and/or are greedy.
Law School: Get a JD
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen! It’s the fabled Juris Doctor! The most overpriced product nowadays in the American market. Take it from me, I’m a lawyer!
After spending upwards of 250K in my Law School career as a whole, I can tell you, without any semblance of reasonable doubt, that at this particular juncture in US and World affairs, law school might be – pound-for-pound – the worst investment in your education that you can make right now.
And here are the basics of Law School:
Law School: The Right Fit for You?
After going straight from college to Law School, and then graduating at the fresh age of 24, I now look back and think that it was probably the biggest waste of my time ever. And that is due to no fault of anyone, or anything else, but mine.
You see, the nature of law school is such that you need – almost indispensably – some sort of life experience in the working world before dragging yourself through the pretentiousness of a legal education. There are just so many things that you are taught and trainings that are forced upon you in Law School, that only now do I realize how much of an advantage I would have had, had I experienced some issues of the professional work-world beforehand. It just provides the unique opportunity of having interiorized a situation or event that occurred to you in the past, which is now being presented to you in theory, out of a $400 text-book, and in the midst of a couple-thousand dollars class, all the while an arrogant and distinguished Professor – who’s never been in a courtroom – tells you how his morning breath smells like roses.
So you need that practical background – in my estimation – in at least one field of the professional work-world, in order to have a solid foundation to apply to the now fresh and new concepts you’re learning in your law school classes; which in my opinion, and in all fairness even more so than the rest of the Grad Schools, are deeply embedded in most of the everyday aspects and daily routines of life.
Law School: Tuition Costs
I told you already, be ready to spend around $200K in your legal education. Though I’d strongly urge you to try and get into a Public Law School, because sometimes they’re about half as expensive as their private counterparts.
Law School: Salary & Career Prospects
Right now? Pretty much f’d up prospects, unless you graduated from a Harvard, or a Yale, etc.
You might also have some solid potential of landing a job if your daddy is very rich, or a lobbyist, or some sort of powerful (corrupt) politician who might call in a favor to some old “friend”.
Even for those lucky few who do get a decent and respectable job, the salary trends for a legal job are going down faster than a stripper’s dignity after dancing on a pole for the first time.
For what it’s worth, the salary prospects for lawyers are $50K-$175K a year, depending on the amount of legal experience.
Law School: Academic Difficulty
Not really that difficult, to be honest with you.
And yeah, I graduated with like a 2.7 GPA, but that’s really prone to a biased evaluation of the difficulty of Law School, because I am very dumb, and because I really did no reading – or studying for that matter – for all my classes, and just crammed up on the studying the day before; the only way a procrastination-extraordinaire knows how to do.
So really, if you read what you’re assigned. Pay attention and take notes in class. And suck up to your professors every once in a while… Then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to graduate with a GPA of 3.5 or more. Just trust me on that.
Read. Go to class and pay attention. Suck up to professors… Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Law School Test: LSAT
The LSAT. It’s really not that hard. Actually, it’s more like a glorified SAT, to be honest with you.
The LSAT is constructed in such a form that there are almost an endless amount of successful strategies that you can learn and employ on the test, which will do wonders for your final score. In particular, the part that seems to be the trickiest and harder one, which is the Logic Games part, is the one where you can get the most help in the form of successful strategies to break the code, if you will, and collect an obscene amount of points that you are otherwise stupidly losing, as I learned the hard way.
In terms of test-prep, I wish I’d had the opportunity to take an LSAT Prep Course, but I was – and still am – very poor and could only afford one of the Princeton Review LSAT Prep books, which I thought was pretty damn good. I’ve heard great stuff about their LSAT Prep Courses too, so if you have the money you should really try them out.
Law School Advice:
Don’t do it!
Or at least, if you’re going to do it, make sure you have – at the very least – 2-3 years of prior work experience in a professional field, before trying to get that JD.
The investment will be less horrible that way, and you’ll get much more from it; in terms of applying the knowledge they throw at you every day to your previous experiences.
Medical School: Get Your MD and Become a Doctor
Welcome to the Big Leagues, boys and girls! It’s freaking Med School!
Let’s look at some of the Medical School basics…
Medical School: The Right Fit for You?
Science background… Do it!
I’d recommend going for one of the basics, like biology, or chemistry, or anatomy.
Anything that gives you a solid background and basic knowledge of the human body and how organic mechanisms behave and relate to their environments, would seem to be a fitting and proper foreword to a medical education and career.
Medical School: Tuition Costs
About.com, help us once again by enlightening us to the frugal tuition costs of Medical School:
According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the median tuition in 2010-2011 was $28,685 at a public institution and $46,899 at a private institution. Note that tuition does not include books, lab fees, etc. In 2010-2011 the median total cost of attendance was $49,298 and $66,984 for public and private universities, respectively. In 2010, the median debt at graduation was $150,000 at public institutions, $180,000 at private, and $160,000 combined.
Medical School: Salary & Career Prospects
Well, you become a Doctor, and can carry the “Dr.” prefix with you for all the rest of us plebeians to acknowledge and worship. It’s the “highness” of these days.
Furthermore, the average median salary of your garden-variety physician is $174,665. So that’s gonna help with the ladies and fancy cars, if you’re a guy, and with wasting a lot of it on shoes and clothes, if you’re a girl.
On the other hand, you’re gonna have to deal with the Health Insurance Industry. And well… Let’s just go ahead and stop right there, because I don’t feel like triggering my sudden disappearance.
Medical School: Academic Difficulty
I’ve heard of no one who’d claim that going to Medical School and earning that one notorious MD, is anything short of a torturous journey of sadness, despair, tears, sweat, blood, and whatever it must feel like to have intercourse with Snooki.
So there you have some bits of wisdom on that. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Medical School Test: MCAT
The infamous MCAT
I like to think I’m a reasonably educated and smart individual — even though I am not. Anyways, I once glanced upon a couple of MCAT questions and I felt as if I was trying to reason with a hardcore member of the Tea Party – uncomfortable, flabbergasted, overwhelmed, about to start crying inconsolably, and ready to pick up a shotgun a blow my freaking head off…
Then again, later on I went to a psychiatrist and told him about my experience of looking at a couple of MCAT questions, and he reminded me – the doctor that he is – that it is a medical fact beyond contestation that I am mentally challenged. I much felt better the very instant he clarified that for me.
Be that as it may, if you must choose Medical School as your Grad School choice, I can only recommend that you take an intensive MCAT Prep Course – and that’s a virtually indispensable part of the “doing well enough to get in” equation – of which I can only attest to what I’ve heard from other people as to the effectiveness of both Kaplan and the Princeton Review MCAT Courses. To be honest, I’ve heard just about the same amount of opinions vouching for either of those two sides of MCAT Prep Courses. So it’s really a toss-up.
So maybe someone amongst the four of you who will read this can actually score decently on this MCAT catastrophic event.
Medical School Advice:
I can only refer to you to some of the best wisdom I ever got in Law School, courtesy of my Evidence class Professor, who told us one day in class that Law School is the choice for those of us who realized at one point in our lives, that we weren’t good enough with numbers to attend Business School, not even close to smart enough to go to Medical School, and not insecure enough in our abilities to go after an artsy Masters or PhD in some field of Human Studies or Language, etc.
And speaking of which…
Grad School: Get a… Degree? Masters?
It’s like getting a major in General Studies. And you will have to get a PhD in order to make any sort of respectable living with your field of study.
As such, I will intentionally underestimate the rest of the Grad Schools possibilities, and go home full and satisfied with the previous three – legitimate – Grad Schools.
Grad School: The Right Fit for You?
Insecure? Artsy? Wussy? “Peacy”? Virgin? Boring? Socially Awkward? Self-Serving? Would like to join protesters at Occupy Wall Street? Your parents hate you, and you hate them? You play the “You just don’t get it!” card like a madman? You cry yourself to sleep every other day?
And the list goes on and on, but I think you get the point by now…
Anyways, if you have one or more of those enviable characteristics, then you’re probably an impeccable fit for a Grad School degree that is not one of the aforementioned three I elaborated on.
Grad School Tuition Costs
They better be cheaper than the previous three… Dammit!
Grad School: Salary & Career Prospects
English Teacher. Security Guard. Reality TV Star. Junkie. Etc…
Grad School Academic Difficulty
It will depend on the amount of tears that you cry, in ounces, during the reading of an archaic and indecipherable poem in class.
Grad School Test: GRE
The GRE. And that means Graduate Record Examinations. It’s like the Special Olympics event of standardized testing.
If you can read, and write, and breathe, then you should be just fine – unless you’re in the same physical and mental state that Lindsay Lohan’s in, in the early morning hours that follow a night spent partying, drinking, and doing drugs.
Grad School Advice:
Ehh… Who the hell knows?
(BTW: Kidding about that entire last part on the rest of the Grad Schools. Well, sort of… It’s satire.)
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