About 26 percent of college graduates enroll in a graduate program within one year of graduation.
Continuing on to grad school has often questioned to be worth it.
Some of the forces behind the desire for students to continue on with their schooling are personal growth, greater employment opportunities, career advancement, financial reward, sense of accomplishment and greater recognition and credibility.
Recent Cabrini College graduates who fall into this percentage group from the class of 2015 are Kaitlin Zisa, Ben Laffoon and Se’ Quia Bailey.
Bailey said the benefit of continuing school right after undergraduate education is that students feel like they are still in the rhythm of going to class and doing homework. Also, it helps them to reach their goals faster.
Commonly, students feel that if they took a break, they would put off going back to school and end up putting a hold on their future.
Kaitlin Zisa, graduate of the class of 2015, chose to continue her education because with the B.S. she obtained in exercise science and health promotion. Zisa needed to find an area in the field she wanted to specialize in and become an expert at.
“The benefits of continuing schooling is you get to expand your horizon on a subject you know a great deal about,” Zisa said. “You also get to meet tons of new people and become that much closer to your ultimate goal.”
Not all students are required to continue on to grad school but when it comes to Ben Laffoon, who is set to start grad school this upcoming June, decided to continue schooling because he wants to be a physical therapist.
In order to become a physical therapist, a student needs to go to PT school for threeyears. PT school used to be a masters program where it was only two years but it was switched to a doctorates of physical therapy. It is now three full years.
When it comes to the workload grad school has to offer, Se’ Quia Bailey said, “it’s crazy!”
“It’s definitely a different pace than undergraduate courses, no doubt about that. I have two sometimes three classes a day and for each of those classes I have to often read 3 sometimes 4 cases, analyze them, understand the law, and sometimes think of counter-arguments of cases,” Bailey said. “At first, I was concerned that I wouldn’t get it done, but what gets me through the assignments is knowing that there is a high chance the professor will randomly put you in the hot seat and you better be ready!”
