Make the most of full time graduate school

[huskybuilder]

Well, I've decided to return to grad school full time to get my Master's in Hydraulic Engineering. I did my undergrad in Civil Engineering and I got an offer for full tuition and a stipend to do research. I graduated in 2009 and have worked for a consultant for a year and a half and a government agency for about six months. I'm not entirely proud of my work history as this last job change I made was not well researched and got me off track of where I want to be.

What can I do moving forward to contribute to my future success after grad school? I realize networking in my program is a big one, keeping up my grades, etc. For those of you who have done full time grad school, do you have any regrets or things you wish you would have known then that you know now?

 

[B16A2]

I went back for the MS after a few years work and did the research track as well, fully funded with stipend.

My advice is to really focus on setting yourself timeline goals. The research track has the tendency to suck you in and before you know it you'll be there for 2.5 years even though the prof will tell you upfront it's only 3 semesters. Take the first semester to orient yourself with the research and figure out how your thesis will go together. Figure out what classes you want to take when. At my school, the classes were a bear mainly because all the professors were research based and didn't care about teaching so you really need to factor that in to your research schedule. Most of the people I knew had to work 9am-11pm to get it done.

Being research based can give you opportunities to present at conventions. This is a great networking opportunity. Also depending on your professor, they will usually be a huge benefit to you in the future. My professor was what they call profzilla. Worked crazy hours and expected a lot, but he's so respected in the industry all I really need to do is drop his name. Heck, I'm still writing papers with him and I'm not even in school anymore!

Grading is not like it was in undergrad. Industry really doesn't care about grad school grades because most programs will kick you out if you get C's. What will set you apart is having the research background. With this you will gain the ability to put together presentations, write, and have an awareness of the current research in the profession. Most of the people who just went through the program non-thesis regretted not having this benefit and didn't seem to gain much.

Then you'll be tempted with the PhD carrot...but we'll leave that question for later

Good luck!

 

[B16A2]

Almost forgot, there's a few tricks to freeing up time so you can put together good papers. Learn how to use Engineering Village to find journal articles and EndNote to put together all your citations automatically. Dont put off learning these during your last semester. I saw so many people who wasted the majority of their time by not knowing how to use these two things.

 

[MacGyverS2000]

No more posting for husky... no students allowed ;-)

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[tygerdawg]

I did that: got the BS, worked a couple years "trying to figure out what it was I wanted to do", then went back full-time for Master's.

Try to discern/decide if you want Master's to be advanced training over the BS, or something leading to a research-oriented track. Those are two radically different paths.

Also, I feel you must manage your own training & educational experience. I entered grad school after returning from a life-changing/life-empowering event and I was the terror of my graduate department because I walked into that experience with the firm stance that they were my employees and I wasn't taking any cr@p from them just because they were underpaid overeducated Ph.D.'s with ego problems. I didn't tolerate poor teaching, and had a good learning expererience that has served me well in my career. I remember I completed all my requirements for my degree and my major professor was trying to play the delay game to get me to do some more free work for him. I was having none of that and gave them the ultimatum of setting up for my defense or not, either way I was leaving for work on such-and-such date.

The grad school experience has been good for my career in that it provided me with an advanced capacity for analysis and depth of thought. But mainly it just opened a few more doors with good opportunities behind them, taught me how to learn independently, and prepared me for going solo successfully when times got tough.

TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering

http://www.bluetechnik.com

 

[btrueblood]

I had the benefit of having a prof. for senior design course who had me writing papers and presenting at student conferences, and doing some independent research as an undergrad. So, for me, the MS route was pretty straightforward. I had a bit of tygerdawg's attitude too, with a pretty girl (later became my wife) graduating a year ahead of me, and living/working out of state. I was very motivated to finish in minimum time. And did, mostly by sticking to my timeline, and making the advisers/profs tell me what I needed to do to get it done.