Once the papers are thrown away and textbooks are returned, it is inevitable that many students graduating Eastern will be moving into the next phase of higher education and entering the world of graduate school.

To aid current students in making a properly educated choice, representatives from various graduate programs across the nation will be at Eastern on Wednesday.

Bobbi Kingery, a career counselor at Eastern, said the event will allow students to directly interact with people who will be dealing with their admission portfolio at each university.

“The Graduate School Information Day” allows students to ask questions about different departments to the people who are well versed in their fields, Kingery said.

Kingery also said students should not depend on rankings in journals like The U.S. News & World Report to tell them what the best programs are, but does recommend only looking at accredited universities.

The personality of the university should correlate with the personality of the student, Kingery said.

“It depends on what they want to get out of the degree,” Kingery said. “Harvard is great for a lot of things, but most of us don’t want to compete at that level.”

Lori Henderson, the graduate school’s publicity promotions specialist, said Eastern currently has about 1,600 graduate students.

Eastern also has 27 master’s programs.

“Master’s degrees are very discipline-specific so meeting with the department counselor’s in the major is important,” Henderson said.

Sophomore year is when students should start thinking about graduate school in order to properly gather information, Henderson said.

“Students need to find out what the research interests are of the faculty at the school because you’ll have to do research at some level in a master’s,” Kingery said. “If you have similar interests as an instructor working there you will be happier.”

Looking for the current jobs of those people who recently graduated is important because it is a possible future roadmap for prospective students, Kingery said.

“Another reason it’s great to visit early is because you want to visit graduate programs and see if you would be comfortable there,” Kingery said. “Otherwise you could end up in a program that isn’t teaching you what you want to focus on.”

Kingery said some graduate programs say they will admit students with a GPA lower than a 2.75, but that is not always the case and finding out the average acceptance is essential.

“Graduate school works best if it’s really focused,” Kingery said. “(Students) shouldn’t go to graduate school if they are afraid to do a job search.”

Students who are on the fence on whether or not they want to attend graduate school should assess the different commitments it takes to enter into a graduate program, Henderson said.

“When I talk to students, one of the big things we talk about is how are they going to pay for it,” Kingery said.

If students have a high GPA then it could lead to them having their master’s degree paid for by participating in a graduate assistantship, Kingery said.

“With some students, if they already have too much student loan debt-it may not economically make sense to go on because it will take them too long to pay back the loans,” Kingery said.

With the current job market, Henderson said it could seem easier to enroll in a graduate program, but students should be conscientious of what their final job goal is.

“Sometimes it’s a very good choice, but it depends on if the career field you are looking to enter requires the degree right away,” Kingery said.

Many professionals end up getting a master’s degree later in life to aid in the further career advancement and increased pay, Kingery said.

“Not that many of us require it immediately to get into the field we are choosing,” Kingery said.

Majors that require a master’s degree are: communication disorders and sciences, dietetics’, pre-medical, pre-law and some programs in kinesiology and sports studies.

Kingery said students majoring in education should not enroll into graduate school directly following completion of their bachelor’s degree because of complications it could cause in finding work.

The hiring percentage for students immediately graduating with a bachelor’s degree is generally greater because of the certain sanctions teacher unions put in place for school districts.

Essentially, the districts will be paying for the diploma and not the experience the teacher would have, which in turn makes it less likely for those inexperienced teachers to be hired, Kingery said.

“If you have a have a master’s degree without experience it wouldn’t make sense for them to pay you more,” Kingery said.

Kingery said she hopes to have at least 200 students show up to the event, which is taking place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

“The sooner they realize what the expectations to get into the programs are, the sooner they can shoot to meet them,” Kingery said.

Nike Ogunbodede can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].