After graduation, some students choose to take a gap year, some travel abroad and some enter the workforce, but others choose to remain in school as graduate students. In addition to those who make the transition immediately, every year students who left academia briefly also choose to join the ranks of The University of Alabama graduate student body.
Graduate students make up a small, but significant, part of the UA student body. They come from all parts of the University, from the Manderson School of Business to the College of Communication and Information Sciences. All students are required to apply to the graduate school before being admitted into their respective programs.
Programs will have different admissions requirements, but the graduate school handles all of the initial paperwork. After that, students deal mostly with their specific academic department. Programs within the graduate school vary in length and curriculum design. Students are able to earn master’s degrees and doctorates through thesis or research tracks. Several graduate programs culminate in comprehensive exams towards the end of the degree program. Students are able to take the exams once they have taken the necessary courses to be adequately prepared.
“For the program you are supposed to have a certain amount of required courses and after those required courses you should be ready to take comprehensive exams,” John Tilley, a master’s student in higher education administration, said. “And so if you have completed those courses, or maybe have one lacking, but you have most of the knowledge, you can still do it.”
Tilley said the layout of comprehensive exams varies by department. Some master’s programs take a less traditional approach to graduate education, such as the College of Communication and Information Sciences master’s degree in community journalism. Unlike the traditional two-year thesis track, the community journalism program is only one year in length and instead of a comprehensive exam, culminates in the presentation of a master’s project.
“I think the master’s project is good because it is real life application,” Elizabeth Manning, a community journalism master’s student, said.
Students choose an issue in the community to be the topic of their projects. Manning said the project is something the graduate students work on throughout their time in the program. Every class they take will somehow tie back to their overall master’s project idea.
The Manderson School of Business offers two-year MBA programs in various specialties, such as business analytics, real estate, finance, financial risk, strategic management and marketing, supply chain and operations management, and enterprise consulting. Academic departments within the College of Arts and Sciences offer both master’s and Ph.D. programs in most academic departments as well.
Although their courses of study may differ, most graduate students will agree on one thing: Graduate school is nothing close to easy.
“I have already learned so much more than I did in undergraduate,” Laura Monroe, a community journalism master’s student, said. “It’s so much more in-depth and our professors, because we are at this level, expect us to understand more than we did in undergrad.”
The extra work pays off for most graduate students, since graduate school allows them to know their professors on a much deeper level.
“We have more leeway because we get to know professors a little bit better,” Tilley said.
