My experience in McNair has prepared me for the graduate school application process in ways that I didn’t realize until I started my capstone course this semester. For one of our assignments, we had to put together either a packet of job application materials (resume/CV and cover letter) or a packet of graduate school application materials (personal statement, CV, cover letter for an assistantship of your choice) While I felt comfortable with the assignment, I noticed that many of my classmates struggled. This seems to be due to the assignments that we’ve had to complete in McNair. Over the past year, we’ve had to submit our CV and personal statement several times for feedback and revision. This ensured that by the time I applied to graduate school in mid-September, I had all of those materials ready, and they had already been rewritten/revised several times to be the best version I could put forth. I had classmates that had never seen a CV, let alone that knew how to write one. Due to the skills and resources that I acquired through McNair, I already have my CV completed and polished. When we exchanged packets to provide feedback in class, my classmates had no suggestions for improvement on my CV. My personal statement had already been read and I’d received feedback that allowed me to revise it several times to make sure that it was something graduate schools would look favorably upon.
Something that I feel I could use more experience and confidence in is graduate school interviews. For my capstone course, we completed a mock interview to apply for the position of our choice (graduate assistantships, graduate school admission, or employment). While I’ve completed interviews before, I’m not quite sure what the graduate school admission interview process will look like, so I think that it’d be helpful if we engaged more in this process in McNair. However, based on my experience with the graduate school application process and what I’ve learned about it in McNair, I believe that I felt more comfortable with the interview than my partner did.
The experiences I’ve had in McNair-assignments, discussions, and conferences-have all prepared me for the graduate school process in a way that many students don’t get to experience. I think that a capstone course may be more useful in the semester before graduation, or even in the second semester of junior year. Then, perhaps, we can create another type of capstone course for the last semester of senior year. I noticed that many of my classmates felt panicked or unprepared for life after graduation, and I believe that experiences like McNair or an earlier capstone course could better prepare them for this process ahead of time.
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