setting the bar too high, maybe

August 29, 2015 4:55 PM

Considering what I've done with my life, are my career ambitions too high?

I was an intelligent, precocious teenager, but I didn't care much for the general high school experience. In my senior year, I decided I'd had enough and moved to Germany via an exchange scholarship program. Eventually, I got accepted into SUNY Buffalo but I decided to enroll in an unspectacular American uni based in the Netherlands so I could stay in Europe. After two years, I realised I wasn't getting what I needed academically and I transferred to a public liberal arts college in the PNW. (You know which one I'm talking about. It's the "non-traditional" college with no grades.) I loved it there. I flourished in the political economy programs. I was active in community development work. I genuinely didn't care that after spending my youth with everyone around me pushing me to get into a prestigious school, I ended up somewhere with a 96 percent acceptance rate. My evaluations were impeccable, though my GPA equivalency, at 3.6, wasn't exactly stellar.

Now, I'm 23. I'm at a middle-tier UK university and I'm a year away from my MSW. I'm contemplating what I want to do when I graduate in Summer 2016. I don't think I want to work in statutory social work forever.

Options-wise, I've been looking at things like:

1) the UN Young Professionals Programme

2) a four-year fully-funded PhD program on the East Coast

3) the Peace Corps

I know getting within even a mile of any of those options will require hard work (and excellent entrance exam/GRE results) on my part, and I'm totally willing to put the hours in.

There's a part of me that feels like I might be good enough. My academic pedigree might not show it, but I have some good things going for me. I have a knack for critical analysis and writing. In a UK-based system, my written assessments consistently come in with marks in the high-70s and low-80s. I have between one to two years of work experience (albeit voluntary) with refugees, young offenders and the Red Cross. Besides English, I speak two other languages fluently, though neither of those languages is French. I look at what I've written and I feel so...competent, and then I realise that there are other people in the world who have the same background but have the paperwork and connections to show for it. I feel like I'm going to be an underwhelmingly ordinary person in a candidate pool full of born-and-bred High Achievers.

So all this boils down to the essential questions: Do I stand a chance in achieving my goals when I'm against equally-or-perhaps-even-more talented, accomplished people with more impressive academic backgrounds? What more can I do to get where I want to be?

(If it's relevant, there's more to my life than my career prospects. I do ballet and contemporary dance. I write bad poetry. I'm on a roller skating team. I eat too much pizza and yell at the tv with friends.)

posted by quadrant seasons to Work & Money (10 answers total)

You will never know if you don't try. What do you have to lose?

For what it's worth, a 3.6 GPA is plenty impressive.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:11 PM on August 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

You are imagining that the Peace Corps admissions process is way more rigorous than it actually is. You can definitely get into Peace Corps, especially if you speak an in-demand language. The application process takes about 8 months so start getting your ducks in order now.

Also, you are doing fine. I don't know about the other two programs you mention, but you sound like a pretty impressive 23-year-old with a case of impostor syndrome.
posted by chaiminda at 5:28 PM on August 29, 2015 [6 favorites]

Nothing you have said would disqualiy you from a US PhD program. The biggest determiner there is research experience. Do you have any? In the US, the MSW is not a research degree, but it may be where you are. If you don't have any research experience, I encourage you to start looking into getting some if you hope to apply to US PhD programs.
posted by hydropsyche at 6:19 PM on August 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Your goals seem very reasonable--even modest. If you go the PhD route, you get to write a brief personal statement that's often the key to admission, if it shows in just a page or so that you bring an interesting mix of experiences to bear on specific research interests that are a reasonably close match for those of the faculty. You have a lot of time to figure out what those research interests might be, and I think you have no idea how few PhD applicants in the social sciences have experience with community development, refugees, young offenders, and the Red Cross.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 7:20 PM on August 29, 2015 [4 favorites]

Yeah, you stand a chance. The UN YPP or the Peace Corps in particular, because I don't know much about U.S's PHD programs. I'd rather be in the YPP than in the Peace Corps, though, for many reasons.

For GPA -- at least in my country -- whether or not someone has 3.3 or 3.9 GPA doesn't really matter for post-undergrad students; what matters are the papers, research, etc. Good luck!
posted by tirta-yana at 3:09 AM on August 30, 2015

There's always going to be someone with better credentials and pedigree. You can't change that. You *can* change how hard you work, how you present yourself, etc. So I wouldn't worry about your past much at all. Just focus on what would make you a better candidate going forward.
posted by deathpanels at 4:05 AM on August 30, 2015

Fwiw, I have a degree in fine art from an "art school". I studied on my own, got good GRE scores, got into good grad schools (though I ultimately didn't go), and make more money than either of my Ivy-educated cousins. You can do this!
(Although know I suffer from a very similar strain of imposter syndrome!)
posted by jrobin276 at 4:09 AM on August 30, 2015

Response by poster: My MSW isn't a research degree, but the social policy program I'm looking at specifies that all applicants should have a MSW--which is encouraging. The first two years of the PhD program are taught. Then the last two years are research. I'm still taking the advice here to heart, and I would definitely like to work on gaining research experience in the next year.
posted by quadrant seasons at 5:06 AM on August 30, 2015

Best answer: If you know which PhD programs you're thinking about, then I'd recommend skimming recent publications by faculty members whose work strikes you as interesting. That'll tell you what good research looks like, methodologically, from their point of view, and their bibliographies may lead you to other sources of interest (possibly other PhD programs). Mentioning specific readings in your personal statement to demonstrate how you fit in with the department is also a pretty good strategy for getting noticed in the social sciences.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 11:13 AM on August 30, 2015

The Peace Corps doesn't require particularly strong academics. To get in you just to be engaged (your volunteer experience suits this), culturally sensitive, flexible in your expectations, and most importantly have the patience to stick through a long application process.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 7:30 PM on August 30, 2015