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How to Prepare for Graduate Education

How to Prepare for Graduate Education. Eileen Doyle Crane, J.D. Utah Valley University. Maxims for your progression. It’s not the grade, it’s what you know Faculty Mentors can help you Research and writing skills make all the difference

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How to Prepare for Graduate Education

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  1. How to Prepare for Graduate Education Eileen Doyle Crane, J.D. Utah Valley University

  2. Maxims for your progression • It’s not the grade, it’s what you know • Faculty Mentors can help you • Research and writing skills make all the difference • Oral advocacy—if you can’t explain it, it doesn’t matter how smart the idea is • Publishing as an undergrad—put it in print • Build a network of professionals who do what you want to do • Read the literature in your field at the professional level • Research graduate programs in your area of interest—all programs are not created equally • Find your heroes who do what you want to do

  3. Grades v. knowledge • Within 3-5 years of graduation, no one will know or care when you graduated or what your grades were • They will care about what you KNOW • And how the knowledge you have can help them • Solve problems • Create solutions • Address issues • Give value-added to their organization, company, product, goods, or services

  4. Faculty Mentors • Faculty members have studied in their field of expertise for at least 8 years before you see them in the classroom • Faculty members have a firehose of information to give you • A 3-credit semester class equals 48 hours of face time in the classroom • Faculty members know MORE than what they can teach in one semester • Curriculum design requires faculty to teach a broad sector of their topic • But the depth of their knowledge is MUCH deeper • Act interested and they have MORE to give you!

  5. Research & writing skills • Law is very interesting; you could spend hours researching something that you can not bill the time for to clients • Managing/supervising partner will not be interested in ALL that you can learn about a topic, at least initially • Since the creation of the Internet, an information explosion has occurred • The ability to find what you need exactly and quickly will save you in billable hours

  6. Research & writing skills • Knowledge of strict grammar rules is a MUST • Seek critical feedback of writing from professors • Buy this book and read it, use it • Mark it up and put tabs in it for rules on commas, semi-colons, etc. • There are special punctuation rules in legal writing • Bluebook Citation Manual

  7. Oral advocacy • Many graduate programs are writing based, oral secondarily • Broaden your vocabulary: www.merriam.com Subscribe to an email Word-A-Day • Read broadly to expand your command of ideas and timeless philosophies • Practice oral presentations in front of friends and family • Law, for example, is an oral occupation ONLY secondarily • No oral presentations until AFTER the writings • Even in negotiations, writings such as demand letters come first • Court visits take up very little of most attorneys’ time, unless one is in the litigation section of a large law firm

  8. networking • Contact each of the two other attorneys • Invite each to lunch, breakfast, as above • Ask specific questions about the profession • Ask for names of two other attorneys to meet • Write/email/call the 1st attorney and thank him/her for the referral and share what was learned in subsequent interviews • Continue till student knows 100 attorneys • Collect and file business cards as well as create and share one’s own card; write notes on the back of details that will help you remember something about this particular person

  9. Literature in your field • Start with a macro search on your field • Discover what the specialties are that exist within it • Do some self-discovery to identify your particular interests • Discover who the experts in those areas are • Read their work and learn what the issues are in those areas • Arrive at graduate school with some idea of the past, present, and future concerns of the field are

  10. Graduate programs • Identify where graduate programs are in your field of interest • Discover a way to systematically compare and contrast programs • Create a spreadsheet of the variables involved • Research the various programs, filling in the spreadsheet with information • Compare within schools for breadth and depth of offerings • Compare across variables for breadth and depth of offerings

  11. Post-graduate school work • Most graduate programs lead to a variety of employment options • Explore the options currently most subscribed to by graduates • Discover necessary data about those positions, e.g. pay, hours, travel, benefits, work settings and situations, professional development, advancement opportunities, leadership training • Post-graduate training/degrees: are they necessary, negligible, optional

  12. Heroes in your field • Identify those who laid the foundation for the field you are interested in • Find out who the current leading actors are in your field • Contact them, if they are still alive • Assume that they will be interested in hearing from you • Ask those who respond intelligent questions which show that you have done your homework • Thank them for their time and attention

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