Liberal arts students in colleges like Middlebury, Williams, Amherst and Bowdoin are accustomed to answering the question, "What are you doing with your life after graduation?" As students are often forced to choose a career path more focused than their college studies, many decide to continue their education in graduate school.
At Bowdoin, students can expect to find a variety of support networks on campus to support their graduate school ambitions. The small size of the College can make it difficult to get advising for specific graduate programs, but administrators stress that the right advice can always be found with enough searching.
The Career Planning Center (CPC) is a common place to start that search.
Assistant Director of the CPC Sherry Mason said she sees herself as somewhat of a facilitator, providing general guidance for graduate school applicants, but also helping students access campus resources.
Mason recommended that students interested in pursuing Ph.D. programs should seek expert help from professors in relevant departments.
"I almost always tell people, 'you should run this by an expert in your subject matter,'" she said. "They have access to, sort of, gossip information and they are all products of Ph.D.s and they know how to take the Web page publicity and cut through it to what is really going on."
Mason said Bowdoin is well suited for students interested in pursuing a Ph.D.
"I would say the people who have the easiest time getting good expert advice about grad school are the people who want an academic graduate school," she said.
Both medical school and law school advising have special support networks at Bowdoin.
Mason, the pre-law advisor for the CPC, regularly sees current students and alumni about applying to law school as well as choosing a course of study to prepare for law school. Bowdoin does not have a pre-law major, meaning that a variety of majors are represented in a Bowdoin law school applicant class.
She said that during the current academic year, she had advised or was in the process of advising approximately 30 Bowdoin students and alumni. However, she mentioned that many more students could be applying to law school and bypassing the CPC completely. The CPC does not have a system in place to track students.
Mason mentioned that one recurring problem she has heard from Bowdoin students is a concern over standardized tests.
"One big element of getting into law school, for better or for worse, is the LSAT," said Mason.
Mason said the LSAT is a "hugely frustrating part of the law school application process" for some students.
Concern over standardized tests is also common for students applying to medical school, according to Director of Health Professions Advising Sue Livesay.
In reference to the MCAT—the required test for admission to medical school—Livesay said, "It's a big hurdle. If I could bomb it and make it disappear, I would. But I can't."
Nonetheless, Livesay mentioned a variety of campus resources available for test preparation. She also thought that academic performance at Bowdoin was generally a predictor of MCAT results.
"People who do well in the sciences here typically do well on it," she said.
Livesay is a busy woman. Oftentimes, she takes lunch breaks in Moulton Union to provide casual advice for students. She currently has 340 people in her database who have expressed interest in medical school, although many of those students will end up pursuing different career tracks. Some students are pressured into pursuing a pre-med track by parents or other influences. Livesay said there are currently about 95 first year students in the database.
Livesay tries to meet with students to plan pre-med coursework and better target individual students' interests.
She spoke of "trying to make students aware of the range of opportunities in health care" apart from regular medical school.
According to Livesay, usually about 30 to 35 Bowdoin students apply to medical school each year; last year 41 students were on committee, meaning they had received official recommendations from Bowdoin for medical school.
Livesay mentioned that a big part of her job is making sure people are ready to apply to medical school, and then ensuring that their applications are ready for submission. She said that some students have a tendency to rush applying when it is clear they are not yet ready.
"The most difficult part of the job is telling people what they don't want to hear," she said.
Livesay also mentioned working with students to apply to the right caliber schools.
"The ones who do not get in, it's usually not a surprise," she said.
Mason mentioned that there are certain graduate programs, such as psychiatry or engineering, that are harder to provide adequate advising for.
"[With] things that we do not have lots of in-house expertise, we have to hunt a little more to get good advice," she said.
Alex Haskins '11, who plans to attend Harvard Divinity School next year, spoke about his choice to pursue a less commonly attended type of school and his experience receiving advice at the College.
"I think the Ph.D. in religion and the Ph.D. in political theory didn't quite cut it for what I wanted to do," said Haskins, who hopes to eventually become a professor of political theory.
Haskins said that he talked to a wide variety of people before making his decision to apply to divinity school. He mentioned Professor of Social Science Jean Yarbrough, Professor of Government Paul Franco, Associate Professor of Religion Elizabeth Pritchard and ministers from the surrounding area, as well as people from his hometown of St. Louis. Haskins talked with Mason more on the specific details of his application, such as improving his personal statement and curriculum vitae.
Haskins felt that Bowdoin provided good resources to contact, although he said it was a result of his initiative to contact these various people.