Back to School- Earn Your Degree

The recession hit hard in early 2008 with the subprime mortgage crisis. The faulty irresponsible lending of banks with little regard to the soundness of people’s credit, led to massive amounts of foreclosures that directly equated to a freeze in credit lending to the people who need it- businesses. An economic downturn across the nation came as a result and now millions are suffering. Graduates from college, even those from premier schools like Harvard and Yale, are having a very difficult time finding a job. With the unemployment rate at an all-time high of 10.2%, we are experiencing an overload of over-qualified employees. Those who should be working at office-jobs have to make ends meet by pulling whatever strings they can at their local grocery store, supermarket, deli, dry cleaner, or drug store. Perhaps if you were a leading manager at a big-time company, the lay-offs that companies turned to as a way to cut costs might have left you on the back-burner. The trickle effect continues. So you may have once been a leading manager, and now an average Joe and the average Joes and merely a blip on the map in the economic sense. I’m sure this may sound familiar to you. So at one point you might have been leading the pack, but it’s far harder to do when employment rates are so low and there are less jobs to go around. The competition is that much tougher. But although it may seem like we are over qualified, the only way to reach the top again is if we differentiate ourselves by becoming even more qualified. We need to be better than the competition. We need to be so enticing to companies that they cannot think about laying us off, firing us, or not hiring us. We need to be so attractive to their business model that they “need us”. We need to be their best asset.

One way to be an asset, worthy of being a vital component of a company, is encompassing knowledge and intellectual understanding of the task at hand. Knowledge is so powerful. The more you know over someone else, the more valuable you come. The more educated you are, he more irreplaceable you become. With that being said, one way to beat this recession is to go to school and be smarter, more experience, and more informed than the competition pool. There’s always more you can learn, so take the opportunity to do so.
Ultimately, school will provide you with a major opportunity that will open new doors and career paths. You’ll immediately be viewed in a new light by prospective employers and your resume will be that much sharper. Let’s take a look at some schooling routes you can take:

Earning a College Degree

Obtaining a college degree gets easier year by year. People from all walks of life can get obtain a college degree with the numerous amount of scholarships available, low-rate student loans, and the financial aid that is being provided. The financial incentives to get a college degree are so overwhelming, you’d be foolish not to get one.

Studies show that people with college degrees earn at least 25% more each year than someone who performs the same job without a degree. That is with the same job. Especially in these hardships, (where this is a commonality) an employer who is faced with the option of hiring one with a college degree or one without, the employee will almost always choose the one with the college degree. The National Center for Education Statistics showed in a study in 2007 that a 25 year old male with a bachelor’s degree earned a median income of more than $22,000 higher than one with just a high-school-diploma. That is pretty compelling evidence.

Furthermore, college increases your potential in terms of finding great jobs in your preferred field of study. Therefore, your earning potential is multitudes above what it would be without a degree.

College provides increased knowledge regarding a particular field of study of your choice. Companies want to ensure that their employees understand their industry. Having a college degree with a concentration in that area pertaining to your job ensures the company that they want you as their employee. They want the best for their company and promoting someone with advanced knowledge on their industry will only help the company grow and succeed.

Not only financially, college just makes you better as an overall person. College provides a wide range of mandatory courses that make you a well-grounded individual. Taking literature, math, business, philosophy, and law classes are all part of a process to give you a strong foundation of America’s principles and traditions. College is very important, because it is much more focused learning than a high-school education could provide. It is also important due to the environment you are placed in. College is a maturation process. It’s healthy to socialize and “party” with classmates while rejoicing in good times.

If you happen to be in college now, realize the capabilities you have at your disposal to head straight into graduate school once you earn your college degree. You are better to go straight through, while you are still in school-work mode, rather than taking off a couple of years and then heading back in. The reason why this is so is because after taking a couple of year hiatus, you won’t want to stop making money or take classes at nights to learn again. Also, your learning, reading, and writing skills might not be as sharp as they were coming off of an education setting.

Business School

MBA programs provide a strong foundation for individuals by merely focusing on business courses. These subjects are vital to running a business in a commercial environment, but aren’t taught in-depth throughout high school, college, or other graduate programs. Business schools teaches you not only the fundamentals of these courses, but really goes in-depth with the material. Unlike an undergraduate course, where you just learn the material briefly, and then spit what you learned on a multiple-choice exam, where the answer is right there in front of you, business school helps with real-world application of the material you learned, where the answers aren’t sticking out on the page with a 25% chance to get it right. In the real-world, no answers stick out on the page. You’ve got to come up with the answers on your own by applying the material you’ve learned. The gap between knowing information and actually applying it is so large, and business school helps you overcome that. If you always had a dream of opening up your own business, you should really consider going to business school first.
If you are looking to enter the corporate realm, nothing will move you up that totem pole faster than an MBA. It will immediately lead to a career (not a job) change, where you’ll be prepared for management-level positions. While most of your entry-level foes won’t have specialized degrees, you’ll stick out and be that more appealing to your bosses to receive that promotion when the time comes.

An MBA can also give you autonomy to not only move vertically, but horizontally across industries as well. You’ll be well-rounded and understand multi-faceted concepts, so moving from the business management side of computer software development to life insurance won’t phase you. You’ll understand how businesses work and the logistics and industries will be overcome by your ability to adapt to your new environment (something you were taught in business school).
If you know exactly what you want to do and you’re interested in sticking with a single career path, getting a specific MBA will help you greatly in this regard. Being knowledgeable in a focused subject like finance, will make you that much more qualified in that area. For instance, if you are applying for an analyst position in Goldman Sachs, a finance MBA from a top school will make you very attractive in that area of expertise.

Take the GMAT’s today!

Law School

There truly is nothing like a law degree. The legal profession pushes you to your full potential. It is all you think it is and a whole lot more. Not only does it teach you how to sift through extensive material, research, write, dig deep for the rulings of law, be concise, and be organized, the most important tool acquired from law school is the ability to think critically. A necessity of law school is to constantly raise arguments from both the plaintiff’s (party bringing suit) side and the defendant’s (party suit is being brought against) side. It inherently requires you to think outside the box and look deeper than the words on the page. While most educations spoon-feed the material, where what is written on the page is the answer, law school requires you to take the rules and laws you’ve learned and actually apply them by questioning to yourself: “what if this happened?”. It requires you to be critical, not taking anything for the way that it is, but rather question and come up with new positions. To overcome the gap of learning something and applying it is a whole new world that law school teaches you how to do.

From a financial standpoint, a law degree is a wonderful asset to have under your belt. Attorneys such as corporate lawyers pay very well (upwards of $125,000 to start). It opens up tremendous doors not only in the legal profession, but in business as well. Law is involved in every business transaction you could imagine. Any kind of contract or draft, sale of good, warranty…anything you could imagine in your every day life, has legal implications. Knowing the law allows you to be a better businessman/woman. You can even be your own in-house attorney and not go through the hassle of hiring out when you run into a dispute or problem.

Also, as an attorney you have the ability to contribute to society in a big way. As an attorney, you are relied upon by clients. Your profession allows you to enrich the lives of others. In a criminal setting, you can perform great social service by bringing criminals to justice or helping the innocent find justice. In a civil setting, your expertise allows you the ability to restore hardships through remedies. You can make a difference in this world!

Please do understand what you are getting yourself into though- lots of reading and writing, semesters enclosed in a library, sleepless nights, and an awful month of preparation for finals. However, also understand what you are getting out of it-the knowledge of the legal system, the ability to think critically in every situation, the skill to apply that law, and ultimately, the capability of practicing as an attorney at law.

Tip: If you want to go to law school, but didn’t do exceptionally well on the LSAT, don’t be discouraged… Look into part-time programs as they are usually much more lenient in their admission standards. Loads of schools offer night classes.

Medical School (Included In this is Dental School/Dermatological School/Pharmacology School, etc.)

There is nothing more prestigious or admirable than becoming a doctor. This is the ultimate professions, in my opinion, just because of the profound impact a man in this field can have on others’wellbeing. Health, truly is wealth. One’s overall wellbeing is directly attributable because of their health. The doctor has the ability to remedy one’s ales, aches, and pains. Nothing is more rewarding than knowing you’ve changed one’s life for the better in a regard like medicine.
Financially, doctors, and especially specialized doctors, can earn a very nice living. This profession constitutes a high earning potential, where the median earnings in 2005 range from $137,119 in a family practice to $321,686 in specialized medicine like anesthesiology. However, be wary because that may change with Obama’s new healthcare schemes. However, finances should not be the compelling reason on why you should become a doctor. Do it for the cause.
There is also tremendous job security. There is always a need for doctors, and since there is an annual bar on how many doctors can be certified each year, unlike lawyers, there profession ensures security because there will always be a shortage and it is always in demand.

Don’t Have the Money? Here’s a Solution

Do your research. Find out how much money you need. Then, find out ways to get it. Look into both federal and local grants, and apply for any and all. Start with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Look into the low-interest Federal Stafford loan as well. Call the financial aid office at the university or school you plan on attending and ask what they have to offer. Look into scholarships. The school you are applying to probably has a few. Furthermore, there are plenty of websites out there that offer scholarships such as FastWeb.com. You’ll have to provide an essay along with the application, so build up your list of accolades immediately so you have a compelling scholarship-worthy essay.

Hint: Tailor the essay to the type of scholarship you are trying to receive. General topics to write about are hardships, incredible feats, real-world application to a theory you’re proposing. If it’s for a not-for-profit organization, write about a profound experience you’ve had while volunteering time for the community’s cause. The main thing, though, is that it’s got to be about you, specifically, and what you’ve learned from your experiences and what you plan on doing with what you’ve learned in the future to better both yourself and others.

Low-interest rate student loans are another option. This will allow you to pay off the loans once you get a job after schooling, where your monthly payout rate is determinative upon your income. Furthermore, look into a pay-as-you go scheme.

Also, look for a full-time job during the breaks (summer and winter) and a part-time job during school to help pay for the tuition.
If you are working already, find out if your company offers tuition reimbursement. Your company wants you to participate in higher education, so just ask.

The Ultimate Conferred Benefit

Personal satisfaction should be the ultimate reward that you’ve benefited from after going to school to earn whatever degree you sought after. You took the steps and additional measures necessary to better your education and future, and by extension, yourself, as a person. There is nothing more rewarding than knowing that you improved your overall being.