Daily Deacon

Graduating Seniors Choosing Grad School Now More Than Ever

As graduation approaches, Wake Forest University Seniors are being pushed to decide the next step in their lives. And more than ever, those students are choosing graduate schools over searching for immediate placement into the workforce.

U.S. News and World Report recently reported that graduate school applications from graduating undergraduates rose more than 8% from 2015 to 2016. This follows an 8% increase from 2014 to 2015, equaling the largest percentage growth in history.

Wake Forest Seniors seem to be helping this trend with more than 23% of students surveyed in the Senior Class planning on attending graduate school in the next year or one year removed from the end of their undergraduate careers. According to statistics on the Wake Forest University Graduate Program website, this number has increased steadily from 11% since 2011.

According to Generation Opportunity, a conservative nonprofit that advocates for millennials, this spike in undergraduate seniors deciding to pursue graduate school is a sign of a struggling economy and tough job market. A Wake Forest Senior who asked to remain anonymous echoed the sentiment that only the highest qualified applicants are being considered for jobs. “These are entry-level jobs, but experienced people are taking them.”

As out-of-college job placement becomes increasingly difficult, “millennials, and employers for that matter, are starting to believe that an undergraduate degree just isn’t good enough,” said Dr. Herman Rapaport, a Wake Forest Professor of more than 20 years. “A degree, even from a prestigious university like Wake Forest, just doesn’t mean what it used to in terms of gaining meaningful employment.”

To many, a graduate degree offers a more secure path towards the goal of a gainful career. Wake Forest University Senior, Valeria Villa, turned down several offers from high-earning jobs out of college in order to pursue a Law Degree from New York University. “It just makes more sense in the long run,” she said, explaining her decision to reject her initial offers. “A Graduate Degree of any kind opens so many doors that otherwise would never even be on your radar.”

A tough job market and a broader field of job options are not the only reasons today’s undergraduates are more frequently pursuing graduate degree programs than their older peers. Some seniors, such as Senior Biology and Chemistry Major, Eric Bueter, see Graduate School not as a vehicle for job placement but rather motivation for waiting longer to enter the job market.

“I just worked my a** off for four years, and had the best time of my life,” Bueter said when asked why he wanted to put off the job search in favor of completing a Graduate Degree at the University of Chicago’s Biochemistry Ph.D. Program. “Now I get to study exactly what I want to at one of the best programs in the entire world. Who in their right mind would pass on that?”

As factors such as the difficult job market and a more secure career path weigh on graduating seniors now more than ever, it is easy to see why Graduate School has become a more frequently chosen option for first year post-graduates than it has ever been in the past. And in the case of Bueter, Graduate School just makes sense. “I never want to stop learning. Ever.”