For many of us, a career in housing wasn’t part of our 5 year plan, 10 year plan, or really any plan at all. Working for a college housing program is an incredibly niche career, and it’s not something you get much serious exposure to unless you were an RA or an incredibly involved resident. While some of us chose to shift from our undergraduate degree to pursue a master’s degree in higher education administration, higher education and student affairs, or whatever your degree was called, many of us also found housing after pursuing alternative careers and degrees.
Whether you’re someone with no formal higher education background who has ended up working for housing or a student staff member interested in learning more about a student affairs degree, today’s post is for you! In this two part series, I’ll provide a general overview of what it’s like to pursue a student affairs degree, illustrated through my own graduate school experience.
Researching Schools
There are many different types of graduate school programs which have different theoretical frameworks or structures that guide their curriculum. There are research programs which prepare you for careers more oriented to higher education research, social justice-based programs which prepare you to work directly with diverse student populations, counseling-based programs which focus on the intersection between student affairs and crisis response, and more. It can be hard to figure out which kind of institution you want to attend, but luckily most schools are very eager for applicants and would be more than willing to share an overview of their curriculum with you or connect you with a current student to aid you in your decision. Professional organizations like NASPA have also created helpful directories that centralize information and help you narrow your search by various criteria, such as geographic location and financial aid options.
Applying
When I applied to graduate school in 2017, the main requirement was taking the Graduate Record Examination, or GRE. Nowadays, not all schools require the GRE, and many are also waiving application fees in order to create equity amongst applicants, as these fees can add up to hundreds, if not thousands of dollars depending on how many schools you apply to, and how many times you take the GRE.
If you are interested in a school that does require the GRE, I will say that my impression of the GRE is that it was mostly a formality, as the content of the GRE has little to do with the content of your coursework. To prepare for the GRE, I borrowed GRE prep books from my campus library, which typically contain helpful practice problems and entire practice tests based on previous years’ exams.
Interviewing
After applying, processes can greatly differ depending on the school you apply to. In my case, the school I ended up attending required successful candidates to obtain an internship before being formally admitted to the university, so my next step was participating in interview days.
Interview days, or I-Days, are a 2-3 day process in which you interview with a variety of offices on campus and from other local universities. During the first day of I-Days, the goal is to get you to connect with as many offices as possible, so it isn’t uncommon to have 8 interviews in a single day. At the end of the first day, there is typically a matchmaking system where candidates rate their top offices they would like to work for, and the offices do the same with their top candidates. The subsequent days are reserved for 2nd or even 3rd round interviews in which candidate placements can be narrowed down even further. While some people may leave I-Days with an offer in hand, it may also take a few weeks or months for you to hear back about an internship placement.
For me, I-Days was the most stressful part of the process! I felt a great sense of imposter syndrome, as everyone was pressured to be the best version of themselves in order to score their top choice internship. While COVID may have shifted the I-Days process online for some schools, my I-Days experience was fully in person, so adding travel to an unfamiliar place during my last semester of undergraduate study was another stressor.
Compensation
Note: In recent days, policies and laws around higher education feel really up in the air, and not in a good way. Most recently, our government has made vague, confusing and contradictory statements about federal aid and who gets to benefit from it (should I add a link?), so take this section with a bit of salt.
During my two years of graduate study, I participated in a 20 hour/week internship with my university’s housing department as a graduate resident director. This 20-hour internship paid for my housing, meal plan, and tuition, and I was paid a stipend of around $10,000 split into in biweekly payments on top of that. Every school has a different compensation package, and even some positions within the same school may vary. Not all positions pay for housing, and if you have a position at another local school, they may factor your commuting costs into your payment.
The inequity in compensation was felt deeply for the duration of my graduate school experience. Jobs with live-on benefits are often a top preference during I-Days, and candidates that do not secure those positions may find the need to get second jobs to pay their rent. If you find yourself in a position where your compensation is significantly greater than your classmates’, it’s important to recognize and work through that privilege from day one.
Your Internship
As I previously mentioned, not all graduate programs require an internship. However, obtaining an internship is a great way to determine whether you enjoy the work and see the real-world applications of what you’re learning in the classroom in real time. If you have a fantastic supervisor who is tuned into your curriculum, they’ll be eager to help you make those connections too.
Since your graduate program and internship site exist in symbiosis, there should be a lot of flexibility between the two. Most offices understand that your academics will come first, but your professors will also understand if you need to step away from class to address an on-call incident. If you have inflexible meeting times at your internship that conflict with your academics, your program should ensure that any required coursework has a section that works with your schedule. Just like undergraduate students, graduate students are limited to working 20 hours/week across all university positions, so it’s uncommon (and also probably illegal) to find an office expecting any more of you.
Internships are not always set in stone, either. If you’re looking for a diverse work experience, some schools offer the option for you to switch internships midway through your academic program. Even if this isn’t the case, schools typically offer a practicum course which grants you the ability to pursue more internship experience for course credit.
While my graduate school experience sometimes feels like a distant memory (despite only being 5 years ago), I hope you were able to gain some insight about the application and internship process from this post. Check out part two, which does a deeper dive into the coursework of student affairs programs.
