C&CS: Not Just for Jobs

by Micael Kemp
Associate Director, Counseling and Career Services

Most students turn to Counseling and Career Services because they want a job. Or they want some pre-professional experience to help fill out their resume to better position themselves for a job. Like any career center, jobs are our business. But theyıre not our only business.

Increasingly, students are looking to us for help with graduate school applications. A huge percentage of our students go on to graduate school, if not directly after graduation, then a year or two later. Counseling and Career Services has a wide range of services to help students with this as well.

First, we have collected our best wisdom on the subject of the graduate and professional school application process and put into a single two-hour workshop called Go Go Grad School. This workshop covers all the basics: why you should (or shouldnıt) go to graduate or professional school; how to determine the subject to study; how to pick to best schools in your discipline; how to write your statement of purpose; and all the other myriad details to address when sending out applications. These workshops are usually offered two or three times per quarter and are sold out. For information on when the workshops are offered and how to register to take Go Go Grad School, go to career.ucsb.edu and click "Workshops."

Once you have attended this workshop, you're ready. Perhaps the best place to start is with your statement of purpose. This will help you get your goals in focus, and you can submit rough drafts to people who will be writing letters of recommendation for you so they know and can speak to your accomplishments and goals. You can fine tune those statements through half-hour appointments with career counselors, who offer years of experience in reading and editing similar statements, and who can help make a good statement a great one.

Perhaps the most valuable service we offer students applying to graduate or professional school is a brand new one. Just this year, we just opened up our Reference Letter Service to allow students collecting letters of recommendation for graduate school to set up file for those letters. You can now ask your references to write just one letter and send it to your file at C&CS (be sure and set your file up first. Instead of having to keep track of who has sent what letter to which schools, you only need to have the author write one letter, then work with C&CS to be sure your letters get to all the schools where you are applying for on-time arrival. (For health professions letters, see the Health Professionals Advising Office at http://www.ltsc.ucsb.edu/health. For law school letters, go to LSDAS at http://www.lsac.org/ for instructions on their letter services.)

Whether you are hoping to be a teacher, a biotech researcher, a psychologist, a market researcher, or any of the hundreds of jobs that require a graduate degree, we can get you started. Or, if youıre going to wait to go to grad school, we can help you find a job in the meanwhile. Please feel free to come by or visit us at career.ucsb.edu to see which of our services will be of most use to you.

Counseling and Career Services is located in Building 599. Stop by, or make an appointment by calling 805-893-4411.

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