Post-grad Opportunities
Careers
Believe it or not, degrees in the liberal arts can actually make it easier to land a job. Each major within the School of Arts & Sciences carries with it a unique list of skill sets that more and more employers are saying they want. Across industries, employers look for a combination of skills, interests and values that match their own.
Forget about scrolling through a list of careers liberal arts majors pursue. There are no rules. If you choose a major you’re passionate about, you are much more likely to discover and develop your own personal skills, interests and values that ultimately, will help you find a rewarding profession.
It’s never too early to visit the Career Development Center. Exploring how your skills, experiences, interests and values can influence your career choices is something you can do from your first year at Richmond through your fourth and beyond.
Graduate School
Making the decision to attend graduate school is a big commitment and one that an increasing number of undergraduate students are choosing to make. For students who know what they want to study and what they’d like to ultimately do professionally, it’s often the right choice. The application process can be strenuous, however, particularly since it takes place during the fall of students’ senior year when they are busy working on honors theses and taking upper-level coursework.
The School of Arts & Sciences offers a number of resources to help make students successful as they go through the graduate school application process. For students interested in attending graduate school in a health profession, the school’s pre-health program is second to none. In 2007, 25 out of 26 students who applied to medical school were accepted. Students enroll in the program as early as their first year, receive guidance from the school’s pre-health advisor, take a full-year, faculty-led MCAT review course at no additional cost (virtually unheard of elsewhere), complete a clinical preceptorship and sit before the school’s review board in preparation for admission interviews.
For students who are interested in other graduate programs, the Career Development Center offers a full range of search engines to identify appropriate programs and keeps credential files for students who want to avoid having to request and send the same information to multiple schools. The Writing Center works with students on their personal statements and writing samples. As always, the best resources for students interested in pursuing graduate study, however, are the professors they have gotten to know in their field of study. Often, those professors can recommend programs, help with recommendations and introduce students to colleagues at other schools.
Bridge Experiences
Students in Europe traditionally take what is sometimes called a “gap” year or “bridge” year between finishing high school and attending college. It’s designed to let students travel, complete service learning projects and learn a little more about themselves and their interests before they plunge into making big decisions about their futures.
In the United States, the bridge year has grown increasingly more common, except it is more typical for students to take the time in between graduating from college and starting their career or attending graduate school. The University of Richmond, and specifically the School of Arts & Sciences, sends dozens of students into a variety of bridge experiences each year.
The experiences range from traditional programs like the Peace Corps and Teach for America to more self-designed experiences. To learn more about bridge experiences that will help you turn your passion into a purposeful experience, talk to the Career Development Center.