The difference experience makes in your graduate degree and career

10 Apr 2020

Your experiences outside the graduate classroom could make all the difference when you are face-to-face with a future employer.

When they see all the hands-on experiences on your CV, it will signal one thing: that you are a confident and job-ready graduate.

Take, for example, Northeastern University College of Social Sciences & Humanities (CSSH) graduate Rose Leopold – when she goes on interviews, she has a substantial amount of experience to discuss.

Her undergraduate tenure alone included working as the press and legislative intern for US Senator Elizabeth Warren in Washington DC, and at the US embassy in Quito, Ecuador.

Her graduate studies pursuing a Master of Science degree in Security and Resilience Studies (SRS) at CSSH featured more experiential opportunities, which complemented and extended her classroom learning in new and unexpected ways.

“The advice I would offer prospective graduate students is to look for a programme that has faculty members who have real-world experiences, and a school that can provide excellent career opportunities and tie coursework into industry expectations,” said Rose.

“Northeastern has exactly that.”

Connect to co-op

One way CSSH incorporates professional experience into graduate studies is through cooperative education (co-op) experiences.

Having completed a full academic year, any master’s student can embark on a co-op experience. Northeastern’s signature co-op programme provides students with six-month work experiences in businesses, non-profit organisations and government agencies in Boston, across the US and around the world.

That means you will gain valuable work and research experience and have the opportunity to apply your knowledge from your first year of studies to that role.

Source: Northeastern University CSSH

Co-ops also include a co-curricular, interdisciplinary experiential integration course as part of your experience.

CSSH master’s students have landed co-ops at the Office of the Attorney General of Massachusetts, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General, Indigo Agriculture, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) and many more.

What’s also great about this experiential opportunity is that throughout those six industry-focused months, you will maintain your status as a full-time student and have continued access to Northeastern University academic resources, faculty and advisors and facilities.

For Master of Public Administration (MPA) graduate Angelina Li, a three-month internship (different than a co-op) led her to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (LILP).

“The Lincoln Institute recognises the importance of providing accessible learning materials and tools as a fundamental component of its mission,” she said. “I leveraged my video production skills and knowledge of policy issues to help the Institute enhance its online courses, covering topics such as planning principles, land use, and taxation.”

As part of her internship, Angelina even had the opportunity to fly to Phoenix to interview LILP’s Board Chair Kathryn Jo Lincoln and to Washington DC to interview former LILP President George Ingram who had established the Peking University-Lincoln Institute Center in 2007.

“I feel that I benefited from every course and experiential opportunity in the MPA programme,” she says.

Enhance your learning through interdisciplinary research

Throughout your CSSH graduate experience, you will be focused on real-world challenges and how to address them via interdisciplinary research.

As a Master of Science in Urban Informatics student at CSSH, Lautaro Cantar was able to conduct research at the Boston Area Research Institute (BARI), based in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University.

The recipient of the Argentine Presidential Fellowship in Science and Technology. Lautaro conducted research using open access data to examine the spatial effects of commercial gentrification determinants.

Later, he used his research efforts to build a Craigslist scraper – a tool used to filter through large amounts of data – for rental housing units in Massachusetts.

Source: Northeastern University CSSH

He returned to Argentina with this newfound knowledge and real-world experience and now applies them in his role as a data analyst for the Argentinean Federal Government (AFG).

“I analyse geographical data and I advise senior offices on different issues. Additionally, I’m dabbling in teaching data science for public officials,” says Lautaro.

By attending a university that combines real-world research opportunities with cooperative education experiences, Lautaro was able to showcase his diverse experience and expertise to top-level employers like the AFG.

If you would like to build an impressive CV like these CSSH graduates, check out the professionally focused social science and policy programs in CSSH at Northeastern University.

In these challenging times, the CSSH admissions team are still available for any inquiries. Feel free to get in touch: gradcssh@northeastern.edu.

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