@ItsJustSchool (re #5): When you use the term “garduate school,” are you including “profeesional schools?” If so, I respectfully – but strongly – disagree with your statement, “Graduate school rearely has that galvanizing impact.”
Here’s why I demur: attorneys, physicans, MBAs, clergy, and so forth frequently have rather narrowly oriented professional lives. They, too, experience “galvanizing moments” – although possibly more professionally than personally oriented – during their years in professional school. For example, I know many fine lawyers who feel their terms as law review editiors were pivitol to their lives – both personal and professional. Similarly, divinity and medical students often believe their lives were altered during – and by – their professional educations (especially, patient and parishioner contact). In addition, some MBAs developed a deep understanding for the many essential elements of an enterprise that require integration and optimization – and for the tools that may help accomplish these goals – and this systemic managerial approach becomes fundamental to their lives (including their personal lives).
To summaruize, what professional school you attend also (to use your phrase) “becomes part of your identity” – quite possibly larger and more crucial than undergraduate school – because a professional career consumes such a huge amount of an adult’s life and because those law, medical, business, divinity, etc. school “galvanizing moments” are both integral and essential to every day’s work.
Finally, I am not to sure the foregoing analysis would apply equally to, for example, Master’s degrees in disciplines such as English Literature, History, or Philosophy, simply because there’s no single, highly focused profession that results from such advanced degrees.