My current goal in life is to attend graduate school and get my degree in Environmental Science/Studies. The issue is I’m fairly certain I won’t get accepted if I apply. I graduated with my B.A in Geography 5 years ago in 2011. My biggest regret was not doing my best during my schooling. I graduated somewhere a little over a 3.0 in my core studies, but my overall cumulative GPA was around 2.9. One of my biggest regrets was not living up to my potential during my school years. Looking back now I was lazy, not really motivated, and didn’t have a real sense of direction in my life at the time. Anyway, from the time I graduated till now I have been in the Air Force. I’m getting out right now and heading back to the civilian world. I want to go back to school now that I am focused and know what I want to do with my life. The problem is I know I’m not the ideal candidate the look at to be accepted into a program. I never build any kind of educational relationships with my professors in the past so letters of recommendation are probably not going to happen. A minimum of a 3.0 GPA is needed but I don’t know if that means overall or core GPA. Thirdly, I have minimum experience or participation in the intended field of study. After some research I decided if I can’t get into grad school, I’ll just go and try to get another bachelor’s degree this time in environmental science. Another road block, Most schools are limited on and who they allow to enroll for a second bachelors and restricted on which field of study are open for a second degree.
I’m still determined to reach my goal though. Once I get out, I plan to do volunteer work related to the conservation environmental science field, and try and take some related classes at a community college to show that when the time comes to apply, I have been active in trying to better myself and become more involved in this field despite my shortcomings in the past. What I’m asking is is this a legitimate plan that can work? I’m also thinking of going for an associates in environmental science at a junior college, will that help my chances at all?
Thank you to anyone who took the time to read this and hear me out and offer any advice.
Your idea of building up experience in allied areas makes sense. You could also look the research being conducted by people in the field at the local university. Read their papers. Then send them an email expressing your interest in working with them. I would do this for faculty at universities that I did not necessarily want to matriculate at. That is because the researchers you contact might think you are trying to back door it into their specific program. Because of ethical issues, even researchers who might welcome your help on their research may be reluctant to allow you to volunteer if they think you are trying to back door it into their program. So you should ask faculty only at programs you can honestly say you have no interest in applying but would like to work with them on current research. Then the person you work with may be in an ideal position to write you a strong letter of support for other programs.
Previous college grades will be less important than these sorts of experiences-especially if you can get good scores.
The fact that you graduated 5 years ago and have experience in the Air Force after that will partially mitigate your marginal grades if you can convince a graduate program that you are determined (maybe you can get letters of reference from your military connections). We have a Professional Masters in Health Physics at my university and many of our best students come with a non-traditional college degree from the Navy. The biggest question is whether you have the prerequisites for the graduate program you are interested in. Have you taken enough mathematics and other science courses to be admissible? Some of these prerequisite courses can be taken part-time at a local university while you are working/volunteering in the field. I don’t think you need a second Bachelor’s degree or an Associates degree, just focus on the prerequisites for the programs you want to get into.
You also don’t mention if you are planning on a Masters of a doctorate. If the latter, you might start by finding a Masters program which will admit you and let you take some remedial courses to better prepare yourself for a Ph.D. program. You will find that there are all sorts of programs out there and some of them have more flexible admission requirements.
Well, if your goal is graduate work, you don’t want to take community college classes. Unless you’re missing some prerequisites for an environmental sciences MA program, what you’d really want to do are take some graduate-level classes as a non-degree student to demonstrate that you are prepared to handle graduate-level work. At the very least, if you are taking undergraduate classes, take upper-level classes (300+ level). These also have the benefit of allowing you to develop relationships with recommenders.
The exception is if you really do need some prereqs like chemistry or biology or whatnot.
An associate’s or a second bachelor’s would be a waste of time and money. You just need to focus on increasing your credentials for graduate work. Also, with your AF experience, see if you can get some work in the field with your BA - the work experience will also help mitigate that undergrad GPA.
*I would do this for faculty at universities that I did not necessarily want to matriculate at. That is because the researchers you contact might think you are trying to back door it into their specific program. Because of ethical issues, even researchers who might welcome your help on their research may be reluctant to allow you to volunteer if they think you are trying to back door it into their program. So you should ask faculty only at programs you can honestly say you have no interest in applying but would like to work with them on current research. *
I don’t necessarily agree with this.
It is very common for people to start volunteering to do research in a lab between college and grad school then end up in that department for graduate school. There’s nothing ethically questionable about that. It’s an ideal situation all around: the student in question has a “head start” on the research area and has already gotten some projects off the ground, and the PI in question knows the student is a hard worker who is likely to be successful in the program. It’s a “back door” in the same sense that doing an internship at a company you later go to work for is a back door. In other words, perfectly okay and very common.
So while I wouldn’t limit myself only to universities I wanted to attend, I’d certainly not rule out programs that were interesting to me.