Climbing the ladder in higher education

The Career Center will host the Graduate and Professional School Fair from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday in PlainsCapital Bank El Gran Salón for the Brownsville campus and at the same time Thursday in the University Ballroom on the Edinburg campus.

“It’s a good opportunity for students to be able to learn about the various graduate school programs across the country, not only within UTRGV, but expose them to all these other opportunities,” said Lourdes Servantes, associate director at the Career Center. “We are going to have a lot of other universities that are [going to be] here. This is pretty much the only real time that other graduate programs, like, this many, are in one place at one time.”

Representatives from Baylor Law School, Our Lady of the Lake, Sam Houston State, South Texas College of Law, Texas A&M School of Public Health, the UT Health Science Center at Houston, Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara and West Texas A&M are among those expected to attend.

“Sometimes, when individuals are trying to apply to graduate school, to try and get additional information you have to pay additional fees and things like that,” Servantes said. “You pretty much see what’s on the website, but sometimes, it helps to have that face-to-face contact and so, this is that opportunity.”

Asked about why it is important for students to attend the event, she replied that it will help them choose which graduate school they want to go to specialize their degree.

“Some of them have specializations that they really want to focus on and so it’s important that they expose themselves t0 the various different programs,” Servantes said. “Some schools are known for this, some schools are known for that, so it gives them the opportunity to expand their knowledge about the different institutions that are available to them.”

She encourages students who are currently not interested in graduate school to attend the fair, because it can help them prepare for their future by knowing the requirements to enter programs.

“It may be that as you move along in your career, five years later after you graduated from your undergraduate, you suddenly decide, ‘You know what? I wanna go back to graduate school,’ and this is an opportunity where you can get information already ahead of time,” Servantes said. “A lot of students don’t go to graduate school right after. Some of them take a year or two years of a break and then they go back to school.”

The event is free and a UTRGV ID is required.

For more information about the event and the full list of universities that will attend, visit www.utrgv.edu/careercenter.

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Nubia Reyna

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