The Challenge and Rewards 1
The Challenge and Rewards of Graduate Studies
The Challenge and Rewards of Graduate Studies
Thomas Taylor Beavers, RN, BSN
University Of Phoenix
The Challenge and Rewards 2
The Challenge and Rewards of Graduate Studies
The Graduate Record Evaluations test, commonly known in academic circles as the
GRE, measures baccalaureate graduates’ proficiency in standardized categories in order
to attempt a prediction of their potential success or failings in graduate level studies. The
developers of the GRE, the ETS group, acknowledge in their internal research however,
that although standardized tests may be useful in forecasting some students’ readiness for
graduate studies, such statistical approaches may not provide an overly clear picture of all
students’ abilities and talents. As with all such statistical prognostications, the GRE
truly, has more value at the higher and lower ranges of test scores, (Bridgeman, Burton,
& Cline, 2008).
In A Personal Reflection, Graduate Study Challenges and Strategies, an article
published in the July/August 2007 edition of SourceDiminsions of Critical Care Nursing,
Linda Weston Kramer, an RN and Nursing educator at Norton Suburban Hospital in
Louisville, KY lists three skills that graduate studies should equip their students with:
data collection, analysis, and interpretation, all leading to personal betterment manifested
by: intellectual improvement, personal development, enhanced verbal/writing skills,
career advancements, and networking with peers and colleagues (Kramer, 2007).
The rewards for embarking upon the quest for a master’s degree would seem to be as
diverse and unpredictable as the mathematical prediction of an individual’s success in
this goal might be...