Harvard graduate school of education - General graduate studies

Grad's guide to graduate admissions essays - Colleen Reding 2015

Harvard graduate school of education
General graduate studies

No classes for an entire year? I could not wrap my head around the idea. Confused not only by the Master’s explanation of Oxford University’s tutorial system but also by the matriculation gown I most likely sported backwards, I tried to grasp my new reality. So far, this was not what I expected my junior year to be like as a Visiting Student at St. Peter’s College in Oxford. Within the first few minutes of arriving at the humbling institution, I was greeted by someone in a squirrel costume and led to my room assignment in a building called Staircase IV.

My tutor handed me a list of lectures I was welcomed to attend but warned that it would be likely that I would not have time to participate in more than a few in a given term. How was it possible that I was to spend the next year with the only obligation of attending two 1-hour tutorials on a weekly basis? I soon found out, and not only did it stretch the limits of my intellectual capacity, but it made me realize the value of education and the many forms that it can take on. With my first assignment of assessing the ramifications of Turkish accession to the European Union, a list of more than 40 resources to consult, and a vague idea of where the Bodleian library was, I spent the next week preparing the claims I would then have to defend in front of my knowledgeable tutor.

While I had been challenged academically at Georgetown, this was the first time I truly had the freedom to learn what I love and to pursue those academic interests with enthusiasm. I can pinpoint this experience as the start to what has taken a few years for me to recognize and develop. My passion is education, I want to be in a position to share that with others, and I know that the Harvard Graduate School of Education would provide me with the foundation I need to embark on this career path.

My ultimate goal is to provide students with that which my own experience in higher education gave me, the opportunity to explore intellectual interests and to identify the implications of these pursuits in a broader context. I can see myself becoming an academic advisor and serving as a resource to students, and I can also see myself delving into higher education policy and working to increase access to higher education for low-income students. And in the more distant future, I envision competing for a Fulbright scholarship to exchange insights on field of higher education with people from all over the world. While I am open to and excited by the number of possibilities a career in higher education offers, I am focused on pursuing the Masters of Education Higher Education Program at the HGSE in order to enrich my understanding of the institutions of higher learning and to become a leader in education.

While it may seem like my role at the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division is an unlikely starting point for a career in academic advising, my daily responsibilities involve providing guidance to special agents in the field and ensuring that they have access to the necessary resources to conduct investigations. A given day may include editing an operation proposal from Miami Division, resolving a policy issue with the national security legal team, or preparing a brief to a class of new special agents. That being said, there is no such thing as a typical day, and this is something I would look forward to in a career as an academic advisor. Both my professional and academic careers have required me to become exceedingly resourceful, a quality I anticipate utilizing frequently in counseling students. Although I believe that I have qualities and experiences that will translate to a successful career as an academic advisor, I also know that higher education is a very rich and complex field and that the HGSE would allow me to navigate this area of study and enable me to be an effective higher education administrator.