Graduate School Alumni Describe How They Chose Their Path

How does a prospective student make a choice among graduate schools? Here, five former students tell U.S. News why they chose to attend their particular schools.
Why I Picked the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School 
Lauren Cruz, 2015 graduate and marketing associate at Ethicon
UNC Kenan-Flagler embraces diversity, collaboration and teamwork and offers excellent educational and experiential opportunities. In assessing MBA programs, I looked for these strengths as I didn't have a traditional undergrad business education.
After college, I founded and operated a personal training studio and became enthralled with running my own enterprise. I felt Kenan-Flagler's program would build my leadership skills while surrounding me with the passionate and open-minded students and faculty I sought.
My classwork was flanked by great opportunities: a Leadership Immersion course, study abroad in Barcelona and a business trip to Africa. The 10-week leadership course began with a week in the woods through Outward Bound, included team-based "Apprentice"-like challenges, and ended with executing a charity basketball tournament. UNC's strong career center helped me land a marketing role with Ethicon, a Johnson & Johnson medical device company.
[Get advice on applying to business school.]
Why I Picked Purdue University—West Lafayette's College of Engineering (Indiana) 
Joseph Lukens, 2015 graduate and research scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory
For graduate school, I looked for programs with excellent research opportunities and supportive advisers. Purdue turned out to be a great match.
As an electrical engineer, I studied how optics and lasers can improve communications. The engineering department is huge, but once you specialize you work with very small groups of faculty and students and can build strong relationships.
I had a great adviser who gave me engineering problems to tackle and some general guidance, then allowed me to move ahead on my own. He also helped me get funding for research, including studying how lasers can hide data in a kind of temporal invisibility cloak, a real plus for cybersecurity.
I also took courses outside my specialty, like one in estimation theory, so helpful to me now in my current job as a research scientist working on optics and communications at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
[Explore hot jobs for future engineers.]
Why I Picked the University of Texas—Austin's School of Law
Megan Sheffield, 2013 graduate and public interest attorney
When looking at law schools, I came across a video of the UT immigration clinic's work to end the detention of families with children. I was inspired by the group's advocacy and knew it was something I wanted to do.
At UT, professors make themselves available, and people in general are very kind and helpful. It's not the stereotypical cutthroat law school environment you hear about. The school's strong pro bono program offers opportunities from working on expunging juvenile records to domestic violence cases. It also gives students hands-on experience assisting clients.
In addition, each January, UT takes students to the Rio Grande Valley to help people with needs ranging from wills to asylum applications. I now work with the nonprofit Equal Justice Center and feel well-prepared by UT not just in the law, but also in serving the center's low-income clients and engaging other pro bono attorneys to aid our important work.
Why I Picked the University of California—San Francisco's School of Nursing 
Gina Intinarelli, 2013 graduate and health care executive at UCSF Health
Many senior administrators in health care lack clinical experience, and now more than ever leaders with this background, especially nurses, need to be at the table when policy is made.
That's why I applied to UCSF's School of Nursing, which has a well-designed interdisciplinary health policy program. Already an experienced critical care nurse, I learned institutional and policy theory, health care economics and comparative analysis of international health care systems. All UCSF students must complete a policy residency; I did mine at the World Health Organization in Geneva, studying global efforts to curb tobacco use.

UCSF gave me the skills to perform population health analysis, to implement large programs and to design and use technology to move more patient care into the home, all of which prepared me to be successful in my new role as the executive director for population health and accountable care at UCSF Health.
[Learn how graduate school gives nurses a salary and career boost.]
Why I Picked Cornell University's Department of Physics (New York)
Sam Posen, 2015 graduate and associate scientist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Students in Cornell's world-class physics Ph.D. program perform research using state-of-the-art resources including a particle accelerator X-ray source and a nanofabrication facility. Working closely with top researchers, they get advanced, hands-on experimental experience and develop theories for complex physical phenomena.
I found Cornell's research community refreshingly collaborative – interdisciplinary cooperation is encouraged and assisted. For example, in my research, I investigated superconducting materials for particle accelerator cavities. When my experiments showed performance-limiting nanometer-scale defects, I consulted with a professor, a world expert in condensed matter theory, to better understand the physical mechanism involved.
Cornell also sent me to international conferences, where I built my knowledge and network. This excellent training prepared me well to join Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory outside Chicago, where I perform R&D on particle accelerators.
This story is excerpted from the U.S. News "Best Graduate Schools 2017" guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.

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