EX-planner
Member
- Messages
- 17
- Points
- 1
Hi all:
Your forum administrator just brought me to the attention of this forum after reading I was an ex-planner in a thread on another forum (a forum on skyscrapers). So I followed his link and checked out this forum and started reading the posts here. And I am shaking my head. Before I start my rant, let me tell you a bit about myself: I have BA in Geography from UNC-Charlotte (1987) with good grades, a Master of Urban Planning degree from the University of Washington (1991) with even better grades, I did about a half-dozen internships and odd-jobs before landing a long-term temporary job with King County WA doing watershed planning (2-2/3 years). And having seen and met a lot of planners and having done some planning myself after having gone through the entire planning school bit, I have one piece of advice for all of you asking each other which planning school is the "best." IT DOES NOT MATTER!! NO ONE HIRING PLANNERS REALLY GIVES A DAMN WHICH SCHOOL YOU WENT TO!!! I am serious. In the many many many interviews I went to, I never ever ever got the impression anyone gave one rat scrap that I had a degree from a "good" school or a "bad" school. They all teach pretty much the same (mostly useless) stuff, and pretty much anyone of average intelligence can be a good planner. Personally, having gone through the graduate school thing after having learned a lot of planning stuff as an undergraduate, I can tell you that graduate school for planning is pretty much a waste of time. 90% of what I learned about planning I learned from my geography degree, and maybe 10% I learned from my graduate degree. If you are coming from a totally non-planning related background and want to get into planning, then maybe it's OK to get the graduate planning degree. But if you learned a lot of planning stuff as an undergraduate, seriously, don't waste your time in graduate school (unless maybe you want to teach and get a PhD). You wont earn any more money than someone with a BS or BA in planning or geography or urban studies or whatever (see other threads in this section), and you won't learn substantially any more either. There might be a few research-type positions with Think-Tank consultant firms and stuff like that where a Master's will be helpful, but that's about it. So my advice is, if you absolutely insist on getting a graduate degree in planning, go to the cheapest school you can, party all you want (nobody cares about grades, either) and generally don't work too hard.
Of course, I would recommend not going into planning in the first place, but that's another story.
Your forum administrator just brought me to the attention of this forum after reading I was an ex-planner in a thread on another forum (a forum on skyscrapers). So I followed his link and checked out this forum and started reading the posts here. And I am shaking my head. Before I start my rant, let me tell you a bit about myself: I have BA in Geography from UNC-Charlotte (1987) with good grades, a Master of Urban Planning degree from the University of Washington (1991) with even better grades, I did about a half-dozen internships and odd-jobs before landing a long-term temporary job with King County WA doing watershed planning (2-2/3 years). And having seen and met a lot of planners and having done some planning myself after having gone through the entire planning school bit, I have one piece of advice for all of you asking each other which planning school is the "best." IT DOES NOT MATTER!! NO ONE HIRING PLANNERS REALLY GIVES A DAMN WHICH SCHOOL YOU WENT TO!!! I am serious. In the many many many interviews I went to, I never ever ever got the impression anyone gave one rat scrap that I had a degree from a "good" school or a "bad" school. They all teach pretty much the same (mostly useless) stuff, and pretty much anyone of average intelligence can be a good planner. Personally, having gone through the graduate school thing after having learned a lot of planning stuff as an undergraduate, I can tell you that graduate school for planning is pretty much a waste of time. 90% of what I learned about planning I learned from my geography degree, and maybe 10% I learned from my graduate degree. If you are coming from a totally non-planning related background and want to get into planning, then maybe it's OK to get the graduate planning degree. But if you learned a lot of planning stuff as an undergraduate, seriously, don't waste your time in graduate school (unless maybe you want to teach and get a PhD). You wont earn any more money than someone with a BS or BA in planning or geography or urban studies or whatever (see other threads in this section), and you won't learn substantially any more either. There might be a few research-type positions with Think-Tank consultant firms and stuff like that where a Master's will be helpful, but that's about it. So my advice is, if you absolutely insist on getting a graduate degree in planning, go to the cheapest school you can, party all you want (nobody cares about grades, either) and generally don't work too hard.
Of course, I would recommend not going into planning in the first place, but that's another story.