Graduate School in Criminal Justice @ Criminal Justice Careers | Schools



Graduate School in Criminal Justice CJC Staff

If you have a fairly decent grade point average (generally, no lower than 2.5; the higher the better), an average or above-average score on the GRE, and can get good letters of recommendation, you should consider applying to graduate school in criminal justice. Remember the application deadline for most places is January, with March at the latest.

If you are dead set on going to Law School, have a high GPA, at least a practice score on the LSAT, and tons of money, then visit the Law School Admission Council for more information. For a look at Law Schools, visit web links such as Cornell's Directory of Legal Academia. If you are more interested in a rarer Forensic Science degree, check out the American Board of Criminalists or So You Want To Be a Forensic Psychologist.

About graduate education in criminal justice... A masters degree in CJ take less time to complete than a Bachelor's degree, it's cheaper in cost (at most places), and you are at no time more prepared than now, at the end of your undergraduate education. You'll find that the more common pattern, especially among the senior faculty and administrators at most schools is to get your Ph.D. by the time you're 27 years old. To succeed, the main thing you'll need, besides smarts, is willpower and an ability to get along with people, particularly professor-type people. You must aspire to that advanced degree with all your heart and be willing to persevere no matter what. It's nearly impossible to hide out in a graduate program, and hope nobody notices your character flaws as long as you get good grades. This is especially true of doctoral programs, and the reason is because they are credentialing you for the teaching profession, and they take their gatekeeper role seriously.

WRITTEN SOURCES OF INFORMATION

Peterson's Guide, Barron's Guide, and Arco's Guide are three of the most well-known catalogs and are easily found in any library or bookstore. For CJ specifically, see if your local library or career center has a copy of "Guide to Graduate Programs in Criminal Justice and Criminology" which details programs at more than 1000 institutions nationwide. The publisher is ACJS and for the last five years, they've been sold out of the book. They also publish a document called "Minimum Standards for CJ Education." Another association you might want to look into is ASC. The words criminal justice and criminology are pretty much interchangeable at the graduate level.

Any of the above publications will give program information, the average number of students in residence and the number of graduates per year. Each department's emphasis and each professor's specialty are also listed.

ONLINE SOURCES OF INFORMATION CRIMINAL JUSTICE DOCTORAL STUDY

Why not go all the way to the doctorate? Criminal Justice is a growth area; over 100 new Ph.D.s are needed every year, and the supply doesn't meet the demand. If you apply to places supporting both the master's and doctoral degree, and are planning to enter into full-time residency, you will find your progress towards the master's is nothing less than phenomenal. You can then stay at that same school and pursue the Ph.D. there. Warning: doctoral programs are quite harder than master's programs, requiring comp exams, strong quantitative skills, strong writing skills, strong verbal presentation skills, and in most cases, translation of a foreign language or learning of a computer programming language.
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