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Graduate School

If your career plans call for grad school, we'll do everything we can to help you get into a well-respected program or prepare you for our own graduate programs. While at Roanoke, professors will encourage you to participate in internships in your chosen field, join them in research projects (or conduct your own independent study), and present and publish findings — all actions that will greatly increase your chances of getting into a good school.

We have extensive online resources to help you explore your options and find the best programs for your needs. Our career services team will help you prepare the documents you'll need for the application process, and professors who are impressed with your work will recommend you to graduate programs.

students in class
  • Photo of William Osae at UVA smiling and holding up a sign announcing his medical residency match at Duke

    Osae, a biochemistry major, dove into lab research during all four years at Roanoke and presented his undergraduate thesis at an American Chemical Society conference. “Research is a huge bonus on your CV, and doing research exposed me more to the sciences and gave me a deeper understanding of the things I was learning in class.” His work included examinations of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. After earning his M.D. in 2023, he was tapped for Duke University's emergency medicine residency program.

  • Photo of Lydia Turner-Little smiling

    Turner-Little, a sociology major with a legal studies concentration, took part in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program as a student and a teaching assistant, gaining valuable insight into the system. Roanoke is one of only three Virginia colleges with an Inside-Out program. The experience helped her ready for a future as an attorney. “For a lot of people, I think the criminal justice system can seem shrouded in mystery. Seeing it from the inside and meeting the people there, that was an opportunity I was really grateful for.”    

  • Photo of Razan “Rosie” Hamed wearing a Roanoke shirt on the campus of Purdue

    Hamed, a physics major with a mathematics minor, designed her own physics card game as part of her honors project at Roanoke to demonstrate how innovative teaching tools can help students master complex principles. She was inspired to keep building on that work as a doctoral student at Purdue where she was recognized with a 2023 teaching award for her passion for finding ways to make physics learning more fun and accessible to young students. 

  • Photo of Davis Tingle wearing sunglasses and smiling

    Tingle, a double major in computer science and math, is pursuing a master’s degree in computer science to expand on his interest in the power of technology to help communities create a better future. Roanoke was a founding partner in a collaboration with Virginia Tech to help more students earn advanced degrees in computer science and engineering (learn more). At Roanoke, Tingle was an honor student and selected for the intensive Summer Scholars program where he did research into the optimization of drone deliveries. 

  • Photo of Joyelle Ronan under a string of letter balloons that spell out ROM COM

    Ronan, a communications studies major, connected with an array of multimedia opportunities at Roanoke. She was a radio host at WRKE, a movie director in the Basically Tarantino Film Festival and a Washington Semester intern for D.C. entertainment magazine District Fray. She also did academic research on the genre of romantic comedies — work that directly carried into her studies at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, where she organized Rom Con 2023, an event celebrating and reflecting on rom com work across films, books and TV. 

Over their lifetimes, more than 40% will attain an advanced degree.

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