Roisin in New York

The photograph shows Roisin McGinn on a street in the Upper East Side New York returning from reporting on a United Nations Conference.

Roisin graduated from Queens University with a First Class Honours Degree in English and History of Art in 2006. After taking a gap year she competed successfully against 675 applicants to gain a  place in the world famous City University of New York Masters Programme in Journalism. Roisin has sent us this description of how a former Ballycastle High School pupil can end up living in Harlem.

“I had never thought seriously about becoming a journalist until the end of 2006, when I read about the City University of New York Masters programme. I decided to apply.

The application materials had to include “A minimum of three work samples. These can include published news clips, academic papers, or unpublished writing.” Until this point I had never had anything published in a newspaper, but I felt confident my academic papers would demonstrate that I could write. I filled out the application, attached three of my best essays, slotted the pages into a document wallet and labelled it “New York”. I also had to sit the Graduate Record Exam as part of the application process. 

A couple of months passed and I heard nothing from the university in America. Assuming the worst, I put my ‘American Dream’ on the back burner and started to apply to other universities in the U.K.
 
However, at the beginning of February I received an email from the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism- they wanted me to sit their entrance exam. In between balancing two jobs in Belfast, I began swatting up on American politics and news events for the entrance exam. I read about Republicans and Democrats, the House of Representatives and the Senate- all of which had been fairly unfamiliar territory.