In our mental realities, dissonance is a relatively common phenomenon, and according to cognitive and social psychologists, sometimes depending on the importance of the issue, this cognitive dissonance causes depression and mental problems in individuals. Nevertheless, people often try to overcome this dissonance by using some strategies. In a pilot study, focusing on the mental image of the university  concept among men and women Ph.D. graduates of humanities, this article found that the cognition and mental image of these people about the given concept before entering the doctoral program and after graduation has suffer from a kind of dissonance.Thus, this study conducted with the questions that how the change of the mental images of the concept of university occurs and the more important, what strategies men and women use to eliminate or reduce this cognitive dissonance. The feminine and masculine narratives of this qualitative study collected through purposeful sampling and in-depth and semi-structured interviews with twenty humanities graduates. For answere to the first question, this study, using the theory of cultural schemas, has shown the way of changing the concept of university in the minds of men and women with the help of event, role and image schemas. This study also succeeded to divide the strategies used to reduce or eliminate the cognitive dissonance, into four categories. Findings show that the strategies of men and women to eliminate and reduce cognitive dissonance are significantly different.