My Master’s Application Experience
As the title of the blog suggests, I applied for Master's programs in Canada and USA for the Fall 2022 intake and this is my journey! (All my admits and my final decision towards the end. :P)
Hi, I am Tanya Batra and I will be graduating from Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, in July 2022, as a Computer Science engineer.
I decided to apply for master’s programs in the summer of 2021 (right in the middle of the Covid pandemic). After doing multiple internships in various domains and exploring my interests, I felt the need to pursue a management degree to gain knowledge and develop my skills in the domain. So, MBA was my top choice. However, getting into a top B-School in India is very difficult (more on this in my second blog :P) and MBA abroad requires a minimum of 3–4 years of work experience. So, I decided to apply to Masters in Management (MiM) and Masters in Engineering Management (MEM) programs abroad.
The following blog is all about the steps I followed. I hope this can help other aspiring students planning to apply to graduate programs abroad!
Step 1: Decide the course.
As I outlined above, I decided to apply for these particular courses based on my interests and where I lacked during my internship experiences. To make a decision, the most important thing is having clarity about where you want to be a few years down the line.
Step 2: Choose Colleges to Apply to.
The same course has different minimum requirements, vastly different curriculums, varying durations, and separate fee structures. Make a list of various factors that would play an important role in your decision and list down all universities that teach the course of your choice, keeping all those factors in mind.
A commonly used framework for the same is choosing at least 2 colleges for each of the following categories:
- Ambitious (your profile and experience make this college in a “hard-to-reach” category for you.)
- Competitive (you would be a great fit for this college but you still need to work hard on your application.)
- Safe (you have a very high probability of securing an admission from this college as you are well above the average profile that this college requires.)
However, I personally did not use this method. According to me, it is much more suitable for somebody who absolutely wants to go and pursue a degree that year instead of wasting a year and applying again. But since that wasn’t the case for me, I decided to apply to only “ambitious” colleges myself. :P
Here is a list of top universities for the MEM degree:
Step 3: Prepare for and give the exams required in the application
There are 2 major scores that you need to submit while applying for Masters. A language test score (IELTS, TOEFL, etc) and GRE/GMAT score (in most cases; some colleges waive it off so it is not required then).
A lot of resources are available for all of these exams, I won’t be going in-depth for preparation tricks and resources.
I gave GMAT (scored 680 twice) and IELTS (got 8.5/9 bands) from August-October 2021. Later I only applied to universities either accepting GMAT scores or the ones which had waived off GRE requirements.
Step 4: Letter of Recommendations
Depending on the university, two or three letters of recommendation from professional or academic sources were required in the application. The actual subject they teach or the job they hold does not have to be related to your program. Grad schools want to know how you work in a team, so as long as they can speak about your character and personality in greater depth, you’re good to go.
I sought out teachers and supervisors that were familiar with me both personally and professionally. However, I prioritized getting more LORs from supervisors than professors as I wanted to showcase my genuine interest and capability in the field which I wanted to pursue. So, I got two LORs from my internship supervisors ( I had worked for at least 6 months with both of them so they had enough material to talk about me :P) and one from my college professor (with whom I had worked on college activities as well as major and minor projects).
Step 5: Statement of Purpose+Additional Essays
The statement of purpose’s major goal is to convey how your background, prior work, and life experiences lead you to apply particularly for each programme. The main distinction between the Personal Statement and the Statement of Purpose is that the Personal Statement is about your past experiences/who you are (not necessarily academic), whereas the SOP is about your academic and professional goals and why grad school, in particular, will help you achieve those goals.
Creating an engaging SOP story is simple, especially if you know what you want to achieve.
However, every university does not specifically require SOPs. Some universities specify questions and word limits for their answers. So, it is important to make a list of all the questions and essays you need to answer and accordingly divide your time to answer all.
Step 6: Other College-Specific Application Requirements
Beyond the above-mentioned elements, each application form also has a few requirements that are unique to the particular course. Some of them include portfolios, video interviews, scholarship essays, etc.
Make sure you don’t miss any of these as working on them at the last moment could affect your complete application negatively.
Step 7: Apply!!
Once you have completed all the above mentioned tasks, now is the time to shell out some money and pay the application fees for each university.
And hence, begins the long waiting period and constant refreshing of email inbox, eagerly waiting for results!
My Acceptances and Rejections (in the order of receiving them)!
- Schulich School of Business- ACCEPTED ❤
2. Duke University- ACCEPTED ❤
3. Cornell University- ACCEPTED ❤
4. Carnegie Mellon University- ACCEPTED ❤
5. Dartmouth- Rejected :(
6. Columbia University- Rejected :(
7. University of Southern California- ACCEPTED ❤
A huge shoutout to my dear friend, Dharm Yadav (https://in.linkedin.com/in/dharm-narayan) for being such a huge support and my proxy consultant throughout this process. This wouldn’t have been possible without him showing faith in me whenever I felt demotivated. :)
Well, in case you are wondering where have I decided to go this fall, the answer is not in this blog.
Besides all these admits, I was lucky enough to get admitted to top B-Schools in India for MBA as well. And hence, I will be pursuing my MBA from one of them. More on it, soon!!
If you still have any doubts, feel free to reach out to me: linkedin.com/in/tanyabatra30
