Know this!!!!

Now that you have decided you want to do your masters; you should prepare yourself for working hard and get all the info available. It would be best if you worked hard to find a program and a perfect university you want to get in. There is a lot of difference between universities in the US and INDIA. You must know a few of these before concluding. I discussed a few below:

 

Type of course:

So typically, people coming from India or any other country choose STEM courses. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Majoring in a Stem course has its benefits. One important thing is a Curricular practical training of up to one year and optional practical training OPT of three years.

So, you get to work here for three years without any visa issues. I think this is important to consider after all we came so far to pursue masters, so to gain some experience working in an international environment can be of great value.

Having said that I do not want you to panic if you are interested in some non-stem course, it is totally fine. In either case, you need to work hard, but to have OPT of 3 years can take some stress off, and stem fields are highly evolving all over the world.

Including a course under STEM entirely depends on the course curriculum, and this changes according to the university. So, you must make sure that the path you are choosing stem in the university you apply for.

 

Competencies:

Once you decide a course, you can go ahead and lookup for the competencies of the course to get a rough idea about how closely it matches your interests. Please do not get overwhelmed seeing the competencies; you should be able to understand what they are expecting you to do in the course though.

If you don’t have an interest, maybe this step can help you get a better view of different courses and helps you while making a decision.

One thing I want to stress about here is DO figure out your interests. It might be hard to decide given a few scenarios where some are changing their current stream of study. Even I was not entirely sure about my interests when I considered changing from dentistry, but you will get there, just some effort.

I am not saying you must be sure about your interests but have some options. For example, you can say I am interested to know more about differences in health systems all around the world or equity issues in low- and middle-income countries. So, read up on different topics in the field you are going to choose and have some interests. Having these can help, either way, it can help you both ways to select an excellent course and also helps you a lot while pursuing your masters.

 

Curriculum:

This is an extended version of your course syllabus. It briefs how many credits you need to complete to graduate. So, CREDIT is a relatively new term for most of us. I will try to do my best to explain this. College credit typically represents approximately 1 hour spent in a classroom and 2 hours spent on homework each week. Most of the college courses will be worth three credits, and you will be expected to complete several credits to graduate. For example, for my course, I am supposed to complete 40 credits to be able to graduate. Even the number of credits change depending on the college. So, it is crucial to compare credits to graduate and fee for each credit among different colleges. Doing this can save you a lot of time and money.

And again, going through the curriculum can help you figure out how close the course is to your interests.

 

Reach out:

I cannot stress this part enough. You can either reach out either to the university or to the alum. Do not hesitate to ask your questions to them whatever it might be. There are few people, getting paid in the university to answer your questions. You can even request them information about some advisor or faculty member in the course you are opting for. If the response from the member is not good enough, do not worry at all, keep trying.

 

Look into the future:

As cliché as it sounds, it is very important to do this. Knowing some job and internship opportunities, you might be eligible for can really help you. You can even develop some skills, depending on the descriptions. For example, there are a lot of courses online for free, which can be of great value-adding to your resume. You can even do audit courses, make sure that whatever you are doing or working towards helps you in the program you choose.

 

Networking:

Another critical point to consider is Network…network…network. Create a Linkedln account upload all your information. Be active on it; make connections. You can even read in it about academic and professional developments happening every day in your field of interest. Please connect to the students from the college you choose and ask them about the course and opportunities.

Pilot😄

This Blog is for all students and professionals, working in health care. My main focus is to reach out to all the people whoever has a plan of continuing academics or wants to pursue a masters degree in some foreign country.

Hi! 

I am Radha Ryali, a current graduate student at Rutgers school of public health doing masters in Health Outcomes Policy and Economics. I did my bachelors in dental surgery from JSS dental college and hospital, Mysore. I moved to the USA right after my bachelors to pursue masters and this is my story so far,

After graduating and finishing a one-year compulsory rotary internship, I was very skeptical about which career path to consider. I reached out to a few senior who graduated from my college and working in India. They had some amazing insights, although most of them complained about a break in their career trajectory after some days of work. Then I tried reaching out to people who were pursuing MDS, I remember few of them saying that they see it like BDS part 2 and even they were worried about the after degree job hunt. After ruling out these two options, I started thinking about the obvious third option which is moving out of India and pursuing masters in some other country. It seems pretty easy when I say it here, but in fact, it was so stressful to decide which string to pull. As my own brother did the same things even my parents encouraged me to pursue masters out of India and obtain some international exposure. I started reaching out to the people who are already enrolled in a program but I couldn't receive a proper response.

I don't know what stopped them from guiding others in need. I did a lot of networking and was able to reach out to 2-3 seniors and few alum members of my university. Most of them were pursuing their masters in public health. I browsed a few colleges and their courses, but oftentimes I skipped reading the course curriculum and competencies. My eyes directly went in search of something related to public health I thought that is the only viable and meaningful option. I started searching for the best college instead of the best course. I made a list of few best public health schools. I gave my gre and toefl exams. Got the scorecards and started applying to the colleges I am eligible for. The application process is not that easy to go through. It involves a lot of paperwork. While doing this, I came across the consultancy details which my brother opted for during his admission process and I ended up paying them to help me apply to colleges. 

I applied to 5 colleges because the consultancy people told me that odds of me getting into these colleges is bad and better to have more options. I was so stressed about the result. I was not at all confident about my achievements. After a few days, I started getting admission confirmations and ended up getting from all 5 universities. I was so relieved and I opted for the best among them. I ended up at Rutgers University, New Jersey. Luckily the same city where my brother is working. As there was a lot of people applied to the concentration I opted for they asked me to choose some other concentration. I opted for a concentration quite different from my real interest.

After completing one semester of toss and toil I realized my mistake and started searching for other courses and concentrations in my university to which I can transfer to. I was lucky enough to find something which matches my interest and have a promising future, but to be able to come here I wasted a lot of time and money. I thought I alone went through all this drama but later came across five other students who had the same experience.  

In the past few months, a lot of dental and medical undergrad students reached out to me for guidance and to know my experience so far. I don't want them to go through problems which I and some of my peers faced. 

In the next few series of blogs, I am going to post a few things which can be useful for you to make an informed decision and excel in your career doing what you love.