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.