How to study abroad?

Many students plan to pursue their higher education from abroad but from the entire pool of people, only few manage to successfully plan and execute. Have you ever wondered why? The simple answer is fear (of rejection and low scores in IELTS), lack of knowledge and motivation (where and how to apply).

I myself had been in this situation earlier where the whole process felt overwhelming and my ability to start taking action diminished. However, with the help of a bunch of close friends I carved my way and therefore writing this post to help fellow students who might find it helpful too.

General Timeline of Intake

You must start your process at least 10 months prior to the intake you are targeting. The rough timeline of students who applied for the winter 2022 intake looks something like this.

Prepare for standard tests

This is not a secret that the majority of the countries ask for scores on Language tests (IELTS / TOEFL, GMAT, GRE, GATE and many more in their application. Therefore start preparing for these tests immediately as your first step towards the application process.

Out of the above-mentioned tests, only language tests are commonly required however, you may have to prepare for others as well if there is any program-specific requirement. For e.g. Technical University of Munich (TUM) asks for GMAT scores if the student has a bachelor's degree from China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, and Bangladesh.

TIP: Book your test once you get a rough idea about how much preparation time you require. On average a student can give a test after preparation of 1.5 months. Don’t try to take your scores too high because there are no scholarships on IELTS scores.

Field of Interest

This is the most important pillar of your entire master's application but a lot of people neglect or take it for granted. You must know your area of specialization. I completely get it that most people, in Pakistan (if not in other countries), don’t have a clear vision about what they want to pursue in future. To some, figuring this out seems so overwhelming that they stop just at this stage. I found two activities that were really helpful.

The Tombstone Principle - This works to a different degree for every individual but I would recommend you to start with this because it will help you to zoom out and see what actually matters to you in your life. Be honest with yourself and write anything that comes to your mind without filtering out your thoughts otherwise the activity will be meaningless.
Writing down the favourite subjects - In this technique, you will write subjects you found interesting. Once you figured out these subjects then you can write additional subjects that you have not studied yet but want to integrate in your program. For an engineering student, these subjects can be related to management or entrepreneurship.

Map your courses

Firstly, you have to Google the top 5 universities in the world. After this, you have to skim through the programs each of the previously searched universities offers. Now you have to map your listed courses (step 2) to the programs that offer such courses.

This step will serve two purposes:

It will help you to answer which degree is most suitable according to your needs.
It will help you realize the current trend in the market. Go through the programs that the university abandoned and read the reasons.

The snippet of my work and how I wrote the remarks in each field.

Search for degree

Now you have a very clear idea about the type of degree you are interested in. Therefore, the very next obvious step is to search for the programs. But wait, for which country are you going to find the program? According to my opinion, prioritize the list of countries based on certain factors. For example, finances, weather, relatives, quality of education, permanent residency and post-work visa are a few of the key drivers in the selection of the country.

Here is the list of top destinations (sorted) for Pakistani students.

Germany
Italy
UK
Norway
Canada
USA

Remember, the list is not necessarily the same for every student and will vary on an individual basis. After you have your list ready, you can start searching out for programs.

Tips to be productive during this phase

This phase of the application is very dry because you have to filter out a lot of information therefore here are a few tips to stay productive.

Block a dedicated amount of time on regular basis for web scraping.
You need to add a lot of information related to the program you are interested in. This will save you from future work.
Use the link to duplicate my work to your notion account and try to fill data in all the fields. Trust me this is going to save a lot of time.
For Germany use DAAD - International Programmes; it is the best resource to find English-taught programs.
For UK British Council Course; you can search all the relevant programmes and scholarships for which you are eligible.
For the remaining countries, search the top 10 best universities (respective fields like “Top 10 business schools in Canada”) and find programs. Also, look out for the scholarships along with the program because all countries except Germany and Norway charge fees from international students. It is better to look for funding because in most cases students can be waived off up to 50%.

NOTE: During your research, you will clear out most of the queries by yourself. Trust me the information is readily available on websites and in case you have queries regarding anything then you can contact the university via email. The system is very smooth and you will get the answer.

Also, in my opinion, you can come to this point by yourself and you don’t need any consultant.

Filter out the programs

Now comes the time to filter out programs that satisfy your needs. Filtering is an individual process and you will be doing it based on a lot of things which include but are not limited to finances. At this point, if you feel the need to get help from students who are living there then I would recommend you to join Facebook groups like:

The above-mentioned links are for Pakistani students but every country has such dedicated groups so check them out on Facebook.

Note that you can search your query within these groups and in most cases, you will find the answer. However, if you are still not satisfied then I would recommend you to search for people (preferably Alumni) who are living in these countries and then ask your question.

Final Results

If you have followed the above process properly then by this time you may have shortlisted a few of the programs where you will apply. If you have used “Notion” or “Excel” to create the database then it can be transformed in form of timelines which will help you to have a birds-eye view of the application timeline.

A snippet of the timeline of my shortlisted programs

To be continued

Congratulations for reaching up to this point, this means that you have covered almost 40% of your application process but there is still a lot to be done before you fly. In the coming post, I will be sharing my journey of how I applied for the programs.