These tips and guidelines will help you secure Post Graduate Admission Abroad.
Before choosing a school that offers your program of choice, you need to make a proper research on schools that offer the Post Graduate program you want to pursue. Don’t restrict yourself to only popular Universities which are highly sought after and more competitive. You can start by looking at the continent you will prefer to study in. Your choice of location determines what kind of preparation you need to make. For instance, if you want to go to the US, UK and some countries you are advised to prepare and take any of these English Proficiency exams (IELTS, TOEFL and GRE/GMAT) in order to stand a good chance of being selected and offered admission- though not in all cases. Also getting a high score in these English proficiency tests depends on your level of preparation especially for the GRE/GMAT, and the more time you have to prepare the better equipped you are to get good scores. Do your best to make good result of any of the tests.
1. Apply and get your International Passport.
Your journey towards traveling abroad has not properly started if you don’t have your International Passport ready.
2. Get ready your Transcript and Certificate.
Every Graduate school opportunity requires your Transcript and Certificate before they can consider you for admission. Even those that accept your student copy transcript initially, ask for your official copy before concluding on your admission status.
3. Seek Volunteering Opportunities.
Graduate school application is considered strong if your academic CV is laced with a number of volunteering and community service activities. Therefore, to have a strong profile and stand a good chance for a scholarship offer, you need to start volunteering in your community, church, school, clubs etc.
4. Join a Graduate School coaching group
There is a lot to learn about Graduate school that was not taught in the University. You need to learn how to draft Graduate school essays, write Academic CV, understand the application timelines and procedures for graduate schools, among other things. You are advised to join a group of like-minded people to exchange knowledge and learn more because you can’t achieve all of these on your own.
5. Research Area of Interest
In seeking Graduate School opportunities, the most important thing to consider is knowing your research area of interest. Postgraduate school is for a particular period of learning. Your program is designed specifically for your field of study, not at random like your undergraduate studies. Also, the majority of professors would only want to supervise you if your field of study aligns to theirs. As a result, it is advisable to spend more time in researching and determining your perfect area of interest in the course you studied.
6. Find Universities that offer your desired Post Graduate course
Using Google, you can make further search for Universities that has MSc/PhD in your desired course. You check more to know if they have funding, other financial aid opportunities and if they have professors that are in your research area of interest. You can get the email addresses of these Professors and seek to find their recent publications.
7. Be more active on LinkedIn and Twitter
LinkedIn and Twitter happens to be the two social media space where Academics converge. It is also the space where graduate school opportunities are shared. If you don’t have an account already, proceed to create an official profile on these social media platforms and carry out your activities in a professional manner and engage in conversations to share your own ideas.
8. Have a formal email address
Your email address reflects your person. Adopt and create an email address account using a formal username if your existing email address doesn’t meet that standard already.
9. Reserve some amount of money for application fees
True, there will be a number of application fees waivers especially for schools in the United States. However you will encounter some good schools that will require application fees to be paid. Therefore, save up money to be able to pay for some great schools that offer your exact Research Area of Interest. In some cases some of those schools have affordable tuition fees while small number of them are tuition free and may offer Scholarships.
10. Learn research and statistical skills
Post Graduate study is a research time based program especially if it is a funded offer. Hence, you are a strong candidate for scholarship offer if you have the skills like Excel, Python, R, Ms word, footnotes etc. If you don’t have knowledge of majority of these skills, proceed to register for FREE or PAID online course with Coursera or Udacity or Udemy and get trained.
Get Started Now. All the best !
