Pre-planned paths often lead to wonderful destinations — PART I
How to choose colleges: tailor-made to suit one's needs
It was the middle of June 2018, during my 3rd-year internship. A really quiet environment was buzzing with the sounds of various minds from different backgrounds around me. I had just finished my breakfast and was ready to begin the journey to pursue my higher studies outside India. It is at this moment that I decided to begin selecting colleges for my higher studies.
A lot of factors were buzzing through my mind while choosing colleges that suited my interests. It is at this moment that I decided to have a look an amazing senior, Soundarya Balasubramani’s article on how to choose colleges. A year later, being inspired by the lucid and step-by-step approach to doing the same, decided to write this one to pass on the baton and help my juniors for the same. This is a tribute to you guys.
Now one might be wondering, how do I balance my internship alongside searching colleges, adjusting to the work environment and so on? Well, to clear things out, this is the ideal time to start working on your college selections and even begin drafting an SOP as well!
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So here’s an overview of this article. I would be discussing some of the major factors which go into choosing colleges, in the following order (not necessarily in their order of importance):
- Specializations offered in each college and pre-requisites.
- Courses offered in each specialization.
- Ranking of the college and its location.
- Experience of people who have “been there, done that”.
- The total cost of the entire course (which includes the tuition fees, cost of living, availability of scholarships, etc).
- Academic scores which include CGPA, GRE and TOEFL/IELTS scores.
- Future prospects of the place.
- Miscellaneous factors (weather, presence of relatives in nearby areas, difficulty in academics, etc).
Disclaimer: The above factors are based purely on my opinion and experience of things, and will differ from individual to individual. I strongly recommend all readers who are going to pursue higher studies and who are reading this article to find out, as an exercise, which factors would be more important for them and decide the colleges based on that.
Specializations offered in each college
To begin with, having a look at the specializations offered by each college is the first and foremost thing that one must have a look at while choosing colleges. Despite most people being extra careful in this step, there are still quite a few stories of people that I have heard who have regretted choosing courses by just finding that it was somehow related to their own Bachelor’s degree and in the end, did not “vibe” with their interests.
Every college website would be having the specializations clearly mentioned for the various branches that they offer.
Having a look at each specialization is very important, but even more important than that is to have a clear mindset about what kind of future you would like to delve yourself into.
For example, if you like biomechanics of athletes, and want to contribute to the next generation of coaches in a football team, choose a course that helps you understand biology and even robotics to a good extent. If you’re someone who loves to find out about how buildings can be protected from cracks by formulating a theory better than what the state of the art can provide? Then go on take a specialization having fracture and continuum mechanics and see how that goes.
With that being said, the next point should easily come across as a no-brainer.
