I am also in this category, and so are many others. We hope to get loans, scholarships or some other means to fund our education overseas. Thing is, he should have applied to some moderate and safe schools as well. LOR is also a thing too. Candidates who write LORs themselves can submit applications to as many schools as possible but it's difficult to ask a professor to submit LOR to say 8 schools. Except if you are hoping they'd send something generic.
Loans, scholarships and assistantships. I can afford to pay application fees, but it certainly adds friction and puts a dent on my family's finances. Btw, the bigger constraint here is nudging for recommendation letters.
Makes sense, but another major reason I didn't apply to moderate to safe schools is because I'll be taking up student debt to finance my education and to pay that back I need to make sure I go to a school where I don't have to worry too much about employment. Being an international student, the fees combined with cost of living is even higher for me and I need to ensure that the return on investment is certain. Also, I am a fresh graduate and I have a decent paying job offer at hand in my home country, the only problem is that it is not a finance role (APM). If I don't make it this time, I'll probably delete my QN account and never think about this route again.
Thanks for the information, although I don't think I will apply to anymore programs for reasons I stated in my reply to @joe_boy
There are certainly many good programs that have further rounds coming up, so you can always apply to them. Also, there is an analysis that you can do for yourself that might help you here. Let's call University A (a top ranked program) and University B (a safety school). Now would you prefer to go to B now or to A 1 year later, you can do a detailed mathematical analysis with numbers about opportunity costs and difference in long term of value from both the school and then decide.
This is a great point. The program was brought to market relatively late too so will likely have a low application rate. It is also the inaugural year so some may be put off by lack of reputation and alumni.
Schools like Chicago or NYU are not even safety schools per se. Chicago, especially, is a top school. If you are confident of your performance during interviews, then you will have a good chance of getting a job right after school.
"some will be put off by lack of reputation and alumni". Yes, I guess I am one of those, even though Chicago Booth in itself is a great school for MBA, but that does not guarantee a good outcome for MFin, in fact I feel that they maybe just trying to capitalize on their brand name amongst MBA candidates and the surge in demand of MFin programs.
Obviously, the categorization of safe and ambitious school is based on people's own estimation of their chances of making it. But the decision to apply to only top few schools was a result of my lack of risk appetite at this point of time and other options that I have if I don't pursue a Masters.
icic no wonder you are aiming for the most challenging. but honestly speaking, what you see as safety schools are probably my top choices. in any case, hope neither of us will be disappointed!
You can also ask multiple professors if you don't feel good asking the same batch for that many letters. However, if we're being real, I think generally the first letter will be the hardest to write anyway, all the others will more or less be the same. So if they agree to submit one, they can likely submit up to maybe 10. The application payment is a completely different issue.
Schools like NCSU are probably a good choice as they'll be cheaper for internationals, and the average salary after graduation are still good. If anything, return on investment might be more certain from schools like these; you won't go into debt that is nearly as crushing.
Really? I have the same CGPA and from one of the top 6 IITs (CS).
Pretty sure all schools weight international gpa differently, but I do think many likely take grade inflation from US universities into account
Normally speaking, I think an 85% is the threshold for a 4.0 in the US. I am assuming the Indian GPA of 8.75/10 means an average of 87.5% across all coursework?
