How To Decide When You Receive Multiple Admits?

Yes, this is exactly that moment – your Bruce Almighty moment where you too can sing out loud ‘I’ve got the Power’ and walk in a swag you know you were born with. Because you do have the power! The power to choose from amongst some great schools in the land of opportunities. But let’s not overindulge ourselves and forget what Uncle Ben from Spiderman taught us – With great power comes Great responsibility. And with power this luxurious, the responsibility to make an apt decision is that much more momentous and consequential.

First things first, don’t hasten. All this while, you have been in an accelerated mode, trying to work on everything from your test scores and college exams to procuring all the required documents and applying to a myriad of schools on time. And you’ve crossed the finish line! Now is the time that you put your feet on the brake pedal, relax and make sure that you review and weigh each parameter efficiently.

Here are some pointers to help you make the best decision when you have multiple admits for your Masters:

What Is The Intended Specialization?

A lot of students only apply to places that offer a masters in the field in which they have completed their college major. But, at the same time, there is a huge chunk that also applies to different fields in order to do interdisciplinary work or because they want to move to a different specialization altogether. Also, students tend to sometimes fill in applications to certain schools just to be on the safe side, in case they don’t land their preferred admissions.

Now, when offered multiple admissions, you need to first finalize the specialization that you would want to pursue, based on your interests, using the method of elimination. Browse through the course objectives and the electives offered – they should allow you to do and be in sync with your desired specialization. This should leave you with those universities that offer the course of your choice.

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What Are Your Future Goals?

Having chosen specialization, you need to identify your plans for the career path that you would want to choose in the said field.

If your objective is to do research in this field, you should perform a thorough background check on the ongoing research and the laboratory facilities in the selected universities – numerous publishes papers and good current research projects indicate that the respective department encourages research and also has a sufficient amount of funding. You can also get in touch with the relevant professors and find out about the possibilities of earning a research assistantship in that university.

If you are looking for a good placement in the field, go through the previous placement records of each university rigorously to understand the packages offered and see what companies visit the campuses on an annual basis. To actually find out where your alums work or have worked, you can go through their LinkedIn profiles and also connect with them to visualize better. To have a detailed account of salary potential and benefits, you can visit PayScale.

This is what a comparison for salary potential looks like on PayScale:

What Is The Cost of Your Chosen Program?

Once the relevant program has been worked out and you have shortlisted two or three top contenders, it is time to figure out the actual costs of pursuing the program in each of the schools.

The university websites provide fairly decent information, including prospective scholarships and internship opportunities, but for any questions about actual overall expenses, don’t hesitate to reach out to and follow up with the institution. You can use the scholarship functionality on GyanDhan to get a sense of the net cost and apply for scholarships. Talking to alumni to get the student perspective will help. Also, you need to keep in mind that different locales have different costs of living which could impact the net out-of-pocket expenditure. 

How To Make The Final Decision Of Choosing a University?

The above parameters will help you make a decision based on your requirements such as the preferred course, cost of the program, and the contribution of the degree in your career growth. While these are all sound questions that one needs to answer before finalizing a university, it is wise to compare the universities on quantitative factors. Factors such as top recruiters for your department, TA and RAships offered in the department, tuition fees, living expenses, net expenses, and the annual funding that your department receives should also be taken into consideration while making the final choice.

You can use GyanDhan’s University Compare tool to make comparisons on the numbers. It will help you choose the university that will provide the maximum value to you. Abroad education is a substantial investment whose returns should be equally great. It is of paramount importance to select the university that ticks all the boxes to get the maximum value of your international degree.

Below is a Dummy Comparison of 3 US Universities -