So, firstly congratulations to you! I know this wasn’t easy, the part where you skipped a job offer/left a job to decide to study further, managing all the recommendation letters at the last moment, getting your essays reviewed by people and trying to make sense of two completely opposite suggestions… but here you are, you did it! We (the people of Internet) are proud of you and you should be too! 🤗

Once the high of reading that acceptance email subsides, you probably found yourself thinking about all the steps that follow – finances, visa, scholarships, TA/RAships, housing…the list just doesn’t end. I have added some advice from my own experiences (and some from my friends and seniors) which would probably help you get through the initial shock of the burden of responsibilities that just hit you!

Finances

If your program is fully-funded, hearty congratulations! Feel free to skip this section and proceed to the next one :)

Incase you find yourself getting an admit from one of your dream universities, and if looking at the fee structure makes you second-guess your dream, I’ve got you! So yes, grad school programs (esp. Masters) can be very expensive. If you are international student, the currency conversion doesn’t help either. The first thing you should do at this stage is to talk to your parents/guardians (as applicable) and see if they had any financial plans for your grad school. The second thing is to sit down and make a list of all your assets (Fixed deposits, stock holdings, etc.) and determine your net-worth. This will be crucial for your later steps as well. If you are a fresh-grad and don’t have much financial support, your best bet is education loans and scholarships. Now the process below will be specific for India, and may apply to other countries as well, but YMMV.

Scholarships

If you are reading this in Jan/Feb/Mar, hurry up and look up for all the scholarships that are applicable to your grad school program. I am doing an MS in Computer Science, and the ones I applied to were J.N. Tata Endowment, Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation PG Scholarship, K.C. Mahindra PG Scholarship and Quad Fellowship. This is definitely not exhaustive, and I highly recommend you to Google/Perplexity deeply and make a list of all such opportunities. I was fortunate to have received scholarships from the first three. It is, however, to be noted that these are essential interest-free loans (except Quad Fellowship), and not scholarships in the traditional sense. They will give you a significant amount of money, but you will be expected to return it back to the foundation after 2-3 years of your graduation (depends). These are still great ways to support your education, especially if your other alternative was a bank loan (which we’ll discuss soon). The scholarships also have elaborate applications (including essays, recommendation letters) and multiple rounds of interviews. It is recommended to start as early as possible for these! The interest amount saved is significant, and more importantly, you get to connect with a lot of smart folks during crazy things around the world. During the Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation orientation, all of us 16 scholars were invited to The Trident in Mumbai, and got to meet Mr Narotam Sekhsaria himself, and also famous industrialists, professors and social workers. I also got a chance to meet Mr. Anand Mahindra in the KC Mahindra PG Scholarship interviews.
The timeline for scholarships varies a lot but by June, you will mostly have a sense of what you are getting/not getting. Since June might be too late to plan your other options, you should also start looking for bank loans as soon as you get an admit.

Bank Loans

P.S.: These are my views from my experience and not serious financial advice. Any actions you take or the outcomes that occur are entirely your responsibility. The below advice mostly applies to India.

My parents had never taken a loan of any kind before, heck we didn’t even have a credit card! So it was definitely daunting for me when I first thought about this whole education loan thing. But now I can say that it’s not that difficult, you just have to be confident and smart (which you already are, trust me!). So there are broadly two options that you have here – secured v/s unsecured loans. Secured loan is where you (the borrower) basically pledges some collateral (fixed deposits, real estate, etc.). Unsecured is no collateral. As you might have guessed, secured loans have lower interest rates, and if your co-borrower (usually parents/guardians) have a decent credit score, it can be a good way. If you don’t have a collateral (or don’t want to pledge a collateral), you can go for unsecured (no-collateral) education loans. There are plenty of leading national level banks offering both kinds of loans, and you can start the process online for most of them (except SBI, probably). The way education loans work is, you won’t be charged interest unless you actually get the amount disbursed from the bank. So it might be a good idea to get a loan approved for the max amount the bank is willing to give, even though you have scholarships/some savings/TA/RAships planned. This will give you some safety-room incase things go south. You should ideally negotiate with multiple banks, and pick the one that makes most sense for you – both financially and comfortably. Also, if you gotten an admit at a good university and have a decent academic background, banks would be ready to give you an education loan. So don’t settle for the first offer they give, try your best to negotiate the interest rate, moratorium, registration fees, collateral, etc. Make sure to keep an experienced person (eg: your parents) in the loop and consult them before taking any final decision.

TA / RA ships

Teaching/research assistantships are where you help a professor in a course / do research under the guidance of a professor, respectively and get paid for it. International students, on an F-1 visa in the USA, are allowed a maximum of 20 hours/week of work with their studies, so this might be a good way to take care of some of your finances while also creating valuable connections with the professors. Now the amount that TA/RA pays varies wildly amongst universities. From what I know, universities like Stanford and UIUC waive off your tuition fees if you are a TA/RA. However, universities like Carnegie Mellon and NYU just pay you an hourly wage, and don’t waive any tuition at all. It may be worth talking to current students or checking out university subreddits to get this information. It definitely becomes much easier to get TAships from second semester onwards, for a course you took (and did well) in your first semester. Sometimes you can also get a TA position if you took a very similar class during your undergrad, but again YMMV. It is a good idea to start approaching professors in the summer for Fall courses. For RAships, while you can always reach out on email before the semester starts, I feel that interacting in-person can be a much better way to get to know more about the work and the professor themselves. In my case, I didn’t do any TAships in the first semester (was very busy adjusting to life here and intern-hunting) and did a research project (unpaid, not an official RAship) with a professor. In my second semester, I am doing a TAship for a grad-level course, which mostly takes 15 or so hours out of 20 hours weekly quota, and hence I am again doing an unpaid research project on a topic I am very excited about!

Visa and Further Steps

Visa application

Again something that sounds very daunting, but is fairly straightforward if you are aware and responsible. Once you indicate that you have accepted the grad-school offer, the university will provide you with an I-20 document (specific to the USA). Using this I-20, you can then register for the Visa application, book interview slots, give your interviews, get your visa approved (🤞) and you are set! I won’t go much into the details of the visa process, as I am not an expert myself. You can find a lot of videos/articles online for this. I didn’t pay any individual or agency to do any of the steps for me, and neither did any of my friends. It is pretty streamlined if you are aware of the rough timelines, and act quickly whenever slots open up for registration (usually around May iirc). Also, book your international flights as soon as possible, since the rates for the high-frequency seasons (like August) sky-rocket later on.

Finding housing

You will definitely find out some Whatsapp community/group for your university and admits of that season (eg, CMU Fall 2024 admits) where you can chat with people about housing. Incase you don’t, go on FB and search for “University Housing, Sublets…” and you will find some groups where you can see the kinds of prices people usually rent houses for etc. Again, talk to people already studying there, find contacts of contacts, or simply message them on LinkedIn. It is best to have an idea from someone who has done the specific things themselves. You can use websites like Zillow, FurnishedFinder, etc to also view some listings and contact the landlord directly.

Internship Search

(This is more relevant to CS and related fields) It is not the best thing to start grinding Leetcode when you are planning about the loan, visa and all that. But the truth is that once you start your semester in August, it would be very little time before hiring season starts in full-swing. To avoid being caught off-guard, it’s better to utilize the time in summer to create/refine your resume, work on projects or grind Leetcode. I personally solved only the Blind 75 list partially (although, I had done my undergrad in CS and had a fairly good experience of working with Data Structures and Algorithms). If you are coming from India, the internship hiring process in the US can offset you a bit. There are almost no “on-campus” placements, and everyone has to apply online on every company’s website. This makes the process much more time-consuming and often annoying. However, this is mostly a numbers’ game, and the more you apply, the more you increase your chances. Network as much as possible, reach out to alumni from your undergrad or even the current grad school and ask if they’d be okay with referring you for a role. It’s getting the interviews that is the most difficult part, and the earlier you start, the better it is for you to manage things well.

Deciding to accept/reject a grad-school offer

It is definitely possible that you weren’t entirely sure about higher studies while applying but took the shot anyways, and now you have a good admit on your hands. I am assuming you also have a solid plan (like a job) as a backup incase you don’t go ahead with grad school. While this decision is largely a personal choice, some of the things you might want to consider are – finances, your personal goals (marriage, etc.), whether you plan to live in USA or India after graduation, the recent post-graduate results from your program (PhD admits, placements, etc.), opportunity cost (could you have done something much more exciting/fulfilling in these two years or so?), etc. In my case, I had a very good SWE job offer with me and I would have stayed with my friends, close to loved ones and had a lot of fun, maybe? But studying a top university had been something I had dreamt of ever since I read Rohan Kamath’s answers about Stanford on Quora. Me and my family couldn’t afford to send me to the US for undergrad, and I knew that if I started working in India, I would get too comfortable to leave it and do an Masters. So, well this might be the best time to do this! I know its perhaps not very relatable or even logical, to undertake such risk, but my heart said that I should do it, and here I am, figuring out the journey! Something that can help you a lot as well is to talk to people in those universities, ask them why they did it, how are they feeling there, talk to your family/loved ones and make sure they understand that you are there for them, always. Listen to everyone, and do what your heart says! You have one life, and you don’t want to look back a few years from now thinking about all the possibilities. Worst case what happens? You finish your MS, pay off your loans (if any) and go back to your loved ones. A year or two of advanced, intensive studies won’t ever go to waste, atleast that’s what I think.

This blog is certainly not exclusive, and I wrote it out because quite a few of my juniors or friends who got admits reached out to me and asked many of these things. If there is something else that you think I can help with here, feel free to let me know! Also, make sure to enjoy the summer/winter break before your grad school starts to spend time with family and friends, since you will see them very few times in the next couple of years atleast. The timezone difference makes it worse!

Again, all of these were my personal views and nothing is financial/legal advice. Proceed at your own risk!
Best,
Gunjan