Second Pot contained:
Canada: Toronto, McGill
USA: Stanford, MIT, Cornell, Michigan
(Yeah, I know, that US list is just too fantastic. But back then I really didn’t have enough knowledge to realize the super-fantastic-ness of that list).
Is it a must to create a wishlist? Well, I’m kind of the person who likes listing. It’s like reducing the search space from so many alternatives into the ones on my list. The pots also helped me to define my preference for the search. Without the list, I would otherwise have felt too overwhelmed with the number of universities to check (typical ranking contains about 500 universities) while forgetting about my preferences every now and then.
I think I owe an explanation about why I included no Asian countries at all on my list. No, it was not related to the poor performances of our representatives on World Cup 2014 (Japan, Korea, Australia, and Iran did not score even a win!). It was simply because I completed my Master’s degree in Taiwan, so for Ph.D. I aim to jump further than Asia (and Australia). Besides, I personally perceive that studying in Singapore, Australia, and Japan sound too mainstream.
So... If I had been so anti-mainstream, why would I have ended up being a Fulbrighter?
What happened with Swiss, Denmark, and Canada?
Read the answers for those questions (and more) on the next edition: “Throw Your Applications To The Wind” (highly inspired by Oattes, 1992)…
Next article: http://edukasi.kompasiana.com/2014/08/06/throw-your-applications-to-the-wind-pt-1-2-678390.html
