It all started around the beginning of 2013. I was thinking that I had got pretty complacent with my job, such that things looked like uninterestingly just a matter of routine. Moreover, there were no serious contenders of places to go for a conference. I thought that I should have planned for the next journey abroad, a Ph.D. journey.
Why would I want to study abroad? For me, living abroad is like a great way to challenge my survival ability. I literally have to depend on my own not only to study at a new school (and finish it), but also to meet a lot of new people, to try new food, to learn communicating in a new language, etc. Overcoming those challenges brings the sense of “Yes, I can” as well as lots of invaluable stories along the way, and, believe me, it is totally fantastic, romantic, BOOMBASTIC (Shaggy, 1995)!
No, it doesn’t mean that studying abroad is a neverending happy and sunshine-lit journey. There are study obstacles, irksome people, unlucky situations, lonely days, etc.; but, I do believe that if we have a good intention in every single thing we do, everything will finally turn out to be fine. If things still seem wrong, well, just remember that… everything will flow (Suede, 1999).
Anyway, back to early 2013 (late 2012, to be exact), I made a wishlist of countries that I’d love to go for studying. My main criterion is simple, the countries must be the places I’d like to visit. Somehow I had to add the factor of the country’s higher education quality. Due to the inclusion of that factor, it is a pity that interesting countries like Turkey, Greece, Hungary, and Ukraine, were excluded from the consideration. Based on that personal criterion, my wishlist consisted of these countries in the First Pot:
Swiss
Denmark
Austria
Sweden
(wait, this seems like a group drawn for Euro qualification… haha)
[caption id="attachment_347116" align="aligncenter" width="880" caption="European countries according to... somebody"][/caption]
The Second Pot contained the mainstream giants:
Canada
USA
Germany
UK
I was quite torn between pursuing the opportunities from the First Pot (cool, non-mainstream, great panorama, delicious chocolate) and chasing the prestige from the Second Pot (mainstream, huge reputation). I finally decided to simply follow all paths that appeared in front of me, did my best, and I shall follow whichever path that bears result.
Based on the countries wishlist, later I moved forward a bit by creating university wishlist. Although a country is in my First Pot and a university has a good worldwide rank (I consulted the ranking to Times Higer Education, QS, and ARWU), I still had to check either the department or professor availability. For example, Karolinska Institute is in Sweden (First Pot) and it has good rank, however it is only for Medical studies; therefore, it did not suit me.
Some super prestigious universities such as Cambridge and Oxford also do not suit me. They can never be included to my wishlist, no matter how much I do wish to enroll. Why? Well, for example, Cambridge accepts Ph.D. students mostly from its own M.Phil program (it means I will have to re-take Master’s degree). Suppose I tried to apply directly for a Ph.D. position, the chance is even slimmer than Indonesia’s chance to qualify for World Cup 2050 (kidding!). According to Cambridge’s website, only 1 or 2 direct applicants per year are accepted. After reading it, I was like… kByeThx (okay.bye.thanks.). Same thing happened after I read Oxford’s requirements. It had made me very soberly realize that those requirements are never meant to be within my reach. It Isn’t, It Wasn’t, It Ain’t Never Gonna Be (Franklin & Houston, 1987).
After clicking university websites, checking the available departments, scrutinizing professors’ research topics and publications (also googling the campus’ and their cities’ pics, to be honest), here was the university wishlist in First Pot:
Swiss: ETH Zurich, Basel, Lugano
Denmark: Denmark Technical University
Austria: Universitat Wien, Vienna Technical University
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
