Since two months ago, I have been occupied by an unexpected but tremendous task.

I had been toying with the idea in my mind since last year, but it was not until March when certain circumstances changed that I made up my mind that I was going for a postgraduate degree in the UK.

It was a tough decision.

In fact, it was a several-hundred-thousand-ringgit investment decision. After all, I have, all my life, been advocating the notion that experience, not academics, determines the success of a person.

Besides money, this decision also involves taking more time out of my life and delay the start of my career. After spending 4 years in Engineering, I am already lagging behind graduates taking 3-year bachelor’s degree courses… and, as they say – getting there first is everything.

Finally and not least, Shuyi and I will literally be swapping locations (UK-Malaysia) by year end and that means that we will be having a long-distance relationship… again.

I’m not keen to disclose the exact reasons that made me decide on this because they can be slightly controversial. However, I have considered my options for over 6 months and I believe that my decision is informed and rational.

**********

Anyway, *kills the solemn mood* and so I started my insanely long and stressful period of applying to universities!

First, I immediately registered for an IELTS test. This was crucial because test slots in April to September are pretty full and you’ll usually have to book at least a month in advance. And while waiting for my test date to arrive, I started targeting universities.

I knew exactly what I wanted to study for masters. To complement the scientific nerdyness of engineering, I wanted to study something on the other side of the academic world – economics, accounting, management, finance etc.

I decided that if I was to go for a master’s degree, I would study something related to business, since that is what I ultimately want to do.

Now that I knew what course I wanted to do, the next step would be to choose the institution. There are several hundreds of universities in the UK, and I had little time to research them one-by-one!

… so the easy way out was to simply look at the rankings. Times Higher Education has one of the most respected university world rankings:

And by sorting the world ranking by region, in this case Europe, I extracted the list of European universities that made it into the Top-200 World Ranking (out of the approx. 4000 universities in Europe). And by picking the top universities from the UK only, I got myself a good list of prospective universities!

Fortunately, there were also two UK education fairs in KL last month, one organised by the British Council, and the other jointly by Imperial College, UCL, LSE and KCL, the four major constituent colleges of the University of London.

I went to both fairs and after bugging the representatives from most of the 15 universities, I learned all I needed to know about the universities and was finally confident to make my choice.

So according to the Times Higher Education list, the top UK universities are:

1) University of Cambridge

2) University of Oxford

3) Imperial College London

4) University College London

5) University of Edinburgh

6) University of Bristol

7) King’s College London

University of Sussex

9) University of York

10) Durham University

11) London School of Economics

12) University of Manchester

13) Royal Holloway, University of London

14) University of Southampton

15) University of St. Andrews

…

…

Oxford, Cambridge and York had closed their applications way before March (some application deadlines were last year!) so those were out. UCL, KCL and Sussex didn’t offer the course that I wanted; and LSE was simply too, friggin’, insanely expensive. So those were out too.

In the end I applied to the five universities highlighted in bold above, and I added in the popular University of Sheffield, University of Birmingham and University of Warwick. These three did not make it into the top-15, but they are well within the top-30.

So in the end, I applied to EIGHT universities! As my lecturer said, you only get one chance to apply so have some backups… you never know, right?

The application process was gruelling.

Not only were there an average of 10 pages of application forms PER university to fill in, there were also essay questions like ‘describe your long term goals in 350 words’ or ‘why do you think you are suitable for this course?’ etc. Which took me like days upon days to compose.

And I haven’t even started with the personal statement.

Writing personal statements is the most stressful task on earth. Not only will you wonder what in the world are you going to talk about, you will also be super paranoid about missing out points and important stuff AFTER you’ve finished it. So the reviewing of the statement actually took more time than writing it.

And finally comes the reference letters.

All universities require at least two reference letters each from an independent referee who has had significant contact with, and could provide an objective opinion about me. That’s the UK universities’ requirement.

Now MY OWN requirement is: at least two reference letters each from an independent referee who likes me… a lot.

I can’t have a reference letter that bad-mouths me, right? Haha but fortunately my Final Year Project supervisor, who was also my lecturer, and a Maths professor came to my rescue. Both referees satisfy the universities’ requirement, and both referees… well… had been in pretty good terms with me during my four years as an undergrad.

Hehe so… DONE! (To be fair, my conduct in uni was actually quite good kayz…) No cheating here.

So with all my documents ready (academic transcript, reference letters, personal statement, application form, certs and other supporting documents) I nervously submitted all the applications, and wished for the best!

**********

Looking back, the four weeks following my application submissions were absolutely nerve-wrecking. I can remember myself rushing home everyday just to check my email and kept refreshing my Yahoo inbox every few minutes when I’m in front of my computer. Imperial College also conducted an interview with me through video conference and I was absolutely blown away by the questions they asked. I remembered waking up everyday with butterflies in my stomach, telling myself “maybe today is the day I receive a response!”

A week later, University of Sheffield replied with an offer. I was thrilled! This was my first offer! I hung on to my seat and waited patiently… maybe there would be more coming!

In the second week, both University of Manchester and Royal Holloway, UoL replied with offers. Although both were not my top choices among the eight, now I’ve got two more alternatives!

In the third week, University of Birmingham and University of Bristol replied with offers! This was spectacular news and I was literally jumping with joy in my lab. University of Bristol has my favourite Master’s course so far. Not only is the university high up in terms of ranking, its programme structure is also very flexible and I love the subjects offered. Birmingham is not bad either, but I’d like to keep it as a backup.

In the fourth week, University of Edinburgh and University of Warwick replied with offers. I was astounded! Now I am beginning to get spoilt with choice! University of Warwick is the upcoming star in business studies and UK employers in particular seem to like Warwick graduates a lot! University of Edinburgh, on the other hand, has almost five centuries of outstanding reputation, is the oldest university among the eight, and is situated in a wonderful, historical city.

Most universities promise an offer/rejection within 4 weeks, and by the end of the fourth weeks, I received offers from seven out of the eight universities I applied to! Yay! (Technically, these were offers conditional upon my graduation with a certain CGPA and obtain a certain IELTS band score. But blah… who cares about that now?)  

On the fifth week, I received nothing.

On the sixth week, I checked my email one fine day and voila! I struck gold. My eighth and final university, Imperial College London sent me an offer! Imperial is like top ten in the world and top three in the UK (after Oxford and Cambridge) and I had never really expected them to accept me.

Anyways now I am presented with a problem that I have never really anticipated – I have to make my choice among all the eight universities I applied to. A month ago, my original plan was to just take whichever university that accepts me… but now this is an entirely different dilemma.

I love all the universities very much (that’s why I applied to them) but I particularly favour Imperial College (obviously!), University of Bristol (for the reputation and course structure), University of Edinburgh (for the city and historical roots), and University of Warwick (for the fame of its business school).

I’ve decided I would give myself several weeks to seriously think about it, research, and make an informed decision. This is a multi-hundred-thousand ringgit investment and I want to make the best choice.

Meanwhile, I have to focus on getting an ‘A’ for my final year project, as well as prepare for my IELTS! Without these two I would fail my offer conditions and all the work would be for nothing!

Work work!