In this post, I thought I’d talk about what you need to do to get full admission offers to study for your MS or PhD in the US… and also get funding offers (so you don’t have to pay any tuition).

Before we go further: I’d like to introduce a term that U.S. schools use a lot. The term is “graduate school.”

Or grad school for short.

What’s a grad school?

Good question!

A grad school is a department in a school that trains its students and awards them MS or PhD degrees. In other words, grad school (in the U.S.) is the same as postgraduate school (in Nigeria).

The term ‘grad school’ is more commonly used in the U.S., so now you know what I mean anytime I say: “grad school.”

So back to the subject of today’s post: how do you get full admission and funding offers at excellent U.S. grad schools?

I got admitted with a full funding offer (to cover my tuition and other fees) to study at Louisiana State University (LSU), Baton Rouge in the U.S. back in 2017.

And let me tell you this:

Even though the road to getting full admission and funding offers is a long and demanding one (especially for international students e.g. Nigerian graduates)…

… only a few critical factors are supremely important to master to make the admission and funding process easy and successful for you.

Today, I’d like to talk about one of those critical factors: that is, understanding what U.S. graduate schools look for in Nigerian graduates.

You have to put yourself in the shoes of these U.S. schools, and understand what they’re looking for.

Because once you understand this, things suddenly become easier and clearer.

You’ll understand:

-how to evaluate your profile, just like your dream schools will evaluate it
-how to select your list of schools to apply to, so you don’t waste time and money
-why your GRE scores are not the only important factor
-why so many first-class Nigerian graduates can’t get into any U.S. school; and
-how to properly craft an awesome application packet that makes you shine while schools compare you with other applicants from several other countries (including the U.S.)
-the most important sections schools want you to highlight in your resume and statement of purpose

With more competitive students applying than spaces available at schools, it’s no longer enough to guess your way, slap an application together, and call it a day.

No.

You NEED to be intentional about moving from point A to point Z, knowing what you’re doing at each turn, and why you’re doing it.

For most research-based MS & PhD programs in the U.S. (of which a lot are), they want to know about your ability to do quality research work. That’s it.

U.S. grad schools want to admit and fund students who they know will be able to do high-grade research and publish research papers in top journals.

Re-read that last sentence.

Because you need to make sure every single part of your application confirms that you fully understand the fact in that sentence.

In other words, much more important than your GRE scores, undergraduate GPA, or campus leadership experience, U.S. graduate schools want (first and foremost) Nigerian graduates who can do high-grade research.

And that’s true either you want to get a Master’s research degree or a PhD.

And although your final year project was a form of research work, there are higher standards that U.S. grad schools look for.

If the only major research work you did was your undergraduate final year project, don’t be afraid.

You’ll just need to know how best to:

-how to present the research you did for your project,
-carefully choose schools where your research experience (and profile) will stand out

In the next post, I’ll be talking about how I got into my desired U.S. grad school even without any “high-grade” research experience.

That is, I applied mainly with my undergraduate final year project; and got accepted with full admission and full funding.

Read more: https://beyondbsc.com/get-admitted-full-funding-us/