Usually, when you start or think of starting to find reputed universities and colleges to pursue your desired courses, then content available on the internet is the go-to option.

However, the minute you start searching them and land on websites of 2–3 institutions, you get confused and overwhelmed. Gradually, you start to feel the entire process to be tough, confusing, and laborious and begin thinking of ways to delegate this work to someone else.

With this thought in mind, you start approaching your relatives, friends, teachers, school and college seniors, office colleagues, or bosses to get their opinions and recommendations. However, when you don’t receive a satisfactory response from any of them. Then comes the last resort – approaching counselors!

And that’s when things start going downhill because you have reached right where they want you to be!

See, I am not saying that taking the help of counselors for researching universities or colleges is bad, but blindly approaching them without doing self-research is the biggest blunder you can make.

If you know then it’s good, otherwise, you should know that there are counselors out there who are fraudsters who engage in unethical and unprofessional practices just to earn a commission. They force individuals to take admission in low-grade colleges whose courses are useless and of zero value.

Hence, the moral of this story can be portrayed effectively with a famous dialogue of Manjhi The Mountain Man Movie which is,” Bhagwaan ke Bharose mat baitho Kya pata vo tumhare bharose baitha ho.” that translates to “Don’t hope to get God’s help,” Maybe God is waiting for you to take the first step.”

Likewise, don’t rely on counselors, and do your research on your own!

Easier said than done. Right?

No worries.

After reading this article, researching colleges would be a skill at your fingertips.

I am going to share my template for researching courses and shortlisting the best universities.

First, this template is not entirely mine. I found it on a YouTube video of Parth Vijayvergiya’s YouTube channel where he shared his template.

I referred to his template and have modified it in such a way that you can use it to research for any course in any country including India and I can say with 100% assurance that it will make your shortlisting process organized and effective.

Template: UNIVERSITY AND COURSE RESEARCHING TEMPLATE

Let’s Dive Into It column-wise!

1. University

In this column, you will have to write the name of the University. If you want, then you can also add the name of the place where the university is located.

2. University Rankings (Global & Subject wise)

There are many organizations which provide rankings to the university based on various parameters. These rankings are provided in different levels and subject wise rankings are also available. With this you can have a better idea on the reputation of the universities.

3. University Reviews From Current students & Alumni (Source can be LinkedIn, Instagram etc)

As our primary source of information is the internet, which is the place where no university will mention anything bad about them. This makes getting the actual review difficult. The best solution for this is to get information from Current students and Alumni of the university. You can reach them out on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook or whichever platform you can think of. If I want to pick one then I’ll go with LinkedIn because there you have the option to search for university and course name on the search bar which gives results of people who has mentioned their university names on their profile. Hence, you can reach out to them and get valuable insights.

4. Link:

This is a very important section. Whenever you search about any university course, then make sure to paste the course page link in this section. Don’t underestimate this practice because with personal experience I have found out that there are many universities which have similar sounding course names which can confuse you. Hence, having a directly accessible link comes handy in this case.

5. Name of the program:

Do mention the exact name of the course in this section. The reason of confusion mentioned in the previous section is valid here as well, and which is why I am insisting repeatedly on this point. For example, when I was doing my research, I came across M.Sc. Environment Management, M.Sc. Environment Science, M.Sc. Environmental Science and Management etc. This can happen to you as well. Hence, be aware of it.

6. Course Review from Current Students & Alumni:

During my research, I have found that not all the courses of reputed universities are good. Hence, you need to get rid of this perception to avoid making mistakes in university selection. Like University review, you should also try to search for current students and alumni of your course on social media platforms or wherever you can interact with them. This will take a bit of effort. But it will be worth it.

7. Course Requirements:

Every course mentions the course requirements or course eligibility criteria for getting admission into it. The name can be different in every university, provide this information. Make sure to include them in detail in this section.

8. English Proficiency Requirements:

Foreign Universities has a specific requirement of English Proficiency level to get admission. IELTS, TOEFL, etc. are the name of the English Proficiency tests whose scores are used for qualifying these requirements. All universities have different level of acceptance. Hence, it is very important to go through this information carefully. For example, IELTS exam has 8 bands scoring system. It has four sections: Listening, Reading, Writing and Speaking. Hence, some universities may ask to score more than 5.5 bands in all the sections, others may ask to score more than 6.5 in all the sections and so on.

9. Tuition Fees:

Almost every university irrespective of the country mentions the tuition fees on their course page. Hence, include this information carefully in this section.

10. Living Expenses:

If you search carefully, you can find the approximate amount of money which will be required by you to cover the living expenses in the university you want to study. Universities include this information on their website. The values are not fixed, but you can have an idea from it.

11. Total Expenses:

Here you will have to add both the Tuition fees and Living Expenses.

12. Financial Aids & Scholarships:

It is possible that you may get a shock after calculating the total expenses for studying abroad. But don’t get disheartened. There are many fully and partially funded financial aids and scholarships offered in different universities which you can take benefit to save as much money as possible.

13. Important Dates, Deadlines and Intakes:

Different universities have different dates and deadlines in different intakes. Hence, keeping a record of this information is very important. Because if by chance you miss the deadline, then your efforts will go in vain.

14. Career Prospectus:

Almost every university mentions the career prospectus for every course i.e., which jobs or future professions you can pursue after completing the course. This information is paramount as you will be investing a big chunk of money in your education and hence having as much information about the Return on Investment as possible will be super beneficial.

This completes all the columns and your research data will start to take a shape and will start giving you a clarity of thoughts on which ones to give more priority.

So, this way, you can short list the best courses and universities for yourself.

At last, I would like to say that no course, college or university is perfect. Everyone has their merits and demerits. So it’s crucial to have an idea of finding the perfect fit for your requirements. Otherwise, you would simply through arrows in the dark and wasting your money.

Apart from this, I would like to mention that I did my research by myself and shortlisted 10 universities. Out of which I asked my counselor to apply in 5 universities and let me apply in the rest 5 as I wanted to know how the process is done.

Now the best part was, the university in which I am studying now is the one among the 5 universities in which I applied by myself.

So I leave the decision of taking help of counselor to you.

As a pro-tip, I would say that if you do this research on your own and then approach your counselor then you’ll have many benefits which are:

1. Appreciation:

Your counselor will certainly appreciate your efforts, and it would be a great help for him/her to narrow down the university options for you.

2. Credibility:

No counselor will try to trick you if you show them your research. Because they will realize that you have done your own research and cannot be brainwashed.

3. Realistic Expectations:

As all the information is uploaded on the university websites, it becomes hard for anyone to understand the actual value of the course because every university will mention their best aspects only, and they try to lure you in with aesthetically crafted information. This can make you set unrealistic expectations. However, if you use my template, then it will help to broaden your perspective, set realistic expectations and make your decisions objectively.

So I hope you liked the template and found it useful.

Do leave a comment with your views on the content, and also mention your queries if you have any. I will try my best to answer them.

Peace!

Regards

Uttam Kumar Tamboli