OK! so you wish to study abroad, and do not have the fortunes to pursue your dreams? Well, it’s not the end of the world for you. When there is a will, there is a way and the way is to get scholarships.
Universities around the world are waiting for scholars to do research but they are not getting enough suitable candidates, reason being the suitable candidates do not have the information how to get there.
The focus of this article is on getting scholarships in East Asian countries, i.e. Japan, Korea, China, Thailand and Singapore. Countries like Japan and Korea are developing fast and investing a lot in the education sector. Their industries are fully supporting the academia, and it’s very easy to get a scholarship, only if you are persistent.
So let’s go directly to the tricks of the trade.
First step is to search the universities in your desired country on the internet. Once you go to the website of any university, go to the faculty and see who are the professors and observe what they are doing. Drop an individual email to the professors of your interest. No, they don’t mind you sending them an email directly. The email should contain your strengths and your desired area in few lines. The rates of response will be slow, one in ten probably, but if you get a response, that’s it! You are nearly there. Every professor has got industrial and governmental projects in his lab, for which he needs researchers to work upon. If he is interested in you, he will support your studies, will get the university to waive-off your tuition and will ensure that you are provided a living stipend so that you can simply relax and study!
It’s simple, isn’t it? Now if you want me to type an email for you, sorry I won’t do that for you. If you can read this, then your English is good enough, far better than a lot of Koreans and Japanese. English language is a great barrier especially in research for East Asian countries and they consider Pakistani students as a blessing. They need you to do research for them in English. Some universities like AJOU and KNU will give you direct access to the professors while for others you have to search the university website. Drop emails to the professors and wait for the response. I repeat, consistency and persistence is all that you need.
In each university, professors run labs based on industrial projects, so the funding is not an issue. If professor is interested in you, he will accept you and rest are formalities. For instance, in my lab, my professor accepted a medical student, who was a graduate in ophthalmology, to do PhD in Biomedical Engineering, a totally different field. I have seen people with the background of computer engineering having PhDs in chemical engineering. So it’s all about you, identify your area and locate the professors in those areas. Prefer the professors with more experience and more projects. Labs do have their websites, and it contains emails addresses of the PhD students, drop them an email as well. I know a lot of students who got scholarships by this method. Most importantly, you can find scholarships with living stipend for Masters degree without many prerequisites.
In the process, you might identify certain university scholarships, governmental scholarships, and some industrial scholarships. It was strange for me to see people with all those different scholarships, and their only ability was that they searched for it or someone told them about it. Korean and Japanese governments also give scholarship opportunities to the students of developing world, which need to be searched upon. For some students, even the tickets were paid by the professors. My professor paid my house rent for two consecutive years as I didn’t want to live in a dorm room.
The standard of education in the universities of East Asia, typically in Japan and Korea is getting much better. You can find quite a few of them in top 200 of international rankings. Tokyo University, National University of Singapore, KAIST, SNU and Yonsei are considered top class universities with tangible contribution towards research. One important factor which directly contributes towards the international ranking of a university is the number of enrolled foreign students; thats why the universities of East Asia are interested in attracting foreigners. Therefore, these universities are offering alot of opportunities to the foreign students, especially to those who are from developing world. So if you don’t have the fortunes to study in USA and UK etc, you can certainly utilize the opportunities which are being offered in East Asia.
Having said all this, life is not a piece of cake out there. You have to be strong enough to survive the test of times. If it doesn’t kill you, it will make u stronger. So if u can live alone, and live abroad in a different culture; then you can get the opportunity of studying there. Most importantly, once you are out and in the open, you learn a lot. The benefit of getting scholarship in East Asia would be that you can quit and move on at any time as there’s very little you have invested in monetary terms. There is no bond and you have free will to carry on or quit. In short, all you need is passion and the doors will open for you InshaALLAH.