The prologue:
I did not choose engineering, instead, engineering chose me. This choice was made right after my10th Standard examinations, which I passed by flying colors and it was destined that I had to be an engineer. But what ‘engineering’ is exactly? it was a mystery to me. What branch should I get into, which field should I choose. I left all these questions to be answered by my scores in the entrance examination. I was delighted to be selected for Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering in National Institute of Technology, Bhopal. It is one of the premier colleges for engineering in India. Little did I know about Materials Science or Metallurgy, I just signed up for the course showing faith in my destiny.
In the first year of the course, I could finally explore what engineering meant to me and which discipline of engineering should I get into. The result of this self-actualization was that I knew that Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering is certainly not my cup of tea. I was more inclined towards Electrical Engineering. I just loved how simple principles like Kirchhoff’s circuit laws and Ohm’s law could be used to build complex circuits which bring ease to the lives of our fellow citizens of the mother earth. I dreamt of being an electrical engineer. I studied pretty hard to occupy a vacant seat in Electrical engineering course. I felt immense happiness and gratitude towards God when I slid into Electrical engineering. I guess it was the time when I started believing in my capabilities.
Towards a larger vision:
The smartest thing I did have I regained my friends even after I was no more their classmate. They stood beside my me at all the times. It was the first day in the new course and after lectures, I was watching ‘Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’ with my friends. This movie gave me another goal to chase. I could feel the strong urge to explore the world and the infinite opportunities engineering can serve me with. I could not sleep that night, I just dreamt about doing Master of Science (MS) from a reputed university which could unravel my true potential, which can give me wings of fire. I fondly remember a quote by Swami Vivekananda:
“Take up one idea, Make that one idea your life, Think of it, Dream of it, Live on that idea, Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success and that is the way great spiritual giants are produced.”
On 10th September 2017 when I’m flying to Germany I take pride in saying that I MADE IT.
I would like to make this article a walk-through my journey to Germany for a Masters course in Power Engineering. I will try to include my experiences, my highs, and lows during that crucial period.
I was so thrilled by the idea of studying abroad that I spent several days researching about MS, the courses offered by different universities and their selection criteria. I also had my fair share of doubts regarding my capabilities and the complex procedure of getting into an institute with international repute. All I was confident about was that I have to do it at any cost, I want to live the life I’ve dreamt for myself, this was the only thing from which I cannot compromise and this led me to build a pathway to Germany. While researching, I ran into some words like GRE, TOEFL, and IELTS. These examinations fulfill the basic eligibility criteria for application in foreign universities. All of them had one thing in common: English (Read excellent English language skills).
As the medium of instruction in the majority of my schooling was Hindi. English always used to haunt me. I could never imagine myself being so proficient in English so that reputed foreign universities accept me for their master’s programs. I knew that scoring well in GRE won’t be a cakewalk for me, it came as a challenge to me which I gladly accepted keeping the dream of fulfilling my goal in mind. The thought of traveling and exploring the world always kept me motivated and firm towards my goal.
It was the start of the third year of my graduation when I revealed my dream to my family. They were completely awestruck with it and tried to resent to this idea. My family has always been cooperative with me except for this time when they told me to cool off my horses and have a more realistic dream. My uncle played a pivotal role in convincing my parents to support my dream. With his help, I enrolled for GRE preparation course at Endeavor Career Limited with the primary goal of improving my English language skills. In the initial classes, I felt devastated and unsatisfied with my performance. Fortunately, I found a mentor, who had a great personality and yet was down to earth. He believed in my vision and kept me focused. I was already doing good in quantitative aptitude section due to my engineering background. All I had to improve was my English for which my mentors suggested me to read as much as possible. I started reading novels written in basic English and gradually continued with development reading and master reading novels. Within two years, I read around 40 novels. Whenever I had time, I read English articles, stories, and newspapers. I always kept myself engaged in reading something. This improved my vocabulary and helped me in the better understanding of the language.
I added 1500-2000 words in my vocabulary during my GRE preparation. These were the words which I had never seen before. Neelam ma’am taught me verbal language skills and gave me ideas for remembering words and their synonyms. For example: On the basis of movies name: Dill to pagal hai. Then we can use pagal synonyms here. E.g. Dill to Insane hai. Dill to maniac hai. Etc. This way I remembered around 1500 words.
Another hurdle in my way was ‘Reading Comprehension’. I still remember that till last day before the exam I was not able to solve this part. I solved GRE Big Book also. I managed to get only 4 out of 8 passages correct. But a hope was still in my mind that I will make it happen. Neelam ma’am helped me a lot in the verbal section. She is really a nice lady. She gave me a strategy to solve the verbal section. Like, you can solve some section of the paper. And I had focused only 13-14 questions out of 20.
Final day, 17 June 2016, I appeared for GRE and scored 303 which is a decent score. When I saw the score on the computer screen, I couldn’t stop smiling because I didn’t expect such a score before the exam. Now, the first step towards my dream was successfully completed. I gave GRE because I was initially targeting USA instead of GERMANY. Finally, some hope came and I started thinking something big. And I am very thankful to my friends Shruti agrawal and Somnath Bharech. Shruti gave me internal confidence all the time whenever I was down. Her words were: Abhi tak hua hai, aage bhi ho jayega. On the other side Somnath had a solution for every problem I faced. Whenever I got stuck, Somnath pulled me out. He made my work very easy just like a walkthrough in an arcade game.
College final year:
This year, many companies visited our campus for recruitments. At the start of final year, I lost focus for my dream. I wanted to take job in any company. It was maybe because of the peer pressure or perhaps the tensed surrounding. Everyone in my friend circle was preparing for campus. I was busy too, preparing myself for placements. In September, I was placed in one of the mass recruiter companies of the college. So, I had one job in my hand. But the pay scale was way too low. I was just wasting my time, appearing for placement examinations. I wasted 5 months in the placement season to get a job. I could not get the job. My confidence level was decreasing as the day passed. Because it’s a final year, I was totally upset. whenever I called my home, A voice asked me every time. Do you have a job? You are a NIT student. I believe that it was for my own sake that I didn’t got placed in a good company otherwise I would have lost track of my dream.
Now I had to appear for the language proficiency exam. It was either TOEFL or IELTS. In November, Donald trump emerged as the US president. His policies ruined my plans and shaped it to a new direction, GERMANY it was. One day, I went to Impel coaching to ask about universities application. One of the faculties gave me a wonderful briefing for this and motivate me that you have also lot of option for your dream. But you will have to give IELTS first.
IELTS:
It was November. I joined IMPEL coaching for IELTS. Yet another battle to be fought. In this exam, there are four sections: Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking. One of the biggest barriers in this exam for me was the speaking section. One has to speak in English for an unknown topic for minutes. It was a huge task for me but, If you want to go Germany, you will have to crack it. This time I had lots of burden like either you have to crack IELTS or take job. I was very furious in these three months. I couldn’t even smile in that period. It was do or die situation. Another fear was that it is expensive exam around 11500 INR. So, we can think of appearing only once and clearing it in a single shot. Again, Somnath came up with the solution. He made me perfect in speaking so that I can speak for 2 minutes on any unknown topic. Finally, I booked the exam date for 21 January 2017 and the test venue was in Jaipur. I was preparing in Bhopal, but I had to give my exam in Jaipur. For this, I must go to Jaipur before 3 days which might be disturbance for my schedule. I wrote my exam with best efforts. Results were declared on 3 February 2017. This time I had mixed feelings. Either I could cross it or not. Both situations were possible. Fortunately, I crossed the second hurdle too. That day, I got my smile again. Now all the language barriers were dealt with. Now was time to apply in German universities. My confidence was increasing step by step. Now, this time, my family was with me. Finally, I have answer of that question (After graduation).
Application process:
I joined impel again as consultancy. Their charges were high but it’s the choice between time and money one has to make to realize his dreams. So, I did not mind the fees and joined the consultancy. It wasn’t the end of problems. When I visited the Daad.de site, most German universities required bachelor’s degree and final semester mark sheet. I was in 8th semester and had mark sheets till 7th semester only while, German universities demanded transcript of the Bachelor ́s Degree. By the way, I started to collect all documents related to application. Within one month, I collected all major documents related to universities application. During collection of documents, one of the major tasks was that you had to collect the 24 LOR ́s (Letter of Recommendations) from three professors of my college. Then, I selected 6-8universities which were matching with my area of interest and profile till the time march was over. And I started my process of application as the portal of universities was opening. As April approached, the last month of the college life. I didn’t want to waste it in thinking about my future goals. Because now I was worried about the admit from the universities as I had already spent a huge sum of money. If I didn’t manage to get any admit then it would be a total waste of time, money and my handwork. On the other side, I joined GLC (German language classes) to learn the German language because it is compulsory in Germany. Luckily, I got one of the best teachers for German: Suman Madam. She literally teaches by heart and immerses herself fully into what she is teaching. In April, we revisited our college memories in Bhopal with a DSLR camera and took some of the best photographs with my buddies. We also celebrated signature day and farewell party. Some memories are:
May – June:
This 60-day period was very crucial for me. I got my first admit on 15 May 2017 from Weingarten University for MS in Embedded Systems. That day was the happiest day in my life. It meant like the ticket to Germany has been confirmed. My family started preparing themselves mentally to send me to Germany, they were talking about Germany and related things like food, culture etc. Now, I had to finish the last step towards Germany in which there were some tasks that should be completed on time like Open a blocked account, book an appointment for VISA, travel Insurance and book accommodation University Dorm. Then, I opened a blocked account in Deutsche Bank in Delhi. For this I came Delhi three times because of some address problem. It took around 45 days to open an account in Germany. After this, Applied for visa slots. For booking an appointment, I called German embassy regularly. No slots available for next two months in Mumbai consulate. This was yet another hurdle for me. Without visa everything was meaningless. Finally, I got visa slot on 3rd August, just a day before my birthday. I was happy to get the visa slot. Now all the tasks were successfully aligning up and the way to Germany became clearer than ever before.
On 11th July I got another two admits from German universities. Again, a big day in my life. I was really surprised after getting 3 admits from Germany. On 3rd August, I gave my visa interview and waited for one month to get my visa approved. I was thinking about getting visa. If I got visa rejection then I will have to go through the whole process again. In mid-august, I got my 4th admit from Germany. That day I was proud on myself and my patience. Also, on 31st August I got my visa approval. I booked my flight on the same day. I started packing for Germany. And got my visa printed and flew to Germany on 10th September. In this whole journey, my motto was “Chayie Toh Germany” and “Believe in yourself”. It was a tough task for me to choose a dream against my family.
Initially, my family had their fair share of doubts. But, I have had the best support from my family and none of this would have been possible without their support.
END!!!