I am always hunting for the best deals on education. The best deal is rarely the best price too. Finding the right education options are a mix of:

• Time in your life, time to career readiness
• Money, it is expensive
• Reputation, country of the institution
• How will the education be evaluated in your home country if it’s foreign education? For example WES Canada evaluates for Canada
• Response time of the educational institution (Yep, I found one that takes WEEKS to reply)
• Transfer credit allowed from other institutions
• Synchronous versus asynchronous instruction. Synchronous is like having classes every Tuesday and Thursday at 7-10PM. Asynchronous is here are your due dates and the content, go at it as you please. Exams in this category can be quite challenging, especially un-proctored exams.
• Do you have the requirements to enter a program? May be a mix of previous education, work experience, portfolio, interview, interview with a panel, 3rd party exams (“GMAT”, etc.)
• Are you going for the paper, or going for the learning, or both? There is a balance between learning everything and paying a country’s worth of GDP to attend, and going for a more value based option and picking up any slack in a Udemy/YouTube/Independent study/etc. add-on course
• Are you speed-running or regular momentum? What timescale and financial costs are you willing to take on?
• Distance learning versus in-person versus hybrid learning
• Do you KNOW which program you actually want? (Love for the work)
• Do you KNOW which program you actually need? (Job/Career)

When you enter graduate school you often need write a letter of intent. In this usually you write about why you want to enter the institution and program, why you love X educational category you wish to enter, brief about your life situation, how you’re going to pay for the education, your career expectations after the program, and some closing remarks, all in X number of words, usually around 400 to 500 words.

Strongly noted, if you cannot articulate this, if you cannot do this, DO NOT APPLY. It doesn’t matter if it’s graduate work or not, even if this is an undergrad, do not enter unless you have assured yourself that at least the above is correct for you. If you do not plan your work, you cannot work your plan. This advice will save you going down the wrong path in education, as well as time and money. You may not like this, but it is very much the truth.

Undergraduate discussion

InstantCert DegreeForum.net High quality and well-moderated forums. USA leaning, a lot, but still discusses non-USA options.

Postgraduate discussion

InstantCert DegreeForum.net - Graduate School Discussion Forum High quality and well-moderated forum, USA-leaning, but still discusses non-USA options. DegreeInfo Forum, sister forum of InstantCert DegreeForum.net High quality and well-moderated forums, USA-leaning, but still discusses non-USA options.