Category: Study Abroad

Postgraduate opportunities for Nigerians in Europe, U.S, canada, Asia, Austrailia e.t.c

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The Cycle of PhD-ing

We bring you this article, that high lights the toils of a PhD student. This focuses more on the relationship between the PhD student and his thesis supervisor.
Article was originally posted on Warwick Blog
I have an agreement with my supervisors that I hand i

n my work a week before supervision so they have time to comment and review. The day I have to hand it in is always clearly marked in my diary. For years now I don’t necessarily think in weeks or months, I think in supervision-to-supervision-periods. And the day I can hand in my work is the day I do what I do best: worry about what they are going to say. I know I am not alone in this. Many conversations with other PhD-students include the words supervisor, supervision, and revision. Surely, you know the sinking feeling when you find well-meant comments, all over what you thought was pretty decent writing.

I know what I want them to say. I just want them to say my work is brilliant. I want them to praise my ingenuity; I want them to be in awe of my genius. When they give me their comments I just want to see nothing other than little tick marks and scribbles saying ‘yes’, ‘good’, and ‘OK’. I want an overall message that I should never even think about changing anything in the text I wrote. Ever.

Everyone needs to dream!

In the real world I usually sit through two hours discussing their comments as they constructively point out every weakness in my work. Of course, there are some tick marks and some paragraphs have a scribbled ‘good’ next to it, but most of the document is drenched in comments. Sentences or words I worked hard to find are crossed out and rewritten. Although their overall comment usually mentions I have done well it is immediately followed with a general message of what needs to improve. And so far, I have not yet been called a genius. I know… shocking!

Rationally I know this is just how it works. I slave away for a few weeks, hand in my work and receive it back with comments to enhance what I have written and to develop my academic skills. It is the endless cycle, these are the inflexible pillars of the process of PhD-ing. But as hard as I try, I am not a very rational person. My emotions usually get in the way, until they take over entirely. I look at the comment-soaked pages and even though I tell myself this is what is supposed to happen, I cannot help but be a little sad… and a little irritated.

But as the PhD cycle restarts the moment I leave the professor’s office, I get back to work. I read every comment, edit the text, add bits here and delete sections there. And during my respectful approach, just once in a while I dare to cross off one of their comments as I mumble with great satisfaction: “That does not make sense”. As I move closer towards the day I have to hand in my work for the next supervision session, I realise that the piece I have been working on has indeed improved. The line of argument is now actually noticeable and the paragraphs are more focused and to the point.

I read through the text for the very last time and decide that it looks good. I press sent. Supervision is a week away. I try not to worry too much about what they will say and instead decide to try out one of those popular strategies to success: visualise your way to achieving your goals. As I stare into space I see myself walking into the office and even before I sit down they shower me with compliments. Do I hear you laughing? Never mind, for just one week I am allowing myself to dream my way to success. Soon enough supervision will do what it always does… put my feet firmly on solid ground. I guess visualising helps, but hard work will always remain the basis of PhD success.
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Postgraduate Admission in KNUST, Ghana

Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, (KNUST) Ghana is seeking application from qualified candidates into its 2017/18 Masters and PhD programmes.

Admission of Candidates to Research or Higher Degree ( MSc/MFA/MA/MCOMM/MBA/EMBA/MPH/MPHARM/LLM/MPHIL/PhD) Programmes for 2017/2018 Academic Year.
GENERAL ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS
i. Masters Programmes
At the time of application, applicants should possess a Bachelor’s Degree or its equivalent from a recognized Institution in the relevant field of study.  Preference will be given to applicants with a FIRST CLASS OR SECOND CLASS
ii. PhD Programmes
Candidates applying for Doctor of Philosophy degree must have aN MPhil degree or its equivalent from a recognized Institution and shall submit evidence of adequate training and ability to undertake the proposed programme.
DURATION OF PROGRAMME
Unless otherwise stated,
Masters Programmes (Full-Time) are of Two (2) Calendar Years and (Part-Time) Three (3) Calendar Years duration.
PhD Programmes (Full-Time) are of Four (4) Calendar Years and (Part-Time) are of Five (5) Calendar Years duration.
For Nigerians & Other International Applicants:
  1. All International Applicants must apply online. International applicants who are admitted will be required to pay an application fee of USD 200.00 (approx. 80,000 naira) before registration.
  2. Application process is online, and can be done outside Ghana. Click to begin knust pg application.
  3. Note to click on theinternational login button.
  4. Download 2017/18 KNUST Postgraduate brochure here
  5. After the online application process has been completed, candidates must print out 3 copies of the completed application form from the portal and submit them (by post) to the School of Graduate Studies along with all relevant documents (Photocopies of Certificates, Recommendation Letters, and [Transcript for those attending KNUST for the first time]) to the following address:                               The Secretary,                                 School of Graduate Studies.      KNUST.                                         Kumasi-Ghana
  6. Deadline for the submission of application forms is 25th April, 2017.  Application forms submitted after the deadline will not be processed.
Drop your comments and questions
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POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ABROAD: EXPECTATION VS REALITY

Deciding to study abroad is one of the most important decisions you will have made in you life so far. The truth is, living abroad is a wonderful experience, but it is often surrounded by numerous assumptions. While many of them are true, some are very

far from it. Only if you have a clear mind about the ‘expectations and realities’, you can make your abroad experience live up to its hype! Here we take a look at some of the assumptions about studying and living abroad – and what the reality may in fact be…

I’M GOING TO HAVE A LOT OF INTERNATIONAL FRIENDS
In truth people rarely find a bunch of friends immediately after moving to a new place. Do not rush things, there is something people call a ‘culture shock’ and you will probably have to go through this period at the beginning of your new journey. In reality, the majority of students that move overseas for their studies make their first friendships with people from their home city or at least with those they share some common geographical ground with. It is long after that they step out of this comfort zone and allow themselves to interact with people who came from other parts of the world. It is a good idea to try and make contacts before you move to your new country.
I WILL SOUND LIKE A NATIVE SPEAKER IN THREE MONTHS
Many researchers have pointed out to the fact that people can learn a language much, much easier if they are directly exposed to it. However, we are all aware that every language has many different dialects. So, if you are expecting that you will master the language quickly you are likely to be disappointed. You may be able to learn the language or even become fluent in it, but you will need much more than a couple months – or even a couple of years – to sound like a native. Additionally, studying abroad usually means being in contact with people from all over the world. Therefore you will be greatly exposed to other languages, which is amazing, but it is yet another reason why you will not be able to completely immerse in the language of the country you are residing in.
I WILL PARTY ALL THE TIME AND EVERY DAY WILL BE AN ADVENTURE
Sorry to say this, but as a postgrad student your studies will be more time consuming than you think – allowing little time for partying, and every day will not be an adventure unless you see the library as something adventurous. The main reason why you are abroad is to study and as a postgraduate student there will be many days that you’ll have to spend in the library. Although every postgraduate program is different, they all have one thing in common, you need to study a lot.

I WILL GET A JOB IMMEDIATELY AFTER I FINISH MY STUDIES

Everyone thinks that other countries work better than their own. Even though this is true sometimes, no country is the ‘perfect land of opportunities’. If you decide to study abroad, do not think that people will be waiting for you in front of the university right after you graduate to offer you a job. It is you who will have to run around and look for a job yourself. And in most cases, you would have to start as an intern and prove what you have learned.

I WILL HAVE THE TIME OF MY LIFE!

There is one expectation that makes you forget about all the challenges in an Continue reading “POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ABROAD: EXPECTATION VS REALITY”

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The Stress and Success: South African Shares Postgraduate Experience

A South African shares in relaxed tone, her experience studying for a Masters degree. In Nigeria & else where, the postgraduate research stress of choosing a research topic, proposals, laboratory & field work and many others are very similar. Article was originally posted on Sayas

 After the First Storm

I was born in the Eastern
Cape, to parents that are both educators. Which kind of explains why I love being in the know. They gave me the name Siphokazi, which directly translates to “a very big gift”

Awesome is it not? I guess that is what I am to the Nyeleka family, my clan. Growing up, my siblings and I were not allowed to be without a book (school books didn’t count!) and school was non-negotiable, unless of course we were feeling under the weather.
My parents have always encouraged me to pursue postgraduate studies – following in their footsteps. So by the time I graduated with BSc Animal Production Science, I needed very little encouragement to continue with my studies. I was already hooked by academia! With the final persuasion coming from my supervisor, I decided to enrol for an MSc degree in Animal Production Science with special interest in broilers.

Why broilers? You may ask… Well, back in the day my grandmother ran a poultry farm for more than a decade, but she had to shut it down due to ever rising feed costs. The whole experience was frustrating for me because I watched her let go of something she truly loved, particularly because she used the farm as means to give the village women financial security. So when the opportunity came for me to try and find alternative ways to help people like my grandmother, I grabbed it with both hands. Thus, my MSc research focuses on using alternative protein sources in broiler diets, with the ultimate goal of feed cost reduction.

To my surprise, though, the whole process of developing a research concept has been very challenging for me. Developing a proposal was supposed to be as straight-forward as writing that final exam at the end of the year… What I found to be exceptionally challenging was that I knew what I wanted to do, however developing a research concept around it was very tricky. How could I distill my thoughts into an idea that was testable, workable, valuable, in the space of a single degree…?

What kept me going back to the drawing board was and still is the ultimate goal and that is to make a difference. Giving up would not only be letting myself down, but my grandmother too and that is something I would never be able to live with. I guess it is true that “ Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain, ” because the happiness I felt after an approved proposal is beyond description.

My second year promises to be an interesting adventure, with more trials and some lab work. I look forward to it, really. Do I still think I can solve the world’s problems? Yes! But like RJ Benjamin says in one of his songs “Changing the world, One day at a time…” I guess in my case its one broiler at a time.

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WHAT IS GRE?

GRE is an acronym for Graduate Record Examination. It is a well standardized academic test, used as an admission criteria for postgraduate schools. GRE is a requirement for (post) graduate entry, at Masters or Doctoral (Ph.D) study in the U.S, Canada, Europe and is increasingly being adopted in Asia-pacific and Africa, hopefully, in Nigeria soon.

GRE have been rated as one of the most difficult exams in the world, because of the high analytical and critical reasoning skills required by GRE candidate. Graduate record examination questions are not specific to any particular field of study.
GRE exams has three sections on which knowledge and skills tested viz,
1. Analytical writing
2. Quantitative reasoning
3. Verbal reasoning
GRE Analytical writing involves testing candidate ability of original thought. It is an essay writing with 2 sub-sections.
First is the issue based task, where the candidate is given 30 minutes to write confidently on a selected topic. The chosen topic can vary from biotechnology to emerging economy and so on. A guide of possible topics is given ahead.
The second aspect of GRE analytical writing is the argumentative based task. GRE candidates would be given a series of facts on an issue and be asked to critique in an argumentative style. Candidate can take a stand to support or oppose, but the important skills is the logic on display and orderly presentation of points convincingly. It also takes 30 minutes.
GRE analytical writing is graded from zero to six (0-6) with a score gap of 0.5.
Quantitative reasoning, tests the GRE candidate’s skill on numerical computation and manipulation for problem solving. This section has 20 questions, expected to be completed in 35 minutes. The grade range is from 130 – 170.
The verbal reasoning test the candidate’s comprehension, critical analysis and use of vocabulary. 20 questions are to be completed in 30 minutes. The grade range is also from 130 – 170.
There is usually an experimental section that doesn’t add to the total score. This may not be easily identifiable by candidates. GRE uses this for its own research.
Overall, to get admitted to a top/ivy league school, GRE candidates should target a total score of about 320.  It’s advantages include;
1. Ease of being admitted fir postgraduate study
2. Earn scare scholarship based on GRE performance.
3. Graduate assistantship job.
Graduate Record Examination have been developed and administered by ETS (Educational Testing Service). Registration for GRE can be done on their website here. For help registering for GRE in Nigeria, drop you comments
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My Third Class Degree from UNILAG Turned Out to be a Blessing

Toyin Odutayo, an Information Technology executive, who had her postgraduate studies in the UK, shares her inspiring story with The Nation News.

Get motivated in your postgraduate educational pursuit, it’s not over till you win.

JOURNEY to the UK in search of knowledge

One of the reasons behind me doing a master’s degree was because I didn’t do too well in my undergraduate studies. I made a third class. I had always been one of these people that sort of looked at myself and felt the need to differentiate myself. I had always been ambitious, so I said let me go and do this master’s while I am more matured and focused, knowing what I wanted in life.
I got into London South Bank University and I did a master’s in Information Systems Engineering. That was one of the most focused years of my life, because I knew what I wanted. I knew the impediments, given that I had a third class from my Nigerian degree. So I told myself I have to do really well to make sure that moved forward. So I had an MSc with distinction and literally that was what opened all the doors for my career advancement in the UK.

What I did differently

I will be brutally honest here. I also had a part time job while I was doing my master’s. What I did different was that I just read. Having said that, when I was in UNILAG, I noticed the time I was focused, I did very well. I was young then. You get into the university at 16 or 17, you want to play. So what was different was that I was completely focused. I knew what I wanted. I knew that to get a really good job, something should set me apart from the other applicants. I made my distinction and it really opened up lots of doors such that when I put in an application for a job, when I look at the ratio of rejection from when I had a third class to the number of  rejections that I had with having a distinction, it was crazy. Literally, if my CV goes anywhere, a door would open. I also feel that God was really on my side.

Programming Experience in the UK

I had a good project manager who looked at me after I had been in the UK for about three months and said I could be a team leader. I was in my early 20s and I didn’t have as much experience as the people on my team. What he explained to me was that there are people who are destined to lead and there are others who are destined to just be developers. I worked as a team leader for a company now called EDS for about two and a half years and I left to work in the retail sector. From team leader, I became a project manager by the age of 25. Having realised that somebody could have that confidence in me and realised my capabilities, I made a conscious decision to keep reading up and trying to make myself different. The Internet wasn’t rife then, so I just found myself investing in self-help books, and then I moved into the financial service sector and became a systems integrator. Again, I did that for about three years in the UK. I stayed in the UK until 2001. I was in the UK for about 12 or 13 years.

Returning to Nigeria, a sanity break

After working in the financial services sector, I began to get itchy feet. So I decided to leave the techie world behind to go for an MBA. That has to be the hardest year of my life. What made it challenging was that I am techie born and bred. With techies, it is bits and bytes whereas in the business world, one plus one equals two, but it could be two in a bit or slightly less than two.

Going into business school was also my turning point. So when I left Nigeria in 1989, I left with the mind of going for five years, but five years became 12 years. The reasons why that was is because it was just very easy to go into the UK and fit since I had lots of Nigerian friends.  Although that ‘fit’ will always be fit in quote, because you look at your skin, you are a black person. No matter how English you try to sound, you are still a Nigerian.

That realization hit me when I did business school, because there were many of us who came from Ghana, Namibia and other African countries. The kind of things they were talking about going to do back home prompted me, and I was like oh my God, I need to go back home and do something too. That was the turning point really.

I wanted to make a difference and I know that would not be made working in the UK. I was brought home by the late Osaze Osifo, former MD of FBN Capital. I knew that after spending so many years in the UK, I would need the sanity break, and that sanity break was coming home to Nigeria.

My experience coming back home

I turned my back on the UK and came to live in Nigeria, and I have no regrets. I moved into Oando as the head of IT. It was extremely challenging. I would go in and talk the talk, but I am actually a leader by example. I strongly believe that your followers will have confidence in you if they see that you have proven experience and you are not afraid to get your hands dirty if you have to. I am an ED now but I still get my hands dirty. Not everyone has to be a leader that leads by example, but I think for me, that is what works and that is what has always worked.

On the cultural shock when I came back, I am a Nigerian at heart. I may speak English in quote because the first 12 years of my life I spent in the UK, then I came back to spend another 10 years of my life and I went back to the UK. Coming home, I was not expecting 22/7 power. I was not expecting the roads to be fantastic. In fact, I think one of the turning points was when I came for my mum’s 60th birthday and that was when I was like you know what, Nigeria is not so bad, because we were trying telecoms wise.

The biggest challenge for me with Nigeria was more communication rather than the power sector. In my own case, I was pleasantly surprised because when I came home, I was able to get a flat that didn’t have a 24 hours light but I was able to have light most evenings. This is the thing that I tell people that want to relocate. When you left Nigeria, how was Nigeria? Yes, you may have risen to a level where you can stay in an estate that has 24 hours power, but that is not reality. That is not how Nigeria is. So if you can just get your head around that.

Career transitions and challenges in the IT field

From Oando, I was approached to go to Virgin Nigeria, and that was like to be one of the pioneer people. I always like startups. Yes, I want to do things for myself, but I also want to make a difference in Nigeria. It is good to be part of a movement, pretty much like what we are doing in Wakanow. In the whole of my career, I have been a techie person; the only things that are challenging are the materials things. We need power to run. And again, because I’ve got varied experiences, I tend not to have people challenges. I think it’s because I am a reader. If I have a challenge, the first thing I will do is pray and then there is a book where somebody has gone through that challenge. So by the time I read how somebody overcame that challenge, it is usually very easy to resolve.

When you build up to a level that people have confidence in you and they know that when you go to complain or talk about a challenge, everyone knows that the challenge is genuine. When I was younger in my career, if I had a challenge, would rather go and meet my mentor. Before I take up the challenge of heading an organization, I have mentors who I could talk to and ask questions. It is all about what I call effective networking. I may never have met someone before, but I will look for someone who knows that person and say look, this is the role that I am going to take, I need help. I just need someone to sound me out.

Wife, mother, woman

I honestly don’t believe these days that Nigerians believe it is a big deal for a woman to be something. I have gone to so many women conferences and I see so many amazing women around. I think it is now becoming the run of the mill for women to succeed in their careers and businesses. You just need to look at Ibukun Awosika for instance. She is a major role model.  Some of these things were instilled in me when I was growing up. You can still manage your home, be a good wife and a good mother. Not everybody has the same resources, but there.
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