DIY US Master’s Applications: How Phil Stood Out by Reaching Out

Updated 2026/10/16

This post is an edited version of the podcast transcript. 👉🏻 Listen to the full episode (in Chinese).

If you enjoy it, please leave the podcast a five-star rating on your platform of choice 🌟 (transcripts take a lot of work to put together 🥹)!

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Hi, and welcome to “Jason’s Career Folder.” I’m your host, Jason, and I’ve been sharing content about careers and studying abroad for a long time. Here you can “open” the folder and explore people’s stories, and you can also “edit” it with me: build up your experience, pick up new perspectives and learn something new.

🎤 Guest: Phil
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phil_thephilface/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cywang-phil/

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In this episode:

📂 The best and worst decisions of four years of college
📂 How studying in the US can speed up your career
📂 When he decided to study abroad
📂 His application timeline
📂 The resources he used to apply on his own
📂 Recommendation letters and the CV
📂 Why showing your own connection to a school matters more than praising it, and how to do that

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Jason: I’m really happy to have Phil here today. He’s going to talk about applying to biomedical engineering master’s programs in the US, plus his college experience, his research and his extracurriculars. Let’s start with a quick introduction.

Phil: Hello, everyone listening to Jason’s show, I’m Phil. I applied to master’s programs in the US. I studied Biomedical Engineering at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and graduated last June, in 2023. I’m still waiting on some offers, but I’ve already been admitted to two: Duke’s Master of Engineering and a master’s at the University of Pittsburgh, both in biomedical engineering.

Jason: Thanks so much for doing this interview, Phil. I think we first met at the end of 2022? It was a Skyline event, right? Yes. Phil made a strong impression on me back then. He seemed like a young man with a lot of promise.

Phil: I remember I was a campus ambassador at the time, and we had to organize events ourselves, so we invited Jason to come share with us in a workshop. I had just come across Jason’s page and channel, so I reached out and asked whether he could do a session on studying abroad for us.

Jason: Right, that’s how we met. I had only just started my channel then, so I was pretty honored. OK, let’s jump into Part 1 and talk about college, and about Phil as a person: what he sees as his traits and strengths. Before we start, we usually ask our guests:

Three adjectives to describe yourself

Phil: I’d describe myself with three adjectives: Resilient, Passionate and Bold.

Resilient

Resilient is something I built up slowly over my college years, and maybe high school too. Lab work in college, coursework and the whole application process were all long stretches, both of learning and of figuring out who I am, and doing your best on a piece of writing or a subject takes a lot of resilience. I went through plenty of ups and downs along the way, and that gradually made me a more resilient person. That’s probably a fair summary of my college years.

Passionate

As for Passionate, I’m someone with a lot of enthusiasm for the things I like, whether that’s an activity or connecting with people, like being a campus ambassador or recording this podcast to share with everyone. If it’s something I really enjoy, or something that can help the people around me, I throw myself into it. That’s probably part of why I chose biomedical engineering. This ties into what we’ll talk about later, but using engineering to solve clinical problems feels like it gives a real, tangible benefit to people who are sick or in pain, and that gives me a sense of accomplishment.

Bold

As for Bold, I became a lot braver during college. I went to a private school for middle and high school, and the education there was strict, so I grew up fairly reserved. In college I started approaching professors on my own and reaching out to lots of people, letting them see me, and speaking up when I had questions. I stopped letting worry and anxiety about not doing well hold me back.

I think this trait played a big role in my applications. If I hadn’t been brave enough to raise my hand (not literally raising my hand, I mean reaching out), I would have missed a lot of opportunities, met far fewer people and gotten far fewer resources.

Jason: From what I’ve seen, one of your biggest strengths is exactly that: raising your hand. You’re willing to reach out for opportunities, you meet a lot of people, and you get a lot of help as a result. In college, opportunities and help are within reach; the question is whether you raise your hand. You can invite a professor, an upperclassman or anyone else to a coffee chat, and they can help you with academics, extracurriculars or bigger life questions.

Phil: Talking with other people, especially experienced people, helped me a lot. It also helped me get past my initial fear.

Biomedical engineering in a sentence or two

If I had to sum it up in one sentence, I’d use the broadest definition our department uses when recruiting students: using engineering to solve clinical medical problems. Anything related to that is what we do, so the field is broad and covers a lot of areas.

Planning college: joining a lab and extracurriculars

Jason: Your CV shows a lot of research during college, and a lot of extracurriculars too, like clubs and organizations. When did you decide to join a lab and start doing research?

Phil: I joined a lab in September of my sophomore year, which was quite a bit earlier than most people in my department. Our department requires you to join a lab, but only for a semester or two in junior year, I forget which. The required credits are small, and you don’t have to stay for several years. I think the requirement is about a year.

So in sophomore year, a few classmates and I went to find professors ourselves. I felt that choosing biomedical engineering had been a good decision, because it touches on people and medicine and also on some of the engineering side. The major seemed to suit me, but I was still pretty lost about the future and didn’t know what I could do with it. That was probably my first small step in reaching out.

I was really troubled by what I could do in the future and which fields I could choose, so I reached out to a professor and arranged something like a lab visit, where the professor introduced the lab to us. That was the main thing.

As for extracurriculars, I already did a lot of those because I love playing ball. I joined teams, and at first I played on a varsity team, but I’ve always liked baseball best. I never had a chance to play baseball growing up, because my private school was focused on getting students into university and didn’t leave much time for clubs.

So in high school I played volleyball instead. When I got to Yang Ming (the Yang Ming in the north, on the Beitou campus of what is now NYCU), there was no baseball team, so I stuck with what I’d played in high school, not professionally, just regularly, and joined the volleyball varsity team. I only lasted a few weeks before deciding I really wanted to play baseball, so I joined the dental school’s softball team and played for about a year. It still wasn’t the same. Softball and baseball really are different, mostly in the pitching and the speed. I preferred baseball and the feel of real pitching.

Then in sophomore year, I was lucky. Some very enthusiastic underclassmen tracked down upperclassmen scattered all over campus who loved playing ball, and we started a baseball team. I was a founding vice captain and vice president of the club. Was it the whole university’s baseball team? Yes, the whole school, but not including Chiao Tung, since the two only merged later. Did you have anywhere to play? Our space was very limited. I’d love it if we could play off campus. We always practiced on the grass in the middle of the track at the top of the hill. Playing at outside fields costs money, and since we practice at night, we need the lights on, so the lighting fees are a big expense.

This might be a bit off topic, but I’ve been in touch with the younger players recently, and they’ve found a clay field on Shezi Island that we can use. I think that’s real progress. We still have to pay for the lights, though, since we can basically only practice at night and the field needs lights then. It’s not a small cost, but that’s how we’re doing it for now. Having a proper team makes a huge difference to the training.

What were your best and worst decisions in four years of college?

Jason: Let’s go back. College admissions results just came out, and you graduated almost a year ago, so I’d like to ask: looking back on four years of college, what was your best decision and what was your worst?

Phil: I don’t really think there’s such a thing as a worst decision. Let me start there. I’ve always believed in the saying Life is the sum of all your choices. If any one choice, any one step or any one problem I ran into were missing, I wouldn’t have become who I am. Some decisions look bad in the moment, but what you learn from them can end up helping you a lot. Looking back, they weren’t necessarily bad, and things that seemed unrelated at first may let you connect the dots later. I’ve run into that a lot. As for my best decision, it ties into what I said earlier about gradually becoming willing to reach out: being willing to talk to my lab professor and to connect with people who had application experience.

At first, of course, I worried a lot about whether to take the initiative, because I wasn’t brave enough. Luckily, I decided to go ask them for advice. And there wasn’t just one decision like that. Those decisions led to a lot of good results: I met many people, and I made lots of small improvements in my coursework, in the lab and in my applications, all from talking with them or reaching out myself. That’s probably what I’d call my best decision.

How can studying in the US speed up your career?

Jason: What does your career plan look like right now? You decided to study in the US, so you must feel it will help your future plans. How do you think that decision could speed up your career?

Phil: My goal is to work for a company in the US. I don’t want to go into academia. So my master’s program is a stepping stone, both for my résumé and for getting legal status there. It’s an important step. As for speeding things up, if I work hard during the program, looking for internships, doing projects and reaching out to companies, I might be able to find a job sooner. That’s how I picture it for now.

When did you decide you wanted industry rather than academia?

It happened gradually. I was in my lab from sophomore year until the end of this January, a little over three years. Besides my own lab, I also did a summer internship in a lab at Academia Sinica, and another internship, more like job shadowing, at the National Applied Research Laboratories in Hsinchu, which is also fairly academic.

I can’t point to a specific moment. I gradually came to realize that I’m probably better suited to the applied side. Let me tell a few stories. When I was doing experiments in a wet lab at Academia Sinica, I came in at 8 a.m. one day and saw my supervisor. I remember that day the most. Around eight he went into his darkroom to look at fluorescence, fluorescent cells or something like that. I finished my experiments, stayed a bit late, and left after six, and he still hadn’t come out. He didn’t even come out for lunch.

He studies neurons, specifically oligodendrocytes, and I knew he’s incredibly passionate about cells and that kind of research. He can spend a whole day on it, so I wasn’t surprised that he stayed in there all day. By comparison, I don’t think I have the interest or stamina for that kind of research. After an hour of looking, I’d want to go out for a walk, or I’d be exhausted.

There’s another reason I moved from research toward practice, and it’s about me. Our lab did research on mice. Rationally, I understand that after the mouse experiments come the larger trials, and eventually there might be a product that helps people. But while I was doing the work, even though I could logically connect it to that end point, it didn’t feel concrete. If I could actually build a product that helps people with all kinds of diseases, I think I’d feel more accomplished along the way.

That’s the biggest difference: where my sense of accomplishment comes from! I know research is a long process built on lots of failures, and I don’t deny that at all. I think researchers are amazing. It just isn’t my personality. I don’t think I could stay on one research topic, say a PhD where I’d work on the same topic for five years. I think I’d go crazy.

So my view is that research isn’t bad; it’s a question of fit, since everyone’s personality is different. Through that process I kept asking myself why I’d choose academia or why I’d choose industry, and in the end my answer leaned toward industry.

Once you wanted industry, did you look for internships in college?

I did think about it. This touches on how universities, at least in Taiwan, don’t give students much sense of industry: how a company works, or what a day as an engineer there looks like. There isn’t much of that information. The most I got was when I served in the student association, in a role tied to academic affairs, and invited alumni to come and share.

Some of them had graduated and gone to work at companies, and sometimes there were company visits. Those were about the only chances to get exposure. For most students, the school environment is either studying or the lab. Schools also promote their own PhD and master’s programs and say research is a great path, because that’s how they recruit students. That’s just reality.

That leaves even fewer chances to meet people from industry or get industry information while you’re in school. My first thought, of course, was to find an internship. The awkward thing about biomedical engineering internships in Taiwan is that the field is so broad. As I said, it’s using engineering to solve clinical problems.

On the engineering side, it can include almost every engineering and science discipline. Electrical and electronic engineering is one part; physics, chemistry and mechanics are another; chemistry and materials are yet another. You can do a lot, but there are basically no internships opened specifically for biomedical engineering students.

At least back then, in my sophomore or junior year, I forget which, when I researched online, it really felt like there were almost none. The openings were mostly software engineering internships where they’d have us write software, or lots of administrative roles doing odd jobs, which I ruled out. Those tended to attract chemistry, computer science or electrical engineering students. Even at medical device companies, the projects were mostly like that, or, most often, regulatory work.

Regulatory affairs is probably the area that’s most specific to our major. But I didn’t want to keep doing regulatory work, at least not for an internship, so I never applied to any corporate internships.

My terms for the job titles may not be precise, but that’s roughly my impression of internships here. I also looked at the US, where there were many more. I even thought about going over for a while if I got one, but I didn’t in the end, because they almost all required on-site or hybrid work. There was still COVID at the time, but you’d still need to go into the office sometimes.

They had a lot of openings there, many of them simply labeled medical device intern. In Taiwan, I forget the exact titles, but the job descriptions said clearly that you’d be doing software or very engineering-heavy work, and you might not touch anything related to medical affairs. The difference was big. Also, many US internships required you to be a bachelor’s or master’s student currently enrolled there. So I still didn’t apply, but I did a little homework to understand what kind of people most companies wanted, both in Taiwan and in the US.

Is biomedical engineering like a business degree? Broad, so you need to find a specialty

Jason: I’ve always thought biomedical engineering is a bit like business administration at a business school. You learn a lot of different things, and then you need to find your own specialty.

Phil: Yes, it’s a bit like that. Because it’s so broad, if you don’t narrow it down to one of those three main areas I mentioned, you can end up lost and not know what to do.

But in the end the engineering skills matter a lot, because we use technology to solve problems, so you need to get good at the technology. I’d say it leans toward the engineering side. As for internships in Taiwan that connect to clinical medicine, most of them are tied closely to research institutions or clinical research.

Jason: You mentioned that while you were looking for internships in Taiwan, you had already looked into what kind of candidates the US market wants.

Phil: A little, yes. So you were already starting to think about studying in the US? Sort of, because I had already been thinking about it. I made the decision around the summer after sophomore year, a year after joining the lab. The main reason was that what I was doing in the lab is basically only done in academia in Taiwan, while in the US and Europe it’s done at companies that are still at the startup stage. So if I want to work in industry, the US is the main option.

That’s probably my biggest reason. There are smaller ones too, like being a bit drawn to life and study over there. I’d thought about it in freshman and sophomore year without being sure, but by the summer after sophomore year I’d made up my mind. So I told my professor clearly. He had asked whether I had ideas about my future. You could say that’s partly because he wanted to recruit master’s students, but the way I’d put it is that he wanted to understand his students’ plans so he could help them as much as possible.

During my time in his lab, after I told him, he really didn’t push me to stay for a master’s or anything like that. He’s very willing to send students abroad. If we have clear ideas of our own, he’ll arrange a lot for us, whether that’s chances to run projects, to do experiments and learn techniques, or any connections he has. He’ll do whatever he can to help.

Jason: I think that’s great too. Once you share your goals with other people, they understand better how to help you.

Phil: Saying your goal out loud first. Around that time I came across an article, or maybe a video, I forget whose, that said once you’ve decided on something and written it down, you can share it with people close to you so they know your idea and your goal.

Then, while you’re working on it, it’s not just you who knows. If you get a little lazy and want to give up, there’s more resistance, because the people around you know. So I talked about it with a lot of my friends, and some of them had the same idea and were also hesitating. We ended up with a small group where we’d post any relevant information we found and sometimes just chat.

Application timeline: deciding to go abroad between sophomore and junior year

Jason: You decided to apply abroad quite early, between sophomore and junior year. What did your whole application timeline look like?

Phil: Of course I had the military service issue. I didn’t do the two-month summer phase of military training, because I spent my summers working in the lab and didn’t have time.

Usually, if someone wants to go abroad right after graduating, they apply during their final year and leave after it. In the second half of junior year you do your research and take your language tests, and from September to December of senior year you write your documents. I originally considered rushing it and going abroad sooner, so I prepared a bit and did some research in the second half of junior year and the first half of senior year.

But I felt I wasn’t well prepared. I tried to push for it, and halfway through I realized it wasn’t going to work. My CV didn’t look great yet, and I hadn’t spent much time on my documents, so I put it on hold. In the end, all I did that year was take the TOEFL once, in November. Since scores are valid for two years, I at least got the test done.

I did a lot back then, but I realized I shouldn’t rush to submit applications, because I wasn’t ready. Even if I had prepared and applied that year, I still had projects to wrap up the following March, from March to May, and plenty of other things I hadn’t done yet. I hadn’t even started my CV in September or October, because I was preparing for the TOEFL.

So I decided that starting early wasn’t realistic for me, and I stopped. Still, I think that period gave me a lot, because I read and listened to so much. It laid a small foundation. My timeline is a bit different from most people’s. Since I want to work over there, I didn’t want military service to interrupt my job and force me to come back for a few months, so hitting the brakes that first year and not applying was a good thing.

Applying abroad with military service still ahead

Jason: You’re starting your military service next week. That’s pretty late and tight. If you start in March and serve four months, the semester will be about to start. Are you worried you might not make it in time? And why did you end up enlisting so late?

Phil: Partly personal reasons. Originally, the ideal plan was to finish applying in January and enlist right away, but there were some family and personal reasons, so I didn’t. I had heard plenty of stories about people enlisting too late and running into the start of the semester. If you plan to study abroad, you can call your district or township office and ask the military service section.

That’s what I did. I asked them whether I should apply for early enlistment or a deferral. They recommended early enlistment, because in some years university graduates who just waited in line without applying for early enlistment ended up not going in until March or April. I forget whether it was a military instructor or someone else who told me that, and I thought, if I applied for a deferral on top of that, I’d be done for.

So I took their advice and applied for early enlistment. They told me they’d send a text in advance once a date was being arranged. I don’t know if this works everywhere, but I talked with the staff there and asked whether they could schedule me for a certain time, because I didn’t want to be suddenly called up in the middle of my applications. Openings come and go, since lots of people are filling vacancies, so they gave my original slot to someone else. That’s how I ended up going in next week.

Applying to eight US master’s programs

Jason: You applied to quite a few schools.

Phil: I applied to eight, which isn’t really many. I’d say that’s average for biomedical engineering, and on the low side for EE.

Jason: Why is it low for EE?

Phil: EE and CS are very competitive in the US. A friend of mine applied to EE, and he told me that the profiles people posted on GradCafe after getting in were all from superhumans: tons of papers, lots of first-author work, GPAs like 4.3. After reading them he felt like he was doomed and couldn’t compete.

So of course you apply to more schools, because it’s so competitive. I think that friend applied to more than ten, maybe close to twenty. Twenty? Probably not twenty, but at least fifteen, which is pretty normal.

How to choose which schools to apply to

Jason: That’s in EE or CS. When you were choosing schools to apply to, there were a lot of factors to weigh. The biggest is probably tuition, and then program length, location, whether you like the school’s culture, and maybe employment rates. When you were researching schools, where did you get your information, and what did you decide mattered most?

Phil: Let me start with what mattered most. Since my goal is to work in industry there, the most important question was whether they had a program offering what I want to do. Also, some schools offer electives related to management or business, which might help me later, so I specifically checked which schools had them. If a school did, I’d favor it a bit. Duke has them, for example.

But what I valued most was the fit between the program and me, which also matters a lot for your motivation. Also, there were fields I didn’t want to work in, and I had narrowed down a bit toward what I do want. I wouldn’t say I’m 100% sure, but I have a direction and a rough goal. For example, I didn’t apply to any UC schools, because when I went through their master’s programs, almost none of them offered what I want to do. That work seemed to happen only at the PhD or postdoc level, so I skipped the UCs.

After that, realistically, if you want to work in industry, rankings matter. The first impression always comes from your school’s name, so I considered that too. Location wasn’t high on my list, but one thing I care about is safety. If I went somewhere where I’d have to worry about getting shot just walking down the street, I’d be scared. I seem to care a lot about safety.

Showing your fit with a school: Fit & Why School

Jason: You mentioned your fit with the schools. How did you make those connections? Beyond the courses, how did you figure out why you, and why this particular school’s program in particular would help you?

Phil: On where to look: most of it came from digging through the schools’ websites. I clicked on almost every link I could.

Some schools put their curriculum, or a course schedule from two or three years ago, in some hidden corner, may not have updated it, and don’t post it anywhere else. So I clicked everywhere I could and got a rough idea. Some schools write things up carefully, others are vague, and some hide their course content so well that I couldn’t find it at all.

Course content

Phil: The first thing, of course, is course content. One important reason to judge whether you fit a school is that you first need some initial understanding of yourself. That doesn’t mean you need 100%, or 200% or 300%, passion and have already settled on one thing. I don’t think most people can find that; I didn’t. I just found something I lean toward, or at least don’t dislike, that I’d be willing to do as a career, because I suspect I may never find a job I’d want to do forever with absolute certainty.

So making these choices is about understanding yourself, and I think understanding yourself is the most important part. What you like and what you lean toward. Once I had that understanding of myself, I gradually learned which things needed to fit me.

Like I said, I want to do more applied work and would rather not do more animal experiments; I want to work with humans. So I’d look for schools that do more human studies or clinical trials, or that work closely with companies. Some of those partnerships show up in press releases, and some career centers post a list of the companies they partner with, so I checked whether any companies that are strong in my field were on it. That’s roughly it. And of course there’s the curriculum. If a program lists in detail the things I think are essential to learn in my field, that’s a big plus.

Location

Jason: I also wanted to ask about location, which you mentioned. Is it especially high on your list of priorities?

Phil: Companies in biomedical engineering don’t cluster in one particular place. And after ranking everything else, I didn’t have much room left to choose by location. By location I originally meant things like climate: how cold it is, whether it snows or rains a lot. I still applied to some schools around the Great Lakes, thinking it was fine, I could tough it out for two years and then focus my job search on places I actually want to live.

That was my thinking at the time. I didn’t have anywhere lined up yet, so I didn’t filter much by location.

Jason: Is there anywhere in the US where your industry is especially strong or concentrated?

Phil: I really don’t think there’s one location. As far as I know, the companies in my area are basically all startups right now, every one of them, so they tend to stay where they started, or maybe some go to Silicon Valley. I honestly can’t say where the hub is. Some large companies also have divisions doing this work, but big companies have offices in many places, so it isn’t necessarily concentrated there either. That’s my understanding, and I may not know it well; friends who live there would know better.

Resources for applying abroad on your own

Jason: Let’s talk about the applications themselves. You applied on your own, without an agency, right?

Phil: Yes, I did everything myself, and almost all the resources I used were free.

Jason: So what free resources did you use?

Project Tyra / OfferLand Mentorship Program / Jason

Phil: Jason’s resources, of course. Besides Jason, I especially want to mention Project Tyra. I don’t know if everyone has heard of it. It works like this: it finds lots of people in the US, whether PhD students, researchers or senior people working at companies, who volunteer to guide Taiwanese students applying to master’s or PhD programs there. It runs a matching program that pairs mentors with mentees.

It’s a bit like Jason’s OfferLand Free Mentorship Program. It helped a lot because once I was matched with a mentor, I could schedule time with him, say every week or two, and ask whatever I needed. At the start I could ask about choosing schools, then how to revise my CV and my SOP, and he proofread my documents many times. He gave me a lot of application advice. Sometimes I was unsure whether to apply to a school, or whether to be bold and apply to a reach school, and he talked it through with me and said something like, you lose nothing by applying, go for it, you might have a shot. He really took the time to analyze my CV with me: which projects I’d done, whether they helped, whether it was rich enough, and which sections needed changes.

This made a big difference for me, and I’d recommend Project Tyra. Sign up early. I forget exactly when registration is, maybe April or May, and I think matching happens around June or July. After you’re matched, you can’t pester your mentor every day, but you can set up regular times with him in advance and talk, not an interview, just an online conversation.

American Institute in Taiwan: EducationUSA / Fulbright Foundation

The second resource is the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). In past years AIT ran workshops, such as CV and SOP workshops. Starting in 2023 they tried something new: EducationUSA, an organization funded directly by, I think, the State Department, and, as far as I remember, part of AIT. They offer free advising sessions at any stage of your application. Very early on, before you’ve picked schools, before you’ve decided whether to take the TOEFL, GRE or GMAT, you can already book a session. In the middle, when you’re choosing schools and getting ready to write your CV and SOP, you can ask them how they’d suggest writing them. Later, when you need proofreading, they’ll review your documents and suggest edits. I used that last part the most, because I had already worked out the earlier parts on my own and had a good idea of what I was doing.

In that final stage, I got a lot of advice on revising my CV. When you keep writing on your own, heads down, you start to notice that someone else can easily spot a better way to put things. So I decided I should get more people to proofread for me. Their advice was very professional, because they’re study-abroad advisors attached to EducationUSA or AIT, and they also work with the Fulbright Foundation, so this is their specialty. And it’s free. Sessions are hard to book, though, so it’s better to book about a month in advance.

Jason: I’ve noticed there are more and more free resources for applying abroad. It used to be that UK applications had lots of free help, because agencies earn commission from the schools. Now the US government has stepped in and is offering a lot itself,

Phil: Right, the government stepped in directly.

Jason: I remember seeing last time that besides the advisors, you can also book sessions with some people who studied in the US. Yes, yes. Some of them work part time at AIT for a while, and on the same website you can sometimes book native Americans. How does it work when they review your documents? Do you set up a one-on-one Zoom call, or do you send them your documents and get comments back?

Phil: The advising I described, available at every stage, is a one-on-one Zoom call. It doesn’t have to be Zoom; they might use other tools, and they might even call you on LINE. You can talk about anything. If you want them to look at documents, they might ask you a day in advance to send the files or email them first.

After that, it depends on how the session went: whether you book another one, or whether you send more for them to read. If you impressed them in that half hour and they’re willing to keep helping you on their own time, that can happen too. It depends on how you handle it. But sessions are hard to book, so do it early, and they’re all one-on-one Zoom calls.

Jason: Using resources like these saves a lot of money. An agency for US applications, if you apply to eight schools, can cost over 100,000.

Phil: I know they’re expensive, but I never went to one, because I decided from the start not to use an agency. I don’t know if this will offend anyone, but I’m fairly anti-agency. I think I know myself best, I can write it myself, and I know what my story is.

Because when you write an SOP you need to show, not tell. While I was writing, some small stories would suddenly come to mind, and I think that’s the most natural way to write. If an agency writes it for you, they may not know what you actually went through, so they’ll write something more generic, closer to what most people write, and it won’t stand out among all the applicants. That’s my view. I hope I’m not offending anyone who works at an agency.

Jason: Don’t worry, this show has already offended plenty of them. Last time you mentioned a school that offers similar free resources itself. Was it UMich?

Phil: Yes. But first, one more thing about EducationUSA. Besides the one-on-one sessions, they run lots of workshops, online and in person, and registration is free. Some have limited spots, so follow their page, I mean their website. They invite people from companies, and sometimes people who sit on admissions committees in the US, to talk about things like key points for applying abroad or how they read a CV.

I remember one session where they even brought in the Taiwan representatives for the TOEFL, GRE and GMAT, the people in charge of the exams, to explain them, so they even cover test prep. They cover a wide range, so it’s worth checking what the free workshops are about. Some are very specific, like tips for applying to STEM programs; I think one had a title like that. I forget which months, maybe May through July last year, but they ran online sessions every week at lunchtime. I think they’re worth digging into.

Jason: That reminds me, I recently saw that agencies charge for events like these. I saw one called something like a study-abroad document editing camp: a single-day session for around 1,800.

Advising from schools themselves and from student organizations

Phil: Back to UMich. I found this while researching schools; they state it clearly on their official website. When I applied to UMich, since I was applying to BME, Biomedical Engineering, there was a BME GAAP program, I think it stands for Graduate Admission Assistance Program.

It’s run by a student organization. It matches people who want to apply to UMich BME with someone who can help them. It was originally aimed at people who want to do a PhD. I was still undecided then, so I put down that I might do a PhD or might apply for a master’s. I got in, and they matched me with someone in exactly the same field who had been in the PhD program for two or three years. He gave me a lot of help, especially with editing and proofreading, with tons of suggestions, because he’s a professional working inside that program.

I think he’s American, I forget, an Indian American. His feedback was fast, precise and plentiful. Later we also talked about things beyond the application documents, like the outlook for the industry, since he works in exactly the same field as me. He told me what he thinks of the industry and about his own goal: he wants to be a cutting-edge scientist or cutting-edge R&D engineer, so he has to go as far as possible in his studies, publish lots of research and get a PhD, and he even needs postdoc experience to get there.

That’s his goal, so he chose to do a PhD and keep going. It made me think about whether I have the same goal, and whether I really want to push all the way to the cutting edge. I started thinking about that again, because I didn’t know much about what positions, openings or kinds of work exist in the US. Before that, I understood very little about it. If I’m honest with myself, I don’t necessarily want to be at the very cutting edge, because I don’t want to do a PhD, and I don’t feel I have to reach a top-tier engineer position.

So later I asked him, where can I see job descriptions, or the problems and projects I might run into on the job? He recommended some websites where I could look up job descriptions for my field directly and see which companies are hiring. You can even filter by academia or industry. That helped me a lot. Later, when I was preparing for interviews or writing about my future goals in my documents, I could say more precisely what kind of engineer I want to be. Most people just say R&D; I could name other job titles and write with more understanding of the content.

Yes, I even wrote out my target companies. I researched my field and looked at a lot of the companies working in it. Since they’re all startups, as I said, I read many of their press releases and papers, including the clinical studies they published, and I roughly know where they’re located and what makes each one distinctive. When I applied to some schools, Pittsburgh for example, I knew they had partnered with one of these companies, I think a few years ago, on a human trial, something called a command trial, on their campus.

That gave me a close connection to the school. I already admired that company’s technology and had followed it for a long time, and it happened to be connected to a school I wanted to apply to. That let me show the school that I had done my research and my homework in advance, and that the school’s partners, and my own goals, were areas where the school could help me or where it has a lot of experience.

Finding job openings

Jason: You mentioned websites where you can look up job openings. Do you remember which ones?

Phil: Before anyone told me, I’d just search keywords on LinkedIn or Indeed for internships or job descriptions in my field. I haven’t said what my field is yet: I work in neural technology. The UMich PhD student recommended a site called NeuroTechX, which lists lots of companies currently hiring, including internships, and also postdoc and other academic positions.

You really only find out about information like this by making connections. Otherwise I might never have known.

Writing your CV

Jason: Right, talk to people in industry, since everyone has different insights. OK, let’s go back to the application documents. How did you prepare your CV? I noticed yours is quite long, three pages. I’m not familiar with the norms or traditions in STEM fields. Do you think three pages is too long?

Phil: I followed my mentor’s advice. When I listed everything, it came to more than three pages. I cut back some things, like extracurriculars, and got it down to about two pages. But I had also included a lot of term projects, and he told me those actually show well what I’ve done. He said it was fine to include them all, unless a school has a hard rule that it only accepts two pages. I forget which one, but one of the schools I applied to said explicitly in its description that anything after page two would be cut. They spelled it out that clearly.

So I made a two-page version for that school, and used three pages everywhere else. My mentor’s view was that these are all things I did, and he thought they were all related to my field. I also included some extracurriculars, but not much. He felt that if you did it, include it. And is two pages long? Is three pages long? Not necessarily. Someone on the admissions committee might be bored after one page, or might not mind page two at all, so two or three pages makes little difference.

So I don’t think you need to overthink it. As long as the chronological order is clear and you decide what goes first, once you get those priorities right, three pages is fine.

Ordering the sections of your CV

Jason: Reading through your three pages, even though it’s long, probably more than a thousand words, it looks clean at a glance. I could pick out the key points right away and get a sense of what you’ve done. We mentioned prioritizing sections, and I’m curious about that. You put education first, then research, then publications. After publications you chose term projects (academic projects), then skills, then awards. Did you consider moving awards up, or putting skills last? How did you decide?

Phil: At first I put honors and awards near the front, because I thought awards show at a glance that you’ve won something. But my mentor advised otherwise. He said the projects are directly related to my field. You might think it was just a small term project or final project for a class, but you spent a lot of time on it, and when someone reads it, they’ll see that you’ve worked on things of different depth and breadth within the field. That can say more than entering a competition. I did enter a few competitions, but under each term project I described what the project involved and what I analyzed, so it shows more concretely that I actually did the work.

The awards section just says I won an award, and it’s harder to include much detail there. For example, I might have submitted a proposal to a competition and won, but what I did for it was very similar to my lab work, because sometimes our professor took our current lab projects to outside competitions to get suggestions and feedback. There were also things like a fellowship from the undergraduate research program, which I had already covered in the research section. Thinking it through that way, awards really were a secondary point, so I moved them to the end.

Preparing for an overseas job search

Jason: You said your short-term career plan is to work in the US, and most of the programs you applied to last one to two years. You’re about to start four months of military service. Before you go abroad, how do you plan to prepare for the challenges of job hunting overseas?

Phil: As for the challenges of an overseas job search, I don’t want to claim I have many ideas yet, because I’ve never been to the US. What I know about the environment there comes from articles, videos and my own research, so it’s just my impression. I don’t have any big plan. I’ve talked to a lot of people, but some things will look very different once I’m there and different opportunities actually come my way. I’ll probably spend a lot of time connecting with people there, talking with professors, classmates and older students.

You also asked how I planned my gap year. I wouldn’t really call it that. I graduated in June and then applied, which ran until December or January, and February was Lunar New Year, so there wasn’t much of a gap. Right after graduating I started working full time as a research assistant in my lab, and did my applications at the same time. So I didn’t have a lot of free time. The plan was: research assistant for the gap year, then four months of military service, then a month or two waiting for my visa and sorting out housing and other errands. That’s about a year gone.

Working as a full-time research assistant in his university lab after graduating

Jason: I see. Is a full-time research assistant position like that paid?

Phil: The full-time one is, and I signed a contract directly with the university. So after you were no longer a student, your professor was still willing to keep you in the lab? Yes, yes. And you agreed with him in advance on roughly when you’d leave? Yes, we agreed on that from the start. Back in sophomore year he asked if I planned to go abroad, and he gradually talked me through what I might need to do if I went.

When he offered this opportunity, I thought it fit perfectly: I had about a year in between, and I could wrap up my remaining experiments and projects and maybe write them up more completely. It would also count as formal work experience, even if only about eight months, which would make my CV a bit stronger. Those were some of my reasons. He offered me the option, and I said OK, but since I was applying to schools and still had military service ahead, I couldn’t stay a full year. I told him roughly how long I could stay before I had to go, and he generously agreed to that.

Takeaway

Know yourself

The first thing is whether you understand yourself: whether you’ve thought deeply about why you want to go abroad. I don’t mean being obsessed with it. I mean having thought it through carefully and concluded that this is a path you’re willing to put your time and energy into. Once you start, it costs a lot of time and money, and turning back or giving up halfway is very expensive. So that’s something to think through early.

Be Bold

The second is to be bold, because there are a lot of free resources out there. At first I didn’t know about them either. My reason for writing everything myself was that I know myself best, but how was I supposed to write it? I had no idea at the time. So I searched online and talked with friends in my small group. They shared things, I shared what I’d found, and gradually we built up a lot of resources I could use, all found by searching on our own. So you really need to put in the time and be brave enough to reach out. That’s the second point.

With an ordinary cold email, you can’t count on anyone replying. But if you reach out to professors at your school, to older students, or to other people working on related things or with related experience, I think your chances are pretty good, because there’s a lot you can draw on and plenty of resources available.

Jason: Great. Thank you so much, Phil, for coming on Jason’s Career Folder. You shared a lot about planning your college years and applying abroad, and about how reaching out helped you avoid a lot of detours. Whether it’s applying to school, job hunting later on or exploring your career, coffee chats really are an easy, fast way to get different insights.

Phil: Right. Just before we started recording, I was actually messaging my Project Tyra mentor. I was telling him when I need to decide and when I’d hear back, and he asked which other schools had admitted me. So we’re still messaging. That’s why I think having a mentor helps so much.

Jason: OfferLand is also planning to launch a related program. And if you find professors at your school who really care and spend time sharing their experience with students, they can be great mentors too. I hope that after this episode, everyone can find their own mentor and make the most of the connections around them. There are lots of resources now: Project Tyra, which we mentioned, plenty under AIT, and places like Jason’s channels or OfferLand where you can access many different opportunities.