January 19th, 2021
Hello everyone, today's post is going go be a fairly short one but I wanted to write that for a long time and if I wait for a little more the topic will be outdated. I want to talk about how did I apply for a Master's Degree, how I moved from my country and how I'm dealing with my classes during the pandemic.
I'll update this one or write another one about the academic perspective of the situation after my first semester is over. I believe this way it will be more efficient and objective.
Application phase was quite unusual to me to be honest, firstly my GPA is not the best and I knew that receiving an acceptance letter will be hard for me. I prepared some stuff before application processes begin like reference letters or IELTS score. Of course since I’ve graduated a long time ago stuff like transcript or diploma were under my hand already for the whole time.
As I explained in one of my older posts I have a scholarship and that scholarship have some rules about the education quality of the university I can go. After I compare the metrics of sponsor, the Ministry of National Education of Turkey, with the universities that can offer me an English education opportunity I ended up with 10 universities to apply.
Normally if you apply for a German University most of the work goes on physical papers and mails yet my case was different, like all the other people who applied around the same time with me. I've made 10 applications and I sent actual documents during the application only for 2 of them, maybe the ones who worked on a German University application before pandemic can confirm me.
I started to apply to universities around April 2020 and finished all around June( not because I'm slow, some started to accept applications quite late :D), the part between is not as interesting so I'll just jump to the last part of the application process. I received a letter of acceptance around September.
After you receive an acceptance you also need to take another confirmation from your sponsor institute I've dealt with the paper stuff and I got that confirmation too. VISA application was kinda painful but not more painful than any other VISA application before the pandemic probably, actually since the last time I checked Germany channeled their National VISA work in Turkey to a middle man institution, since that was the case my application was even easier I can say.
After everything is alright I started to wait for my flight I received a PCR result since it's mandatory. I also filled out a form about where I’ll spend my quarantine because Turkey was on the list of the countries that considered as high risk areas, and it also was mandatory.
After arrival part is quite straight forward to be honest, I stayed at the declared location I rented a student flat from the university, I register my address to city hall and finally I moved to my place, yet I need to say that this whole process can be a little bit tricky and hard for the ones who doesn't come for educational purposes. Even in my case with lots of help from my relatives that process took roughly around 1.5 month because of the pandemic restrictions.
That's all for now everyone, I hope, after I receive a little bit more insight, I'll explain academical aspects of the education during the pandemic too.