Masters in Design-Application Tips (Study Abroad) — Transcript

Ayushi Saxena shares practical tips for applying to Masters in Design programs abroad, focusing on course selection, portfolio, SOP, LORs, and mentorship.

Key Takeaways

Thorough research on courses and student outcomes is essential for choosing the right Masters program.
Early and continuous mentorship significantly improves application quality.
A well-structured portfolio and SOP that tell a coherent story are critical for success.
Start the application process early, especially for securing strong LORs.
Avoid generic consultant templates; personal effort leads to better, faster results.

Summary

Ayushi Saxena, a design student at Royal College of Art, shares her experience applying for Masters in Design abroad.
She emphasizes the importance of critically selecting the right courses by researching program differences and student profiles on LinkedIn.
Mentorship from current students or alumni is crucial for refining application materials like SOP and portfolio.
Consultants may not be ideal for niche design applications as they often provide generic templates.
A strong design portfolio should tell a clear story with an intro, body, and conclusion, showcasing diverse projects and skills.
The Statement of Purpose (SOP) should connect past experiences to a clear career goal and explain how the degree supports it.
Request Letters of Recommendation (LORs) early and discuss your program with recommenders to ensure strong, relevant letters.
Including workshops, self-initiated projects, and professional work in the portfolio demonstrates initiative and skill breadth.
Ayushi advises against waiting until the last minute to seek feedback and recommends multiple reviewers from both design and non-design backgrounds.
She plans to share future videos on scholarships and financial aid for Masters programs.

Chapters

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

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Hi guys, I'm Aushi Saka, currently a design student at the Royal College of Art in London, UK. I have done my bachelor's in architecture from the School of Planning and Architecture Delhi, and I'm now pursuing an MA in service design. I have

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also worked both as an architect and a UX designer in the industry for around two years. So this channel is going to be all about careers in design, where I plan to share topics ranging from Masters in India and abroad, different pathways which

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you can take up as a designer, and basically a place where I share anything and everything that I learn about design. So for today's video, and the very first video on this channel, I'm going to share some tips and tricks which worked well

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for me in my Master's application process. So I applied in two intakes, in 22 and in 23, and though the results of the 22 outcome were not so good, I could learn a lot from the mistakes I did then,

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which helped me improve my application and landed me here at RCA, which is one of the world's leading design colleges, and also helped me bag a few other offers. So let's jump right in. So I began my application process by

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critically choosing the courses that I want to apply to. Now, as straightforward as it may sound, selection of the right courses can be a very daunting process. You'll come across universities which offer multiple courses, and the names sound very similar. For instance, a course

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in UX, sci, design research, and whatnot. In such cases, it's helpful to go and check out if the university has given a comparative matrix between the programs which highlight what differs them from one another. Secondly, it is also

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very helpful to go and visit the LinkedIn profiles of the students who are already doing the program. It gives you a very clear end-to-end picture of what the profile of the student was before entering the degree and what they

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went ahead and did after completion. So one mistake which I did in the previous intake was applying to two courses which had a lot of technical requirements, and me being from a design background obviously did not qualify well. So this

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LinkedIn profile check helped me a lot in the 23 cycle. Now, the next thing which really helped me out in my application process was finding the right mentors. I reached out to people who were a part of the

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program then or had recently graduated and asked them if they could help me review my material for the same. Now, I found these people through platforms like LinkedIn or ADP List, which are obviously both free, and you'll be

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surprised to know that there are so many people who are readily available to help you out. So I asked them for their help at multiple stages, and I would highly recommend that you do not wait till the end to send out your final cut

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of the SOP or the portfolio. Rather, seek their help from the very beginning. Also, what makes these people special is that they have been working with the faculty very closely, and they know what kind of values the

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faculty is coming from and what are the learnings that they are trying to inculcate in the students. So they will help you refine your material in a way that these values get reflected through your essays, through your portfolio, etc. So for me, I made sure

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that I have at least three to four people read through my work before I submitted the final application. I tried to keep a mix of people who are from the field as well as some outside of it because it's very important that

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the story that you're trying to convey is comprehended by everyone. Even if they are unable to understand the technicalities of your work, they should still be able to understand the gist of it. Now, I did not keep any consultants

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which would help me in the application process. However, I had hired one in the previous round, and I felt that they were well-versed with people from tech backgrounds or business-related backgrounds and had more knowledge about

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that. And design being a very niche field, their knowledge was very limited, and what they provided for the SOP formats or the portfolio formats was very much like a cookie-cutter template, which I feel shows very

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negatively on your application. And then the only area of help is in filling out the forms, which I feel is not the difficult part and one can easily manage it. So for me, I did not have any consultants this time, and I think taking

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the responsibility on my own actually made me more alert and helped me do the process much faster. Now, your design portfolio is one of the very, very crucial parts of your application. Now, whenever you hear tips on making your design portfolio, you

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will hear people saying that show the process of the project. Now, this is absolutely true, but the design process can sometimes be very messy and be a lot of back and forth, hence result in a lot of process work. So how to pick and

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choose what's best to show in the portfolio? So for me, I tried answering a few questions and beginning with making a flowchart so that there is a storyline that I'm following in my design projects. I started with answering

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what were the constraints or the fixed parameters for the project, what the design brief was about, and what larger problem it was solving. Next, I tried to focus on my approach and what research I did to go deeper into the

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problem and how did it lead to my strategy or concept. Lastly, I focused upon what the final outcome was and restated while concluding how my final outcome solved the larger problem or how it responded to the brief. So

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it's very important to have an intro to the project, a body of work—what you did—and a conclusion of how your work responded to the problem. So for my portfolio, I tried to have a wide variety of projects ranging from some research

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work to design projects, some group work as well as some individual design projects, and I had also included some professional work in it. Now, how this helped was that it allowed the reviewers to see that I have a wide variety of

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skill sets and I can apply my mind in different kinds of projects differently. Hence, there is very less use in showing the same process or the same kind of case study again and again in your portfolio. I would also recommend you to

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include some workshops or some self-initiated projects in the portfolio because it shows that you went ahead of what was required for you to do and went that extra mile to achieve some new skills. So your SOP is that part of the

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application where your skill as a storyteller should absolutely shine through. So how I went about structuring my SOP was that I first thought of an ultimate goal which I would like to achieve in my career. Then I picked out

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the learnings from each of my past experiences which have added up to that goal and how this degree would be like another stepping stone and would help me go a little closer to that career goal. Now, this aim should not be something

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that appears to be out of the blue. It should be something that is well connected with all your past experiences and should be an add-up of whatever you have been doing and whatever this degree is contributing

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to. So coming to the next thing, which is the letter of recommendations or LORs, which you'll have to ask for from your faculty or your ex-bosses or people whom you have worked with. Now, the only very, very important tip that

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worked for me in this cycle was asking for the LORs well in time. So what happens many times is that there are so many students applying for masters that especially the faculty gets booked out well in advance. So when they commit to three to four students

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beforehand, then it's very difficult for them to focus on newer students who ask them for the letters. So I would say anywhere in about July or August, just ask the people whom you want the recommendations from so that

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they have committed to you that they are going to write you the letters. Also, it's very important to discuss about your program with your recommenders so that they have some clarity of w-

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in the letter and what is the program intended towards so have that conversation with them and have it well in advance so one thing which I really struggled with when I started uh preparing material for my application was that

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where do I begin with what format should I follow for my portfolio how many pages should it be like what should be the word limit of my sop so on and so forth so I would recommend picking one course

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which is of either your top most priority or has the earliest deadline and then tailoring all the application materials as as per its requirements then once you have that in place start iterating it for the other programs and

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when you make each iteration you will obviously keep on improving on the previous one so what happens is that when ultimately you are starting to revise your material and when you come back to your first application you already have a lot of better versions

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and then you're able to put your best foot forward in your uh topmost priority College so now most universities especially for design related courses do not have a mandatory work experience requirement and they take people from zero workx

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years to people who have a lot of uh work experience as well but in my opinion I think uh the one year of added workx from 22 to 23 really improved my entire application not only does a year

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of workex uh add to the number of years on your CV but also it gives you some professional projects to add to your portfolio which have some on ground real impact so it enhances the quality of projects then it gives you the ability

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to get some professional LS which can talk about how you work in a collaborative setup so highlighting your teamwork skills which is again very very important and uh relevant and related work experience also makes you sure that the degree that you're going to pursue

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is something that fits you well so I think all these parameters make workex very relevant uh to your Master's application so in case of having lesser number of years for workex or having no workex at all there are uh some

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mandatory internships that all of us have been have been a part of as part of our undergraduate degrees or any voluntary work that we have taken up so it's always good to mention things which were not a must do for you but which you

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did uh Beyond and above what was required so for instance for me I had actually collaborated with one person who was trying to work on a startup idea and I helped him make his uh business decisions a bit and also some of the

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design work for the p Pates Etc is what I was involved in and I talked about it in my application so even though I did not have any experience of working in a proper startup but this gig added value

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to my uh to my entire application because it was something that I did extra on my part so picking such instances from whatever you have done since uh College is very important and it highlights what different skill sets

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you possess so lastly if we talk about any financial aid or scholarships I will be making a detailed video on how I was able to get two scholarships to fund my master's program however in a gist I would say

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that when you are uh researching for uh programs that you are applying to it's very important that at that time itself you see if there are any Ta Ra opportunities that are available able on campus for you or are there any

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scholarships or funding that the university provides to the students and I would highly recommend that apply to only those universities which either give you a funding or you will be able to afford because there is no point wasting uh the time and effort and the

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uh application fee on colleges which you will not be able to afford ultimately so do this research beforehand and it will come very handy to you you and it will also save you a lot of application fee cost additionally in the UK there are a

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number of universities which do not have any application fees so consider applying to those when you are doing your applications and it will save you the initial upfront costs so with this we are at the end of the video and um

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just a disclaimer that these tips and tricks were very uh beneficial for me and all of them may or may not be useful for for all of you aspiring students however I hope these uh could benefit you in some way or the other and I hope

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for the very best in your application journey and lastly the most important is do not stress out do not wait till the last day to submit your application do it well within time to save the stress of the last minute uh submission and

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yeah all the best

Topics:Masters in DesignStudy AbroadDesign Portfolio TipsStatement of PurposeLetters of RecommendationDesign Application ProcessRoyal College of ArtService DesignMentorshipScholarships for Masters

Frequently Asked Questions

How should I choose the right Masters course in design?

Research the differences between similar courses using university resources and LinkedIn profiles of current students to understand their backgrounds and outcomes.

What is the best way to improve my Masters application materials?

Seek mentorship early from current students or alumni who know the faculty values, and have multiple people review your SOP and portfolio throughout the process.

Are consultants helpful for design Masters applications?

Consultants often provide generic templates that may not suit niche design fields well; taking personal responsibility and seeking peer mentorship is usually more effective.

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