Questions to ask in an education fair or a university webinar that might help you for the application process

Every university conducts webinars and education fairs (if not throughout the year) months prior to accepting applications. Students can attend these webinars by registering on the university website at the ‘Get to know more section’ of the intended program. These webinars are generally conducted in the morning of the university’s time zone. So you might have to wake up early or sleep late to attend the webinar.

Apart from the university webinars, there are education fairs for international students. Some of the institutions that organize the education fairs are Yocket, USnews, QS, IDP. You can register on the website's events sections to know the details. Some education fairs might also have some sort of tie-up with universities. You may be able to avail some sort of application fee waiver. You can get all your doubts resolved in these fairs directly via the university representatives.

After registering for these events, you might get emails from these universities. Even if you are not interested in the university, I wouldn’t recommend to directly unsubscribing these. In these emails, I accidentally found many interesting things (like application fee waiver week, professor’s research topics, etc) that I was not aware of. Instead, I would recommend you filter the university email which you are not interested in to ‘skip the inbox’ and add all university emails into a new category or label. This way every time you get an email from a university that you are interested in, it will automatically be filtered according to your criteria. You can take a quick look at these emails from time to time. You never know, you might find something interesting that might pique your interest.

Each university tries to add more questions in the FAQ section every year that the university has faced from past students. From my experience, reading about the exam requirements which have been explicitly mentioned on the university website and the FAQ section of the university website might help the students to ask questions before attending the webinar.

Having attended some education fairs as a fall 2022 applicant, I came to know some questions that some students might not think of but may help in the application process. Some students might already know the answers to some questions but it is always better to listen to the representative’s opinion. There might be some perspective you might not know about. Sometimes university representatives might also give valuable insights that will help you in your application process. Some of the questions that you can ask are :

- Is there an advantage to submitting an application early?
- Are there better chances to get a scholarship or funding if applied early?
- Is there a separate application for a scholarship?
- Is there any external scholarship that I can apply to?
- How early should a student apply?
- Any specific aspect on what the university is looking for in a student?
- Any tips on what should not be written in a statement of purpose?
- Are there any university online webinars about ‘statement of purpose’ that the international students can attend?
- What can a student do to boost his chances of an admitted to the university?
- Competition for computer science(your_program_name) is getting tough each year. Are there any other programs that are allowed to take computer science(your_program_name) courses?
- Are the decisions on a rolling basis or released at a fixed week or month?
Is it possible to apply for multiple programs for the same intake?
- Does the application get transferred to other programs, maybe in the same department if the student gets rejected from a particular program?
- Does the university have an application waiver process?
- Is there any particular aspect of (your_program_name) that you would like an international student to know about at the university?
- What are the employment prospects for this course? What are the recent graduates gone to do?
- What are the university facilities like? Is the library open 24 hours a day?
- How is the public transportation around the campus?


Hope this info helps you a little bit to start your study abroad journey !!

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