Two years of applying, written down so it is cheaper for you than it was for me. Free, and meant to stay that way.
Hello everyone. I hope you are doing very well, and that you are happy and healthy.
A friend warned me that if I simply put this in a Google Doc, someone might take it, republish it and sell it. Honestly, I welcome anything that spreads useful information and gives people free access to it, as long as the author agrees. My goal has always been free distribution. If you find anyone selling this, tell me so we can stop it, because the free version should be sitting right here for everybody.
I am Arshia Hemmat. I studied computer science at the University of Oxford. I wrote this to share what I learned across two application seasons, and more than anything, to ask you not to lose hope. So let me start a fairly long text with one sentence:
Life places little value on the sorrows and struggles you carry. What it rewards is the way you get through them.
A small caveat: this is my personal opinion. I know it will not be right for everyone, and I would hate for it to harm anyone's application. Talking to people with real experience in your specific field is always worth doing.
0. Why I wrote this
It started with a tweet claiming that people who do not study at the top Iranian universities, Sharif, Tehran, Amirkabir, have no chance at the big places abroad, as if all of success collapses into which university you attended. University matters, a lot, and should be taken seriously. But sometimes you have to accept a plain sentence: it was not possible for you to do your undergraduate degree at the best universities in Iran.
Through most of my life, something has always been limping. This text is not here to sell you false hope. It is the perspective that got me through the conditions I had, and I hope it is useful. I am not taking the motivational-speaker position either. I used application agencies for some of my own applications. I just hope a few of these notes give you a better experience than I had.
1. How to use this
Work out which parts apply to you. I tried to cover three groups:
- People for whom this is not an application year
- People applying for a master's
- People applying for a PhD
I will keep updating this as I get feedback. One request. We have all suffered on this path, and leaving home is tragic enough to last years. In conditions this uncertain, let us make it easier for each other.
2. The application process
2.1 If you are not applying this year
Good. You have time, and if you want this you should be genuinely, thoroughly prepared. Here are the questions I hear most often.
How much do papers matter? The reasonable answer is that nobody expects an undergraduate to have a paper, but it helps if you do. That is true on the first, second and third look. Two notes, though. The process is substantially luck-based, so no single formula applies to everyone. And GPA genuinely matters for academic applications. Forget whatever your GPA is up to this point and fix it from here on; you can explain the past in your statement, why it was not great and how you compensated. Aim to have a paper, alongside teaching assistantships and good marks.
We do not know how to write a paper. What do we do? First work out what you actually enjoy working on. Then start inside your own department. My reasoning is simple: professors at better universities than yours pay disproportionate attention to any research background, however small. So find the people at your university working in the area you enjoy, email their academic address or walk to their office, talk about research, and do the tasks they give you.
A useful trick: search your professor on Google Scholar and look at how many papers they put out this year. That tells you whether they are hungry for research, which decides whether your time is well spent. Usually they will connect you to their PhD or master's students, and it starts from there. Put perfectionism aside and go step by step. Keep strengthening the theory at the same time, and do not breeze past the first two calculus courses. Then submit somewhere whose scope actually fits the work.
What about English? Work out whether TOEFL or IELTS suits you better, then commit. The two are similar in nature and differ in small ways, so talk to language teachers and pick the one that is easier for you. If you do not want language hanging over you during application season, start early. By current standards, simply knowing English is not a competitive score.
I genuinely do not know what I want. Applying looks like a monster. Where do I start? Go back and read the sentence at the top. And read this one, from Samad Behrangi's The Little Black Fish: "You think too much. One shouldn't think all the time. Once we hit the road, our fear will vanish completely."
Criteria differ between universities, but GPA always counts. Focus on actually learning the concepts. Alongside that, find the topics you like, read papers in them, and generate ideas. Plenty of postdocs and PhD students are genuinely open to collaborating, and they are one of the best bridges to a professor. Connecting with senior PhD students and postdocs is one of the highest-leverage things you can do.
2.2 If you are applying this year, master's and PhD
First, the thing nobody says. I tell this to my close friends, and since you may be under serious psychological pressure right now, I will say it here: your mental health is the most important thing. The pressure comes from every direction. Staying steady and working hard without fixating on the outcome is what helps.
The process really is largely luck-based, and that has a consequence worth sitting with. If you tie your mood and your definition of success to the outcome, there is a good chance you will feel like a loser in your own head no matter what happens.
From experience: I was accepted to a top US university and three days later they withdrew it over research funding. I felt terrible for a long time. Sometimes the conditions are simply not your fault, and all you can do is play the best game available with the cards you were dealt.
Finding places where you have a better chance. There are always signals. If you have worked with professors from a university, your odds there rise. For master's applications I used to read the CVs of people currently in the programme, who usually have a github.io page, to work out what the committee actually rewards. I got into Oxford and was rejected by EPFL; friends there told me a very high GPA, above 19 out of 20, matters enormously to them. That kind of detail is worth knowing before you spend the fee.
Do not be fooled by the name of the degree. Every university runs programmes that might fit your CV better than the obvious one. Everyone piles into competitive majors like CS while adjacent programmes with different names sit there with far less competition. Emailing professors helps here even for a master's, because they will tell you which programmes actually suit your profile.
Which countries? If you are asking, good, because relying on getting in somewhere is not a strategy. Check whether you can realistically get a visa, and think about the political relationship between Iran and the target country. Work out how you will cover costs without a funded offer, and look at tuition-free options. Check the embassy site for work-hour rules and look at real job listings in the target city. Improving your implementation and algorithmic skills can land you remote work regardless of where you study.
Apply across several countries and always keep safe options. If you are applying to five places, make it roughly one optimistic, two realistic, two safe. Finland, Germany, Italy, the UK, where funding is hard, and Spain all have programmes close to most interests.
The CV. Keep your academic CV and your industry CV separate; this is about the academic one. No photo, no Iranian phone number, use an academic email address. Education and research interests go first and second. If your last two years are better, say so, and report your GPA on its original scale. Do not over-explain. Picture a senior researcher spending two hours on two hundred CVs: what will make them remember you? Your thesis, significant awards, your research interests, papers and research experience. Add a references section at the end with up to three supervisors and their emails, since professors like hearing from people who have worked with you. And if you emailed beforehand, your chances go up sharply.
The statement of purpose. I wish I had a definitive answer; it is subjective. Explain your academic and professional path, concisely. Avoid generalities. A senior researcher does not care that you fell in love with mathematics while sharpening a pencil at twelve. Mention your activities, volunteering, work, research, coursework, and show how they connect into a coherent version of you. Know specifically what you want to do with a specific professor rather than asserting that your interests match, because they can spot a generated text immediately. Write it yourself, or use AI only as an assistant. Some professors stop reading the moment they detect generation.
Funding. At Oxford and Cambridge you are often considered automatically, though many schemes are restricted to domestic students, so you still have to hunt for scholarships actively. Professors can connect you to companies or pay you from their own grants. Some universities waive tuition, which makes a half-funded plan viable. In Germany, free tuition plus a student assistant position, roughly a thousand euros a month based on my internship at TUM, covers a good share of living costs. Do not be shy about emailing professors to ask how funding works in their group.
Recommendation letters. Pick people who will write you a genuinely good letter, not the person with the highest h-index. Ask them early and make sure they upload on time, because late letters cause real problems. If you draft it yourself, do not simply praise yourself; draw a logical line through your activities, took the class, became a teaching assistant, became a research assistant, and mention both hard and soft skills.
2.3 PhD specifics
The research statement is not a statement of purpose. They are completely different documents. Give this one most of your time. Say what you want to work on, identify real gaps in the field, and write your ideas precisely. After direct contact with a supervisor, this is probably the single biggest factor in your chances.
Email obsessively. It is a gamble, but targeted emails matter. For a PhD the advisor matters more than the ranking of the university, so find the people doing work you care about. Check whether they are taking students, look at who is currently in the lab, since those postdocs and senior researchers are who you will actually work with, and ask directly about separate PhD funding.
3. Mistakes I made
- Your mind quietly resists starting. Accept that, then push through it anyway.
- Finish the language test before you start applying and emailing. It frees your attention.
- Start emailing early, September or October. Everyone, from gold medallists to students at small universities, feels they get too few replies. Keep going regardless.
- I got discouraged easily. Do not be like me. Applying is a full-time job and it does affect your mental health. Everyone feels not good enough.
- Exercise, even a little. Walking counts.
- You deserve the best, but luck is part of the game. Do not put everything in one basket.
- Line up your recommenders well before the deadline. You can request letters before your application is finished, when professors are less busy.
- Kill the perfectionism.
4. Notes from friends
4.1 Iman, on the Canadian student visa
Hello, Iman here. Application experiences are very specific and it is hard to say anything novel. One note: because of the history around US travel bans, older information goes stale fast, so rely on recent experience and write your own down for the people coming after you.
Documents to get translated: birth certificate, police clearance with ministry stamps, proof of assets such as a property deed or car, and your CV. Start your client information with a cover letter summarising the documents and your reason, then your study plan, then the rest of the checklist.
The study plan needs to answer why this programme in Canada, what your overall educational goal is, why you cannot pursue it at home, how it will improve your employment prospects in your own country, what ties you have to your country of residence, and your education history. Every claim, particularly ties such as property, needs a document behind it.
For financial support, a cover letter plus six months of bank statements in Canadian dollars. Be transparent about income against expenses and show that you can genuinely afford it.
On the IRCC portal, sign in, create an account, choose the study permit, answer the questionnaire about family and travel history longer than six months, and upload against the checklist. After the biometrics fee you receive a biometrics letter within a day and have a month to complete it. The location does not matter.
4.2 A CS PhD student in the US, on choosing an advisor
I changed advisor during my PhD. My first was famous, top ten in the field, and elderly. What I got wrong:
Declining output. His recent papers were few and weak, and I ignored it. Some people stay on simply to feel useful after they have lost the capacity for deep thought.
Ego. He accepted only himself, mocked others and bragged constantly. There was no room for a different opinion, which became a mental block for me. I never applied for internships because he thought they were pointless.
No boundaries. The immigrant student and professor dynamic is exposed to abuse of power. You have the right to say no. No to invitations to his house, to the gym, to physical contact. Keep it professional. Academia contains a lot of lonely people who will try to fill that with their students. Do not walk into it.
Do not get stuck, and do not panic. If it is not working, step back, take leave, create distance and make a logical exit plan. The world has not ended. Younger professors are often more motivated. Weigh recent history more heavily than the weight of the name.
4.3 On emailing, generally
Check supervision history. Look at the papers a professor supervised over the last three years and assume your output will resemble the average of their students. Famous professors often appear on collaborations they did not drive. If they publish well but their students do not, treat that as a red flag.
Investigate collaborators. If you are joining a joint project, look into the other group too, and do not be intimidated by names. In a healthy collaboration you provide work and they provide something real in return. Define expectations early, or you will end up doing the work while others add their names.
Keep a paper trail. Write agreements down; email exists for this. If you make an intellectual contribution, make sure there is a record of it. Know your rights and do not be afraid to escalate when an agreement is broken.
If any of this helped, pass it on. If you spot something wrong or out of date, tell me and I will fix it.