Hi ,

I get this question a lot: should I study in US or Canada? Or Germany?

Now I did my Masters in Robotics in USA so it is easy for me to talk about studying in US but I don't know much about other countries.

Here is what I recommend.

First figure out what your GOAL is:

Bachelors, Masters or PhD?

Next figure out what your NEXT goal is:

Job at a company, Academic career or start your company?

Based on these 2 goals, look at the following:

(1) Quality of education, access to funding (scholarship, assistantship, etc).

If you are thinking of masters followed by a job in the industry, the education should have a focus on practical skills, access to robots, project focused classes and career fairs.

If you are thinking of PhD, your advisor is the most important component. What topic are they researching and how much time they have to advise you?

(2) Job market - number of robotics companies and pay scale.

How many robotics companies are there in that country? What is the average pay scale? How many job opening do you see?

If you are thinking of starting your own company, look at funding & ability to hire. Is there enough talented and skills people that you would need?

(3) Immigration - super important.

What if you don't find a job within 2 months of graduation and visa expires?

What if you have to wait years before you can get a visa (after studying) to start a company?

As I mentioned I studied in the USA and can speak about studying and working in the US.

From a robotics standpoint, in my opinion, US has good education system and a lot of companies with good pay scale.

But a big pain point - especially for international student is the immigration system. It is complex and has a lot of restrictions.

I created a video to go through a typical visa scenario.

🎥 US immigration for international Masters Student // International students in USA

Visa journey for masters students in US.

In this video, I talk about F1 student visa, H1B visa, OPT, STEM OPT and CPT (co-op).

Most international student come to the US on F1 visa and then depending on their masters study may go for OPT and STEM OPT. And eventually H1B.

Click here to read more

Upcoming Live Event

I am bringing Madi to the channel to talk about her experience of studying Robotics in US. She did her PhD from Washington State University with a focus in Robotics. She will be answering questions as well, so pre-submit them here: Click here for link

Jobs (USA)

• Accel Robotics > Sr. Mechanical Engineer
• Rivian > Multiple
• Robby > Multiple
• Comma AI > Multiple

Jobs (India)

• Zingg.AI > Machine Learning Engineer
• Accio Robotics > Multiple
• Unbox Robotics > Multiple
• Constems-Ai > Computer Vision/ ML
• IIT Ropar > Jr. Research Fellow

Enjoy,

Kajal Gada