Programme and University Selection

Not by ranking, but to suit your goals

Choosing a university and a subject is not about «finding the highest spot in the rankings». You can get into a prestigious university and drop out after six months because the programme isn’t right for you. Or you can find a modest regional university that gives you practical knowledge, work while you study and a calm start to your career.

We help you choose options where you will genuinely make it to graduation and get a return on your investment.

Where applicants usually start

With the QS or THE rankings, or with advice from acquaintances: «my brother studied there — it was fine». Both approaches work, but with a wide margin of error.

What matters more than the ranking:

The programme of the specific faculty. The same university can be strong in engineering and weak in business.
Whether the programme includes internships. Many Master’s programmes without practical placements leave the graduate with a diploma but no experience.
The language of instruction and the level of the requirements. If your English is 6.0 and the university asks for 7.0 with no language year on offer, there’s no point applying.
The cost of living in the city. London or Munich can cost many times more than a small university town in rent and transport.
Opportunities to work part-time. In some places students are allowed 20 hours a week, in others not at all.

The difficulties of choosing on your own

There are thousands of options. In two weeks you can look through 50 websites and build a table, but:

Open sources won’t tell you that the university cut admissions to your subject by 40% this year because of budget changes.
You won’t see that the programme hasn’t been updated in years: the course descriptions on the website date from 2018, and in reality they teach the very same thing.
You can’t gauge how welcoming the administration is towards international students. That only becomes clear after a couple of emails to the admissions office.

What we do

We gather your inputs: budget, preferred countries, the subjects that interest you, your career goals. Without that list, there’s no way forward.
We pick out not just «universities that offer your subject», but those that regularly admit international students, offer deferred payment and help with accommodation.
We check how current the programmes are: we look at the syllabuses of recent years and read reviews from real students — the critical ones, not only the glowing ones.
We compare the total cost: a year of tuition + living + insurance + flights + visas. Often a university with an expensive semester turns out to be better value thanks to cheap halls of residence and scholarships.
We give you a choice of 3–5 options with the clear pros and cons of each. No «they’re all great»: one is cheaper, another has a more interesting programme, another is easier to get into.

An important principle

We don’t back you into a corner. If, after our shortlist, you decide to apply on your own, that’s your right. If you want us to help with the applications and documents, we do that too. The main thing is that you understand where you’re going and why.

If you don’t yet have a clear idea of which country and which subject to apply for, get in touch. We’ll hold an initial consultation, ask the right questions and give you your first bearings. No filler and no pressure.