How I started my loan process for masters in USA Part 1

So first of all, wishing you all a very happy Rakshabandhan and especially to all my younger brothers and sisters who are here watching my videos, supporting me and showing so much love to this little community that I'm building and I'm really grateful for all of you and since today is Rakshabandhan, I thought before we get into the loan process video, let's start with a little Rakhi wish. So if you have watched my How I Funded My Master's series, you probably already know the complete cost breakdown of my Master's. So my first semester like it was around $17,000 and by the second semester with my internship, student jobs and the savings which I had, my overall actual education cost came to around 25 lakhs. All this information I have given in detail in all my parts of How I Funded My Series and one thing I want to clarify is that my regular living expenses were also being managed through my student job, internship and my internal savings. So when everything was calculated together, my actual loan was around 25 lakhs. So but when I started this whole process, I honestly had no idea how much loan I would actually need. I had this general assumption that when people go to the US for Master's, they usually take around 50 to 60 lakh loan or even more in the, you know, if they are opting for some expensive university. My first step was actually to research how much a US Master's could cost depending on the university and I was seeing numbers like anywhere from around 40 lakh to 1 crore. Obviously, it depends a lot on the university you choose and if you go to more expensive private university, your tuition itself can be much higher. Then your location matters too because your living expense can be very different depending on where you live. So based on all of this, I thought, okay, I realistically want to keep my estimated requirement somewhere around 40 to 50 lakhs but I also wanted to keep some extra buffer. So I decided to plan for around 60 lakhs and then came the actual loan process. I remember initially speaking to a couple of banks and almost everyone asked me the same question. Which university have you been accepted into? Because, you know, that matters a lot. If you got into some Ivy League or very good top most universities, then it becomes very easier. And at that time, I had zero acceptance. So I actually had to put the loan process on a little bit of hold. Before I could really move forward with the loan, I needed to get my university application moving. And at that time, I was still working my regular 9 to 5 job in Pune. So I would like come back to my apartment after work and me and Tal, we used to sit together, you know, in the evening and do our SOP and work on LOR. So sometimes instead of going straight home after work, we would sit at the cafe and work on our application. Even on the weekends, we would, you know, spend hours working on our SOPs and university applications. Because my thinking was very simple. I just need one or two acceptance first so that I can, you know, get an idea. Like I wasn't even, it wasn't even about getting into my dream university at that point. I just needed an acceptance letter so that I could actually move forward with the loan process. Already given my GRE and TOEFL, so I started working on the university application. Initially, I also looked for universities which were offering application fee waiver because I thought, okay, if I can apply without paying the application fee, that's even better. So I started applying to few universities while at the same time spending time on my SOPs and LORs for the universities. Finally, I got my first acceptance and that's when things started getting real. And around the same time, I had already started speaking with HDFC Credela, which was quite popular at that time. I don't know for now, but yeah, they were popular for education loans. So especially for students looking for loans without collateral, they asked me about the universities I had applied to, which universities I was expecting an acceptance from. And then they also started looking at my overall profile and documents. And based on my profile, I was initially told, you can potentially get around 40 lakh without collateral. With collateral, obviously the loan amount could potentially be higher. Without collateral, the initial estimate I got was around 40 lakh. And I was like, okay, I had planned for 60 lakh, but I was being told that around 40 lakh might be possible without collateral, right? Then the question became, how did I eventually get 60 lakh approved without collateral? And what documents did they actually ask me for? So that's exactly what I will cover in part two and including the documents, the process and how that 40 lakh estimate eventually became 60 lakh without collateral. So for today, that's all from my side and I will see you in my next video. Bye-bye. Happy Raksha Bandhan once again.