From a B.Tech in India to joining Meta as a Software Engineer: How I completed my master’s in the U.S. without a mortgage

I am Shubhender Singh and I am working as a Software Engineer at Meta. I completed my master’s degree in Computer Science from North Carolina State University. My experience mainly lies in the development of web applications as well as sensors for Level 3 Autonomous Cars. Like scores of others wanting to study, I needed a loan for my education. Luckily, my financier was Leap, and I was glad to sit down with them and talk about my study abroad journey.

Q: Tell us about your educational background and early career in India.

A: I did my bachelor's from India at Jaypee University of Information Technology. And over there I finished my B. Tech in electronics and communication engineering. After that, I worked for like four years in Bangalore. I was working in Continental Automotive Group. That's a tier-one supplier for OEMs like Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Toyota. So basically, they make sensors that are being used for vehicles for providing active safety, like radars, cameras, autonomous driving, and things like that. I was particularly involved in ADAS subsystems.

Q: How did you get to the US?

A: That was the time of COVID, back in 2021. I decided I wanted to study abroad, and then I started preparing for the GRE. I took my GRE in October, like the middle of October, and a week after that I took the TOEFL exam. Luckily my score was okay, it was more or less what I expected. I got 320 to 324 on GRE, and 100 plus on TOEFL.

Q: Why did you choose North Carolina State University?

A: North Carolina State University is really good, especially if you want to pursue computer science. I got into a couple of other places, but at that point in time,? I was more focused on building projects that were related to autonomous driving, computer vision, etc, so it was a good option for me.

Q: How did Leap Finance help with your education?

A: I chose Leap Finance after researching 20 providers because of the smooth process. For example, I didn’t have to go through the conversion of money from an Indian bank to the US, etc. I didn't have to provide any security against my loan. They just considered my background as well as my GRE score. And the process was pretty fast.?

Apart from that, I never had to hassle a lot about getting the funds. I just had to write an email providing proof of how much I'm getting, how much money I'm spending, or funds I'm using for my tuition, as well as providing an amount of like how much I'm using for personal things like paying rent and all.

Q: How long did it take you to repay your loan?

A: It took me 14 months to repay the loan. So it did not take me a lot of time to repay my loan to Leap Finance. And for some students who, I mean, you will find several success stories where people can get a scholarship or something like that, or they were able to get a research assistant position.

Q: Would you recommend Leap Finance to others?

A: I would suggest Leap Finance to a person who does not want to mortgage anything to secure a loan. For a person who does not want to put any of his parent's property or something like that on the line and likes to study, I would say Leap Finance is a good option.?

If you work hard, you don't have to worry about how to repay your loan.

Q: What was your career progression after graduation?

A: I got an internship from Volvo. Even though they liked my work, they couldn't hire me since they only prefer candidates having either PR or US citizenship. And I got an offer from Lucid Motors.?

I've worked over there for like two years. It was a really good experience. And then this year, I chose to explore other companies in the market and finally ended up at Meta.

Q: What important lessons did you learn during this journey?

A: The thing I learned during my studies as well as during my corporate career is that you cannot always rely on your curriculum or what is being taught to you directly in your master's or B Tech. Doing a job there will be multiple scenarios where you are not aware of how to do this task or something at that time.?

You need to be fine knowing that you don't have the answers right now, but respond with, “Let's figure it out. Let's search what is there online, what has been done by other people, what I can do.” That is something that helped me during my internship at Volvo. That is something that helped me at Lucid as well as during my preparation for the interview process at Meta as well.