Yet Another tale of a Mitacs GRI — Part 1

So, it all started as a very normal day at my college, I went to college just for hanging out, o̶f̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶r̶s̶e̶ ̶w̶h̶o̶ ̶g̶o̶e̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶l̶a̶s̶s̶🤐. I had joined the GDSC of my college as a DevOps lead and it were the very initial days of the new club. I and Aditya who is also an Ex-Lead of GDSC now got a good bonding and we were just chilling and discussing some stuff, it’s then that Aditya told me about an Internship that gives a free trip to Canada. I still remember that he told me that it’s a cool internship exaggerating that free trip part and I was like okay great but will that really happen and then we were like okay it’s not gonna happen but at least apply for the sake of our satisfaction.

The interesting and rather more important part though, that he didn’t told me about, was that it was the last date to apply and we barely had 12 hours to do everything that is:

1. Getting the Marksheet/Transcript from the College
2. Two letters of Recommendation (LORs) from my professor and previous Internship mentor.
3. Creating a Resume as per the Mitacs Guidelines.
4. Choosing the 7 projects I need to apply to from the whole catalog of more than 2000+ projects.
5. And last but not least fill a form that takes around an hour or more to get filled (Thanks to all the about and why questions).

So, now to do all of the above tasks we had less than 12 hours and the clock was ticking.

We were probably lucky that day because just after we decided to fill the form we rushed to the Academic Cell/Registrar’s Office to get the transcript and the good part was that everyone was there to help but the thing that we had no clue about is what Mitacs need in a Transcript. After discussing with our Registrar and my Father, we decided to use the following as our transcripts:

1. All the Marksheets we got from the University till that time.
2. But, as I was not a Regular B. Tech. Student I took admission directly in my Second year ( as a Lateral Entry after Diploma), I had results for only 2 semesters but not their official university Marksheet. So I finally took the printout of the page that had my name from the whole result published by the university and got it attested by our college.
3. Finally, as Mitacs wants official Transcripts from the college with an overall average grade I preferred to have an official average by the College to remove any conversion errors on the college letterhead and got it attested by the Dean.

We were lucky enough to get it all done by the evening, though with a lot of hussle of course.😬😬

Now comes the most interesting and difficult part, the form and the questions.

Why do you want to do this Internship?

Well, of course for a sponsored trip to Canada. 🤫

So here comes the difficult and at the same time fun part at least for me answering the questions in 100 words.

Q1. General description of skills, background knowledge, research interests and experience

It is very much like your SoP and all you have to do is write a story about yourself and your Research Interests in a manner that can be understood and related by the reviewer. The whole point of this question is to make some random person(the reviewer) familiar with you, your skills, and your goals.

Q2. Notable Achievements

Well, it's time To blow one’s own trumpet, so just go for it and write about your achievements.

After all these long passages and other Questions, It’s time to get a LOR(Letter Of Recommendation) from your professor/mentor.

For me, I am really thankful to both my Professor Mr. Moolchand Sharma, and my previous mentor at DRDO Mr. Vipin Kumar. I still remember it was around 9 in the night when I called them and asked for a LOR and they gave it to me in the next 15–20 minutes. I believe it was our relationship and their courtesy to be available that late and help me at an urgent moment without which this wouldn’t have been possible.

So, after all of these hassles, the last and the most tedious task was to choose the Top 7 projects (or at least 3) out of something around 2000+ projects that year(2022). Though, this year(2023) it's more than 3000+ Projects.🥳

But the good news was that Mitacs has a very amazing filter tool that helps us choose the best projects really quickly and easily.

After all of these and uploading all the transcripts, CV and LOR it was finally the time to submit the application and when I saw the clock it was last 30 minutes remaining before the form get closed so finally, I pressed that button and submitted it!!

It was around 2 months after the whole application and I still had no clue what exactly is Mitacs GRI, especially the work that I was supposed to do and nor do I have any idea of how the whole thing works because I was pretty sure that it is not going to happen as we had the myths that it is only for the very premier Institutes and blah blah blah.

But no, I still remember it was at midnight on November 9 and I was casually checking the Mailbox, and then all of a sudden I saw this in a bunch of other spam.

Till this moment I had no clue of how things worked inside Mitacs and about all of the steps that are there in the whole process probably because I haven’t taken it that seriously as per the myths, but it was there and all I did for the whole night is researched probably every blog, quora, Youtube about Mitacs and GRI and it was in the morning that I realized, that’s a big opportunity and I can’t let it be wasted. But at that time all I had to do is to wait for the mail from any of my Professors to whom I applied and after a week I got the mail from Prof. Eugene Syriani for an interview.

I fixed an interview with him and right after scheduling I kind of stalked his profile and everything he did in the last years in the hope to get some information about the project and the interview and while I was going through his profile I saw Naveen Kumar, an Indian guy who worked with him the last year as a Mitacs GRI’21 and then I tried to contact him on LinkedIn. I was lucky enough to get his response in almost no time and all the tips that he shared with me were just great.

Finally, it was the time for the interview and guess what I missed it because of the confusion in the time zones. But my professor was so kind and humble that he again scheduled a meeting the very next day.

And then the Interview….

But the fun fact was, it was less than an interview and more of a casual talk, we discussed weather, our cities, COVID, and probably more amazing things and afterwards he just asked some technical questions about the project. Though the meeting was scheduled for 30 mins, we enjoyed talking so much that it was already 45 minutes and we were still discussing our countries and culture, if it wasn’t for my unstable Internet that broke the call in between we would have talked probably a bit more.

After the Interviews/QA from all the interested professors, we were given a short window of a few days to reschedule the rankings of the chosen 7 projects and it is so awesome that we can rank our projects after having our experience with the professors.

And Finally after a few weeks, it was the night of December 9 when I got this mail.

For the next few minutes, I was numb and couldn’t believe it happened, I told my parents, my Bhaiya and I was on the Seventh Sky. That night I couldn’t sleep just because I couldn’t get out of the feeling that I got it. It was something different and after so many rejections when you get success it is a satisfaction of a different kind.

That was my Journey with the whole process of the Mitacs Globalink Research Program — 2022, from the initial day until I got the offer, what happened after my acceptance and how is my journey going on so far? Well, that’s the story for some other day. Till then, hope you enjoyed my story and got something resourceful if you were here for more info on the Mitacs GRI program. I am always open to any query you might have, just drop a message on LinkedIn.

Wishing all the luck, to all the future aspirants!

Extra Links, Resources, and Ending Notes:

1. Single Page for everything related to Mitacs GRI — https://www.mitacs.ca/en/programs/globalink/globalink-research-internship
2. The only major criteria for eligibility is to have a minimum academic grade of 80% and above and the applicant must be in the Third year of the B.Tech.
3. Personal suggestions:

• Please don’t wait until the last minute to fill out the forms.
• Apply for the passport (if you don’t have one already) just after applying here and don’t wait for your result to come because a passport can take some time and it’s always better to have a passport beforehand.
• At last, even if you couldn’t make it to GRI, there are plenty of good opportunities available and it is not the end of the world, I have never expected to crack this but it happened so it’s fine even if you couldn’t but nevertheless, apply for it and I wish All the luck!!