Hari Prasad Renganathan got rejected from the H1B lottery three times. Most people in that situation spiral.
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Visas + Study Abroad - 12 Episodes
O-1 visa strategy, H-1B lottery math, OPT deadlines, study abroad decisions, reverse culture shock, and the real logistics behind starting over somewhere else. If you are an international student trying to figure out your next move between India and the US, this hub gets to the part that actually matters. 12 episodes and counting.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of international students and tech workers face the same terrifying math: there are 85,000 H-1B seats and over 400,000 applications. But what if you didn’t have to play the lottery at all?
Getting laid off is bad enough. Getting laid off on OPT with the 90-day clock running is a different kind of panic.
In this episode I talk with Hrohaan Malhotra, a Data Scientist at Wells Fargo who actually landed his role through a career fair. Hrohaan rewired the usual career-fair playbook: he didn’t show up to collect business cards — he showed up to build one great, memorable interaction.
Duden used to sit on the other side of the visa window, which makes this conversation useful for anyone tired of guessing what a visa officer is really looking for. We talk through visa interviews, weak answers, strong evidence, and the small mistakes that make a stressful process even harder.
People get strange about accents because they confuse sounding local with belonging. Gurasis talks openly about being judged for how he spoke, the pressure to sand down your voice, and the bigger question underneath it: who gets to decide what 'professional' sounds like?
Akshansh joins Naman for a conversation about build A Strong Profile For Masters In USA. In this episode, my nephew, Akshansh who has been a featured not-expert on this show in the past asks me questions about how he can walk a path similar to the one I walked when I started my Masters from the US about 5 years ago from Purdue University before moving to Chicago for work, where I've been living for the past 3 years my links/socials: If visas + study abroad is the mess on your desk right now, this episode is a strong place to begin.
What happens when you move back to India after a master's in the US? Ratik Dutta talks through reverse culture shock, the job market for returning graduates, and the strange work of settling back into a place that is already supposed to feel like home.
Some career stories sound made up until you realize they were built one unglamorous step at a time. This episode follows a mechanical engineer from Indian Railways to SpaceX without pretending the path was neat, linear, or somehow inevitable.
A lot of Dubai talk is either glossy or cynical, which usually means it is not very useful. Kaushik cuts through that and talks about moving to the UAE for a PhD, what living there actually felt like, and why the Gulf makes sense for some people and not for others.
Moving to France sounds glamorous until you are the one trying to build a life there in real time. Devendra talks through SPJIMR's global management program, the move to Paris, and the small frictions that shape a new country more than the postcard version ever will.
A master's in the US can be useful, expensive, confusing, and wildly overrated all at once. This episode is about getting more out of the move than a degree and a few blurry orientation photos, especially if you are trying to make the whole thing pay off in the real world.