According to Business Insider, three professionals detailed how graduate school was a pivotal career catalyst. Varun Goyal, 25, left a quantitative trading job in India to pursue a U.S. master’s in computer science, ultimately joining an AI startup in 2024 for a lower base salary than finance offered. Deep Shah, 30, a Google software engineer, credits mentors from his bachelor’s program for teaching him machine learning skills and later helping him transfer from Google Bangalore in 2018 to Mountain View in 2021. Kriti Goyal, 28, an AI engineer at a Big Tech firm, used her master’s degree to relocate from India to the U.S., leveraging connections from her program to secure an internship and a role on the Foundation Model main framework team.
The Degree as a Strategic Pivot
Here’s the thing: none of these stories are about getting a degree just for the credential. For Varun and Kriti, the master’s was a deliberate, tactical tool for a geographical and professional pivot. It was their visa pathway and their structured on-ramp into the epicenters of AI development in California and Washington. Varun even frames it as a low-risk exploration phase—a way to “try before you buy” a career in AI versus quant finance. And that’s a powerful reframe. We often think of grad school as a deep dive into a field you already love. But for career-changers, it can be a sanctioned sandbox for exploration, with built-in networking and a clear expiration date. Kriti’s point about the “bias in hiring” is also brutally honest. Can you skip the degree? Maybe. But that piece of paper still opens doors that hustle alone sometimes can’t.
The Real Currency: Connections
But the technical knowledge almost takes a backseat in these accounts. The unanimous, resounding theme is the network. Deep Shah’s journey is literally mapped by connections: a mentor introduces him to ML problems, a friend gets him into Google Bangalore, and his internal network facilitates a transfer to the U.S. Kriti skipped the job board entirely and messaged former colleagues directly. This is the hidden curriculum of higher ed that you can’t get from an online course. It’s the peer who becomes a co-founder, the professor who makes an intro, the alum who refers you. The degree gets you in the room, but the relationships you build there decide what you get to do once you’re inside. It’s about building social capital, and these three leveraged it masterfully.
Is the Investment Still Worth It?
So, with the rise of bootcamps and self-taught paths, is the six-figure time-and-money sink of a graduate degree still the move? Kriti acknowledges the alternative paths, especially in tech hubs. But she also highlights the non-career benefits: cultural acclimation and immigration status. For someone moving countries, that structure is invaluable. Varun traded immediate, higher quant salary for what he saw as long-term optionality in AI. Was that the right bet? Only time will tell. But their stories suggest that in a field as hot and competitive as AI, the degree does more than teach you transformers and tensor flow. It buys you time to figure things out, wraps you in a legitimizing institution, and hands you a ready-made professional network. That’s a package deal that’s still hard to replicate, no matter how many GitHub commits you have.
