My Story

Some times in life you know exactly where you are going but not exactly sure how to get there. After my MS in Saudi Arabia I was determined to apply for an MBA, the US schools were the most attractive, but I never if I ever got in I won't be able to pay for the program. Richard Ivey School of Business of the University of Western Ontario was the only school I rated because of their strong entrepreneurship program; luckily before I applied I found a much better program, the MBET.

KFUPM, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

The strange thing was I found the MBET program by accident, at KFUPM the norm was to complete your masters degree them move to the US or Canada for a PhD. I had heard of University of Waterloo's technology reputation, I also learnt from my MS thesis co-advisor that there civil engineering program in concrete materials at the graduate level was also very strong, so I was at university of waterloo's website to check-out the civil engineering webpage. I scrolled to the faculty of engineering and lo and behold, I found CBET. The minute I saw the program I knew this was the program for me, it didn't take me a split second to make the decision to apply.

Me at KFUPM

As I said before some people know where they are going but don't know how to get there, by the time I applied for the MBET program I had already applied for a PhD at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton Campus. I had been exchanging e-mails with a very nice professor; he was able to secure some research funding. Thus my move to Canada in April 2007 was with the intent on a PhD program in Civil Engineering to start in September. From April to September I was as a research engineer with this professor, who turned out to be very nice and charming and also much focused on research. Here I was with full research funding; I also got a president's scholarship from the University of New Brunswick. When I arrived in April I set about looking for funding for my MBET program because I didn't have enough funds to cover the whole thing. I had my family with me, my wife and months old daughter.

Come September I needed to make one of the biggest decisions of my life: do I leave this PhD program where I had full funding in addition to a president's scholarship, or move to the MBET program where I have less a quarter of the money I needed? It was a tough, tough choice but in the end my passion won out and I choose the MBET program. Do I have any regrets? absolutely not. What I have learnt from this is that a person should have the courage to pursue his dreams no matter how far off that might be. Life is never easy, but the successful people are those that make the right choices when the opportunity presents itself.