Be secure in yourself enough to know that the people around you can also be succeeding and you can still succeed with them.”
Ani Merzaian, BASc
Ani Merzaian, the creator of the Nutrition Masters Instagram platform, joins Sarah on the podcast this week to look back on her internship and Master’s program application process. Ani has always had the goal of getting her Ph.D., so she had assumed going the Masters’ route would be right for her. However, she was incredibly inspired by a class in clinical dietetics and started to wonder if an internship would be a better choice. Ani walks us through how she decided where to apply, what the application process was like for her, and how she ultimately decided to pursue her Master’s.
Ani entered the nutrition undergraduate program at Ryerson right out of high school, and soon noticed that most of her peers were mature students with previous degrees. This made the program feel much more competitive and Ani had to work harder to get herself to where her peers were. Throughout her undergraduate, Ani made sure to network with professors which made it much easier to get references when it came time to start her application process. She highly recommends asking for these references as soon as you can — she reached out the summer before her final year and one professor was already fully booked!
Ani applied to three places in the GTA, including the MHSc and PMDip at Ryerson. Ani was unsure which program she was going to choose, even after being accepted to both. She talked through her decision with a trusted professor and a dietetics PhD student, and was able to conclude that the Masters program would better prepare her for own PhD goals. Ani is currently completing her MHSc at Ryerson, and shares everything she wishes she knew about the application process on her Nutrition Masters Instagram.
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Learn More About:
Undergraduate in Nutrition at Ryerson
Masters of Health Science in Nutrition Communication at Ryerson
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