"A Structured Path Forward at 46"
I started applying for a PhD in Civil Engineering. when I was 46, married, two kids, and more than 20 years of work behind me. Most people around me thought it was pointless at my age, and honestly I also had doubts. Kite didn’t magically solve everything, but it did save me a lot of time. Instead of jumping from one university website to another, I could actually use the filters to look at professors in Civil Engineering that matched what I was doing. That part was helpful, even though sometimes I still had to recheck details and rewrite things in my own way.
Through Kite I found professors in the US, UK, Japan, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Some of them never replied, a few did and we had conversations, and from there I got to interview stages. In the end I received 9 offers, including a couple with partial funding. Around two-thirds of them were from opportunities I found on Kite, the rest I managed with the method it gave me. The frustrating part is that because of travel bans and financial issues I couldn’t accept right away, so I had to defer one offer and I’m still exploring options in the UK and Netherlands. For me, Kite was not perfect, but it gave me structure and a way forward at a point where I thought it was already too late.