From Delhi JNU to Sciences Po Paris: My Emile Boutmy Scholarship Journey

🕑 9 min read

Alumni voice: Neha R., Master of Public Affairs, Sciences Po Paris (2024–2026). Written for Kadamb Overseas.

I’m writing this from the OECD building on Rue André Pascal in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. It’s my lunch break. I joined OECD’s Development Co-operation Directorate as a policy intern three months ago. A year ago I was sitting in the Central Library at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi worrying that my international policy ambitions were dead because the Americans had started talking about H-1B restrictions again. Kadamb is the reason I’m in Paris instead of Washington — let me explain how.

Where I Started — JNU Delhi, International Relations, Ambition With No Money

I did my BA (Hons) in Political Science from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University (2019–2022), then an MA International Relations from JNU School of International Studies (2022–2024). JNU MA is basically free — my two-year fees came to about ₹18,000 including mess. My family is middle-class from Lucknow — father is a mid-level bank manager, mother is a homemaker. My parents had exactly ₹32 lakh set aside for my post-JNU plans (they’d been saving since I was 14). That was non-negotiable.

What I wanted was a Master of Public Affairs or Master of Public Policy from a global-tier policy school. My shortlist in June 2023 was:

• Columbia SIPA (MPA) — 2 years, total cost ≈ $130,000 = ₹1.08 crore
• LSE (MSc Public Policy and Administration) — 1 year, total cost ≈ £48,000 = ₹50 lakh
• Sciences Po Paris (Master in Public Affairs, PSIA) — 2 years, tuition ≈ €19,000/year for non-EU, living ≈ €15K/year, total ≈ €68,000 = ₹62 lakh
• Harvard Kennedy School (MPP) — laughable on my profile, I put it on the list for my mother’s peace of mind

On headline numbers alone, Columbia was out. LSE at ₹50 lakh was theoretically doable with a loan but I’d read 30+ Reddit threads about LSE one-year MA students not finding UK policy jobs and returning to India with ₹50L in debt. That scared me. Sciences Po at ₹62 lakh was also out of reach unless I got a scholarship. I genuinely thought the policy-school-abroad dream was dead by July 2023.

Finding Kadamb — A JNU Senior’s Instagram DM

A senior from JNU (she’d done her MA IR one year before me) had gone to Paris in 2022 for Sciences Po. I’d seen her Instagram stories — Seine photos, café photos — and assumed her family was rich. In August 2023 I messaged her asking how she was funding it. She replied within three hours: “Emile Boutmy scholarship. €19K/year. Full tuition waiver basically. Contact Saumitra Rajput at Kadamb Overseas Ahmedabad. He set up my entire application.” I’d never heard of Kadamb. I’d never heard of Emile Boutmy. I’d never heard of Ahmedabad in the context of study abroad consulting — Ahmedabad? Really?

I messaged Kadamb’s WhatsApp on 11 August 2023. Saumitra sir got on a Zoom call with me on 18 August. First call was 55 minutes. The thing that struck me — and I remember this specifically — he asked me to paste my JNU transcripts into the chat, then he went quiet for 30 seconds reading them, then he said: “You’re a Sciences Po PSIA profile. Forget LSE one-year MA. Forget Columbia SIPA. Your numbers are not good enough for Columbia and LSE is an expensive bachelor’s degree sold as a masters. Sciences Po with Emile Boutmy is your exact fit.” He was right on all three counts. I just didn’t know it yet.

Why Sciences Po Over LSE and Columbia — The Analysis Kadamb Did

Saumitra sir sent me a two-page comparison document over the next 48 hours. I’ll summarise:

• LSE (1-year MSc): High brand, short duration (bad for OPT-equivalent work options in UK post-Brexit — Graduate Route gives only 2 years), cost ₹50L+, French/Indian policy orgs weight LSE lower than Sciences Po for EU policy roles specifically
• Columbia SIPA (2-year MPA): Gold standard but cost ₹1 crore+, H-1B lottery at end (30% approval on average), Indian students at SIPA increasingly unable to convert to US work visas after 2023
• Sciences Po MPA at PSIA (2-year): Same global ranking tier for international affairs (top 3 globally per QS), located in Paris within 20 minutes of OECD / UNESCO / ICC / EU institutions, France offers 2-year APS (Autorisation Provisoire de Séjour) post-graduation job search, Emile Boutmy scholarship specifically for non-EU applicants with 300+ awards per year

The thing I didn’t know — because no consultant had ever told me — was that Sciences Po has a specific scholarship called Emile Boutmy created by the school to attract top non-EU students. Indian students applying to Sciences Po miss this at roughly a 25% rate because it requires a separate application tick-box during admissions and is not well-marketed outside France. Saumitra sir’s exact words: “If you apply to Sciences Po without Emile Boutmy checkbox, I’ve failed you as a consultant.”

Application Deep-Dive — Five Essays, 3,500 Words

Sciences Po MPA application requires: personal statement (1,000 words), research statement (800 words), career goals essay (500 words), two shorter essays on current affairs topics (600 words each), three recommendation letters, CV, transcripts, English proficiency (I submitted IELTS 8.0).

Essays were the hardest part. I had written fine essays for JNU’s MA IR entrance but Sciences Po’s PSIA essays are not academic — they’re specifically asking “what policy problem are you trying to solve and why are YOU the right person to solve it, not just any trained policy analyst.” My first drafts in October 2023 were academic and abstract. Saumitra sir’s feedback in one email I still have saved: “Your personal statement reads like you’re defending a thesis. Sciences Po wants a story. Rewrite with one personal anecdote in the first paragraph, and one specific policy outcome you want to influence in the last paragraph.” I rewrote. Three more rounds. Final draft was submitted December 28, 2023.

My differentiator in the application was a 9-month internship at Delhi Policy Group (DPG) during my JNU MA — I’d worked on India-EU strategic partnership research under a former Ambassador. That one internship, specifically, was referenced in my Sciences Po interview (which was by Zoom in February 2024) and the interviewer had clearly read my DPG published research paper.

Emile Boutmy — The Game Changer

The Emile Boutmy scholarship is awarded based on academic merit + financial need + essays. For MPA (2-year) program, typical awards range from €6,000 to €19,000 per year. Kadamb’s strategy was to structure my financial disclosure honestly — my father’s bank salary plus my mother’s zero income plus my family’s declared savings of ₹32 lakh (= €35,000 at that exchange) — which was genuinely below Sciences Po’s internal threshold for “full-need international student.” No inflating, no deflating.

Sciences Po admission letter came on April 18, 2024 — the portal emailed me at 3 AM IST and I saw it when I woke up at 6:30. Emile Boutmy scholarship decision arrived three weeks later, May 9, 2024: €19,000/year × 2 years = €38,000 total, plus additional tuition reduction. Combined with their own tuition sliding scale for low-income international students, my effective annual tuition came to ≈ €4,000 (down from €19,000 list price). My mother actually screamed on the phone when I told her. First time I remember her screaming in joy.

Paris Arrival — August 2024

I landed at Charles de Gaulle on 28 August 2024. Sciences Po’s main campus is at 27 Rue Saint-Guillaume in the 7th arrondissement — which is, honestly, a ridiculous location. I’m walking past Musée d’Orsay on my way to class. But Paris housing is a separate catastrophe. A 12 m² studio in the 7th goes for €1,100/month. I’m not from a €1,100/month family. Kadamb had connected me pre-arrival with a Sciences Po Indian student alumni group (they maintain a private group) and I found a shared flat in the 13th arrondissement (Place d’Italie area) — €650/month for my room in a three-bedroom flat shared with one Brazilian and one French student.

Language: I’d done French A2 before arrival (self-study + Alliance Française Delhi evening classes for 5 months). PSIA’s MPA is entirely in English but you need conversational French to buy bread, to open a bank account, to get your carte vitale (health insurance card), to deal with your landlord. B1 by December 2024 was my self-set target; I made it by February 2025.

First Year Struggles — Parents Wanted Me to Come Home

Around Christmas 2024 (end of first semester) I had a bad patch. I’d just gotten mid-term feedback — one of my professors at PSIA had rated my policy memo as “promising but insufficiently data-driven.” In Indian university context, that’s basically a B-minus, which I had never received in my academic life. I called my father crying. My father’s response, which I didn’t expect: “Just come back. You don’t need Paris. You have OPSC Lucknow civil services coaching centre references, you can prepare for UPSC here.” My parents didn’t disagree in front of me — but I later learned they had a week-long argument about whether to call Saumitra sir and ask him to bring me back. My mother was the one who stopped them. She said: “She’ll figure it out. She always does.”

I did figure it out. By end of second semester (June 2025) I had an A- average. My “insufficiently data-driven” professor ended up writing my OECD recommendation letter.

OECD Internship — How Sciences Po Actually Works

The OECD internship application opened in October 2025 for the Jan–Jun 2026 cycle. Sciences Po PSIA has a career services office that runs a specific “OECD pipeline” — they know the hiring managers personally, they submit your CV in a batch through the Sciences Po recommendation route rather than the open public portal (which has a 2% success rate). I applied in the Sciences Po batch for the Development Co-operation Directorate in November 2025. Got the interview December 10, 2025. Got the offer December 22, 2025. Stipend: €1,550/month for six months. In Paris on €1,550/month I’m not saving much after rent and groceries, but the CV line is what matters.

My career target post-MPA: one of the UN agencies (UNDP / UNESCO / UNICEF) in a policy analyst role, or return to India as a senior policy researcher at ORF / Observer Research Foundation / CPR. I’m also keeping the World Bank young professionals programme (YPP) on my radar for 2028–2029 when I’ll have 2+ years post-masters experience.

Kadamb’s Role — Where It Mattered Most

1. Emile Boutmy identification. I would not have applied to Emile Boutmy without Kadamb. I would have paid ₹45 lakh more over two years, or I would not have come to Paris at all. That single scholarship strategy is, by a mile, the most valuable output of the consultancy engagement.
2. “LSE is an expensive bachelor’s sold as a masters.” That one sentence reframed my entire shortlist. It saved me a ₹50L loan on a one-year MSc I’d have regretted.
3. Essay structure coaching. The “story, not thesis” reframe was Saumitra sir’s. Without it, my essays would have been academic and generic and Sciences Po would have waitlisted or rejected me.
4. Paris landlord scam avoidance. I had almost signed a Facebook Marketplace flat sight-unseen in July 2024 before Kadamb’s pre-departure briefing specifically warned me about the common Paris €700 deposit-then-disappear scam. I walked away from it. The flat I eventually took was via the Sciences Po Indian alumni network referral.

Cost Breakdown — Two Years

Item	Cost (₹ lakh)
Sciences Po PSIA tuition (2 years, after sliding scale)	7.5
Living cost Paris (2 years @ ~€1,350/month)	29
Visa + flights + settlement + health insurance	2.5
Kadamb Overseas fee (2023)	0.85
Gross outlay (before scholarships)	39.85
Less: Emile Boutmy scholarship (€38,000)	-34.5
Less: OECD internship earnings (6 months)	-8.5
NET COST to family	≈ ₹-3.15 (slight surplus)
Columbia SIPA counterfactual (rejected by me)	108
LSE 1-year MSc counterfactual	50
Savings vs Columbia path	≈ ₹1.11 crore

My Advice to Indian Policy Aspirants

1. Do not default to LSE or Columbia just because your WhatsApp group mentions them. For EU/UN policy careers, Sciences Po is genuinely peer with or ahead of both. For US think-tank careers, yes Columbia has the edge. But know why you’re applying where — don’t just chase brand.
2. Scholarship strategy is the single most underestimated skill in study-abroad consulting. A consultant who only helps with applications but doesn’t build a scholarship stack for you is undercharging you on value. Ask your consultant: “What scholarships specifically are you applying me to, and what’s the award size and success rate?” If they can’t name three with numbers, walk away.
3. Paris is not London on the budget front — it’s closer to Mumbai. If you can live in Mumbai on ₹40K/month in a shared flat, you can live in Paris on €1,200/month in a shared flat in the 13th or 19th arrondissement. Do not let Paris’s reputation scare you. The 7th arrondissement is where you attend class, not where you live.

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— Neha R.
Master of Public Affairs, Sciences Po Paris PSIA (2024–2026)
Policy Intern, OECD Development Co-operation Directorate

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