I SHOULD HAVE SORTED MY COURSES, A NIGERIAN GRADUATE CRIES OUT

A masters degree holder friend of mine has regretted not joining the band .
wagon way back in his undergrad days to buy marks in some of his courses, an act popularly known as sorting. According to him, a GPA of 2.80 still hunts him years after he graduated even when he managed to get a masters degree abroad. A PhD has actuality become an up hill task with most of the schools turning town his applications after paying huge application fees.

The crop of American schools subject him to GRE and other funny tests (of course not TOEFL/ IELTS, he makes good grades) that at times make him sit exams with people too young to be his children, then a mail regretting not offering him admissions. He needs a doctorate degree due to a career part he is craving for. For the schools in Nigeria, his course has got few professionals around and the fear of spending years for a three year program scares him stiff.

He has excellent research proposals and even wrote a proposal for someone I know that is presently in one of the top schools in the US. He has a midas touch and a professional in his area. The surprising this is that he made a distinction in his masters degree, but all the schools where he applied for phdin America and Canada and even Australia and NZ keep complaining of his undergrad. Crop of Canadian prospective supervisors he will manage to get in touch with will advise him out rightly not to continue applying and for US, a regret letter readily awaits him after a rigorous applications and fees. They actually mention the undergrad.

Also according to him, the 2.2 level grade is due mainly to some unfortunate incidents that befell him in school. A lecturer accused him of not buying his handout and swore to make him fail, which threat the lecturer effectively carried out. That was his first carryover. GST causes, two results got missing and no help in view, 2nd and 3rd carryover. Then the big bang, 400 level, he almost dropped out due to hard times and missed a whole semester, he managed to write the exam and bagged an f, 3rd carryover, and finally got sick and missed exam at 400 level 5th carryover. I personally know this guy as a very brilliant fellow ( at least for him to finish with a 2.2 despite these unfortunate incidents and without any extra year).

He is really downcast and heart broken. I have advised him to check schools in Nigeria, China, Malaysia (where he got his masters) etc if he must go abroad again for his PhD but he insisted on going to Europe or America.

I wouldn't know if anyone has a better advise.