After the Second World War, an interim government was set up in India to transfer power from the British to Indians, which offered scholarships to bright young scientists to study abroad. She applied for one such scholarship in the field of electronics and its applications, and in 1946, she was selected as a "bright student" by the Government of Delhi and was given a scholarship to go abroad to pursue higher studies, and she chose to study in University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in the United States. In the 1950s, it was very difficult for Indian women to go abroad to pursue higher education. But Chatterjee was determined to do so. In July 1947, one month before India's independence, she started her journey to the USA on a converted troop ship SS Marine Adder and reached there after 30 days. In the US, she was admitted to the University of Michigan and obtained her master's degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering. Then following the guidelines of the contract she had with the Government of India, she underwent an eight months' practical training in the Division of Radio Frequency Measurements at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C. After the completion of the training she went back to the University of Michigan in 1949 on a Barbour scholarship and resumed her studies. In early 1953, she obtained her Ph.D. degree under the guidance of Professor William Gould Dow and successfully completed her dissertation.