Application Process for MS in US Universities For Indian/International Students [with specific inputs for students of Uttar Pradesh Technical University(UPTU)] |
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The Application Process Finalizing the List of Universities The Art of Applying |
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Finalizing the List of Universities | ||||||||||||||||||||||
The first requirement before you start applying is to have a list of Universities where you intend to apply. How do I come up with a list of Universities? You need to do a lot of research on the Universities before you can come-up with a list. By the time you are preparing your list, you might have given your GRE and TOEFL. You’ll have to make a rational decision as to what are your chances in various Universities that you are evaluating. You'll have to evaluate the department and program ranking of the University and whether the researches and courses align with your interests. How many Universities do I apply? It depends on your profile, your personal mindset, and the money that you have kept aside for application. Generally an application for MS will cost you anywhere between Rs.4000 to Rs.6000 (All inclusive of the application fee, courier cost, GRE/TOEFL reporting fee, transcript fee and other small expenses). This is what the average cost was in year 2008. Most people I saw in various forums apply to about 8 to 12 Universities in general. How do I make my list a balanced list? Generally people have a simple logic of choosing Universities. You need to divide your list into 3 categories of :
Depending on your personal approach, you can choose 2-5 universities in each of the categories mentioned above. For ex: If one decides to apply in 10 Universities, he may opt 3 Ambitious, 4 Moderates and 3 Safe Universities. Different people have different logic for the composition of ambitious, moderates and safes. I divided my list heavily in the favor of ambitious and had very little moderates and safes in my list. There is one faction of people that believes that ultimately you have to go in one single University, so having too many safes in your list will result in a couple of safe admits too. Hence one school of thought says that having more moderates/ambitious in the list at the expanse of safes can be justified. If you get lucky and get on ambitious University, you are on the top of the world. EDULIX forums can be of immense help in your University selection process. As I wrote earlier, edulix is a wonderful place for such things. You can join edulix forum and start posting in the Engineering/Sciences forum. You are required to post your detailed profile and the list of Universities that you have short-listed. Many other aspirants and seniors will help you out to shape your list. There are so many other similar posts that are there. You need to read various posts in which people have discussed the chances for a University for a particular profile. You can read all the posts to have a fair idea of various Universities. Apart from the forums, edulix also offers the infoBank and uniSearch features. Go there, understand the features (specially uniSearch) and make full use of them. They’ll immensely help you in your short-listing process. Even if you are going at a very fast pace, you’ll require at least one weeks research to come up with a decent list. |
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The Art of Applying - the application process. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Now begins the most involving phase. You need to go
to the admission websites of the University and look for the 'Prospective
Students' or related link. Carefully study the requirements/deadlines and
other admission related information for your program.
Does sending applications early gives an advantage? In most cases, Yes !! Some Universities follow a rolling process of applications. Rolling process means that the University will not wait for the deadline to begin its application evaluation. Universities with rolling process of admission will evaluate applications as and when they come. If they find an application suitable, they'll send the offer. In such cases, sending a application early will definitely improve the chances. In some other Universities, where they start processing the applications only after the deadline, I don't think there is any substantial advantage in send the applications early. However, as a principle, you should never wait for the deadline and send/submit application as soon as possible. This will help them to check whether all aspects of your application are complete and they can revert back to you in case something more is expected. You should always leave enough time for such contingencies. For students who are applying for financial aid from University, it is imperative to send applications very early. In fact, most Universities have a separate early deadline for students applying for aid.
Various elements of Application: TOEFL score reporting: TOEFL scores are also required in almost all the Universities. The information at the admission website will specify whether TOEFL is required or not. You need to log in to your iBT profile at the TOEFL website to order additional reports.
Statement of Purpose/Resume: Most online applications (specially those on applyyourself.com) facilitate uploading the SOP and Resume on the online application itself. Otherwise you'll require to send them with the courier packet. In case you are uploading your resume, you can also append scanned copy of various certificates to the resume.
Letters of Recommendations: You will need to send your letter of recommendations. Most online applications now-a-days allow LORs to be submitted online. Submitting LORs online is easy and convenient for student as well as professors. At the online application, You need to give the email addresses of the professors who will be giving your LOR. An automatic mail will be sent to all the professors with the URL of the page where they'll need to submit the LOR. Most interfaces facilitate uploading the pdf/word file. You can ask your professor to draft a LOR on MS-Word and upload it while submitting your LOR. An online LOR usually has some general questions in form of checkboxes/radio buttons and a place where the LOR can be uploaded. All applications on applyyourself automatically convert document in any format to pdf while uploading. In cases where submitting online LOR is not possible, the applicant is required to take LOR in sealed envelops from the professor and send it along with the application packet that will be sent to the University. You can read more about the LOR in Phase-II. Transcripts: Transcripts are to be sent by post. You need to send them in sealed envelops by courier/post along with other application material that is required.
Financial documents to be sent with applications: Some Universities ask some financial documents to be sent along with the application. These documents maybe custom documents/forms that are to be filled and sent back with bank seal etc. Basically they may ask for financial proof for some amount of money. Most students who will avail loan for their studies are not in a position to send those documents at this time. Ideally you should send authentic proof of whatever amount that is possible. In case it is not enough to cover the expenses they have asked for, you can write a simple application stating that since you are planning for a bank loan and it is not possible to initiate loan processing without a offer from University, therefore it is not possible to furnish specific loan documents at this point of time. Further you can write that you will get the loan processed and send the documents if you get a offer. You can take a clue of such a letter from a sample letter here. Such a arrangement works fine and since this is a genuine problem, the Universities generally consider such cases.
The application packet to be sent via post:
There are a few documents that are to be sent via post. Transcripts, LORs
(in case you are sending written ones), Resume, SOP etc. are a few
documents that are sent via post. Basically whatever documents/proofs that
aren't uploaded in the online application are sent via post.
Which courier should I choose? There are various couriers you can send the documents. Even speed post delivers in about 10-15 days. In case you need your documents to be sent in shortest possible time, go for DHL. DHL's University express program enabled students to send application packets to USA in mere Rs.1037 (in year 2008). I sent every packet to universities via DHL and they take precisely 3 days to send the application. In one case where I really escalated the matter with one of my shipments, DHL were prompt enough to send the docs in 2 days time.
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Tracking the progress of all the elements (LOR, mail packets, fee) of application : | ||||||||||||||||||||||
In case you are applying to 8-12 Universities, you may find it difficult to
track the progress of all the applications.
You may require to adopt some tracking method to keep track of the status of various application at various point of time. MS-Excel can
come in handy here. You will get notified by email (or your online application login will get updated) whenever any of your professor completes your online recommendation. I made similar sheets to track various credit card payments
that I made and to keep the DHL AWB numbers of all the shipments I sent. This
made the process pretty easy for me.
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