Apping.. and all that..

Now that we are done with GRE and TOEFL, here comes this long process of apping. What exactly did I do after TOEFL.. Hmmm.. For one, I started preparing for CAT. Thanks to my best friend, I was forced to do it. But, believe me, its one of the best things that you could be doing. Being in 7th semester, with those tests done and moreover given the fact that when you app you do with your 6 semester grades you are just bound to give up absolutely but CAT keeps you going. If not anything else, it helps you spend your time without getting bored to death. So, I took it up and trust me its so much fun.

Okay, getting back to apping.. This is going be this phase where you are always running around the campus if not cities depending on your recos. I was a bit too lazy. When I started thinking about my sop, almost everyone in my class had applied for a minimum of 2 universities not to mention one who was done with 11!!!!!!! I really had to rush through them for my initial universities. What with apping deadlines, CAT and sem exams happening at almost the same time and me not ready with my sop even. But I did do a lot of editing after my exams for the rest of my universities. So, yeah.. your sop and recos go almost at the same time.

So.. its sop. Quite contrary to everyone else around me, I believe sop is some place where you are honest with what you want and actually tell them that. It was told to my best friend that sop is heights of hypocrisy. You write what you think the university wants to hear from you. You are absolutely interested in research. What research you have done in IIT and IISc has changed your life forever and you believe you can not live without it and unanimously everyone wants to be a professor, scientist and what not!! You go on and on and on about research that you did, that you are doing, that you want to do and some more. They say its a sure way to admits. I don't want to comment on that. But let me tell you what I did. I just wrote exactly what I desire. As you might know or have read in the previous post, I have had only one research project in IIT M and that's in a field so unrelated to what I am going to app for. CFD and Industrial Engineering. So, I can very well say my research expertise in the field in next to naught. Oops! I forgot. I was going to do my final year project in a related field. Well, that was to start in 8th semester and I was done with apping even before college reopened. Okay, so what did I do with my sop. I just wrote what I have done which is not anyway great according to so many.. no .. according to everyone else. But that's what I had done. So, I can not do anything to change it now. Believe me, nowhere did I mention I am interested in research and nothing related to being a Prof. After all, that's not what I wanted. I still remember one of my friends saying this after reading my sop, " If you want me to be honest, I have read quite a few sop so far and I am sorry to tell you that yours is below average. You have given history people don't want to hear. You should have projected your IIT M project to be the best thing that happened in your life. Where is anything about research??!!!!! ". That was not an isolated incident. There were many who said, if this was my sop I sure am not going to make even to a university on the higher side of top 20. Well.. Here again, thanks to my best friend, who stood by me. We decided we were going to be absolutely honest with what we want and that if I am going to give the univ what people think univ wants, in the next 2 years my conscience would kill me as I can never be sure if I was picked in because I was actually good. Its better to get rejects than live with that feeling forever. So, with that moral support, I went on. Till the end, my sop only said what I have done and what I want, true to my heart.

Along with the sop, you simultaneously get done with your recos too. At least go and talk to profs and make sure if they are ready to give you recos, to as many universities as you are applying and to the field you are applying. Make sure they have your resume and they know everything else that you think would be relevant. Mine was not a very tough deal. My 3 recos goes as, one from my department, one from my math teacher and the other from my IIT M prof. I know there are cases when you have to write your recos and sometimes as much as all the three and its real difficult to differentiate them when you are going to write all the three. So, make sure you work on it properly. I was so lucky that I never had to do it. Its my staunch belief that your recos matter a lot and some more, belief that formed after I got my admits. I am very grateful to all my recommenders who made it work for me. They not just molded me to be the individual I am but also have helped me scale greater heights. I know if it was not for them I would not have the admits that I do now. So, make sure you have very good recommendations.

You already should have decided on the universities you want to apply to. This necessarily depends on your research interests or otherwise, your cgpa and scores, the profs that you like there and think could work with and the reputation of the university. At least thats what I believe matters when you are apping for masters. PhD I have no clue. I think it would be better, if you can have a word with your prof and also some seniors who had similar profile as yours before finalizing on the universities you want to apply to.

After all these, goes the actual apping. It is not a very difficult thing if you are sure of the above. You just go to the university website, get to application forms, most of them have a very user-friendly system, fill it up. They ask for general details. You personal details,name address etc. Then your profile, your college scores, GRE TOEFL, awards and all that. Being a international student, you might have to answer a few questions on that like your country of citizenship, your sponsors and stuff. I remember one univ asking me for a scanned copy of passport along with my app. I really have to mention this! Two of the univ that I applied to wanted my financial documents right at the time of applying. I have no clue how this affects your chances of admits but as it is mandatory you have to send them. The only difference being, if you get an admit without aid, the univ asks you to send the documents whereas here you send it before. So, the application then would ask you for your sop, which sometimes you upload or otherwise paste it in the box provided. I remember one univ that I applied to which never asked me for a sop. Instead they had some 7 or 8 questions that I had to answer in the box provided and that was more comprehensive than my sop. You will have to pay some application fee which might vary widely depending on the university. Also, make sure your GRE and TOEFL score reaches the university on time. It would be better if you can send the additional score reports as soon as you finalize on the university.

With all this done, you send your packets. I would suggest DHL as it is more reliable and you can track your packets till the end. As far as my memory goes, every packet of yours should have all these. A cover letter, transcript, resume, sop, gre and toefl scores, a printed copy of your application. Some other additions may be your financial documents, passport photostats, pre requisites form. OOPS!! I forgot again. Some universities do have pre requisites, courses that they expect you to have done in your under graduation and some additional knowledge. You have to give descriptions of the course, attach a syllabus copy and mention your grades in the paper. You see, they have your transcripts, so you just can not fool around. If it so happens that you have not done a course which they think is necessary why not be honest with them and tell them you have not done it but you will study before you join the university. Trust me, they wont hold it against you if you are good at other things. I know it for sure, because that is what I did. I told them I do not know certain things yet I got the admit, my best and with fellowship. So, at the end of the day, you have to absolutely honest.

With all this done, you have a really very long wait in store for you. You will have to keep checking the status of your applications and the documents. A lot of times your GRE and TOEFL scores are the issue. Some of my universities never found it. Its good that you have sent a copy of them in your packets. You might very well have to send a scanned copy of it to the admissions coordinator of your department. And, you have to track if your recos reached them too. As it is online almost always, you will have to keep reminding your profs to fill your recos and send them within the stipulated date. Here again, if it does not happen, just mail your coord telling what the prob is, and they are sure to give you an extension. I got, for recos, from 2 of my univs.

So, I think this covers almost all that I went through during my apping. At the end of it, getting admits!! its just great. But more on that later. So, at last to what I wanted to say, from my experience. First and foremost, be absolutely honest about everything all through your apping. This is all that that matters. Honest sop do fetch its own rewards. Have some real good recos. They matter loads and loads. Its really good to have a high cgpa. No matter what people may say contrary to this, a good cgpa sure does takes you places. Have a reasonably good GRE(preferably a 800 in quants) and TOEFL scores. But be assured, GRE scores is not what matters the most, there are a lot of other things. I think that's about it. Happy apping!!!

Of GRE.. and more..

I have been wanting to write on this for quite sometime now. But was pretty hooked up with things that I never could manage it. Long ago when I was free I just felt I was not the right person yet. But now, I think I can really talk of it and express my views if not anything else. So this is going to be absolutely my take on the whole process.

I remember days in my second year of college when all these discussions used to happen during our lab sessions.. masters, MBA and more. I knew I wanted to do it. Apply for masters in US but then I was really very clueless about it compared to my other classmates. But still that's what I was going to do though getting into a b-school in India was relatively less complex in terms of the process involved.

Cutting a long story short, the first time I felt insufficient was during my 4th semester hols when some of my classmates who had masters options were doing research projects and I was going to Tata Motors. That I was told would be a negative. I felt very bad. But anyways, TM was a good option and took it up. I had decided that I was going to get into research the next hols. That, believe me, was not at all easy. It being winter not many openings were there. I really wonder how so many people in my college manage to get research projects all the time. I had to struggle. May be because I was not meant for it. Finally, a Prof. accepted me but the field he was working on was nothing related to mine and was not going to be what I want to pursue my higher studies in. CFD and IE are not really close. But I still took it and worked though I did not do a great job of it.

The next issue was GRE. People were preparing like crazy for it when I had not even bought Barrons. I knew I had to do something about it. Thanks to my senior who kind of pushed me through. I finally booked a date and started preparing. Then came my internship. I really could not let it off for I was sure of getting a PPO. Neither did I want to give up GRE. So, I took the internship and postponed my GRE date. I was to prepare all through my hols which never happened. I leave my place for work at about 6 in the morning and come back by 7 at night all so tired. It was a real bad schedule and I really could not study much even when I tried waking up at 4 and sleeping while I commute. I knew Quants was not going to be bad on me but Verbal was not my cup of tea and what I was doing was just adding to it. I had hardly managed to scrape through Barrons word list once when Prof. called me and said he was expecting that I would come back and work. Man!!! He was some great IIT M Prof. and he wants me to come back and work. I really could not say a no whatever the reason be. So I agreed to come and right on the day my internship got over I went to Chennai. Mind you, this was exactly 16 days before my GRE and I had not even completed Barrons list once. To add to this, I had extremely sincere GRE takers for friends who had completed not just Barrons but big book n stuff too more than once when their GRE date was 3 months away!! I really was going to be God-can-only-decide-what. With all this I met some of my friends after coming to Chennai. Effectively about 10days before the day I started taking the few tests I had and the scores were really erratic. With all this, my placement season in college was about to start and I had to register for it. Two days before GRE I was travelling down to register and do the process and get back to Chennai the day before GRE.

Well.. You can imagine how bad a state I was in. I was damn scared and GRE promised me nothing less. I got screwed like I-don't-really-know-to-define-the-extent. I have always been good with Quants and so GRE stuff was no deal. But Verbal was worse than I expected. I knew I was doing the first 5 or 6 questions well when I was baffled by this I-just-can-not-manage 140lines reading comprehension. There I knew I had lost. I somehow managed to push past that but I knew I had messed up. So I was trying really hard to work on the other sessions when I realized I was running out of time. I just started rushing past the questions and had just managed to mark almost every answer when time ended. The questions were so very easy near the end and I knew it was all gone. Still I waited for some miracle without concentrating on the analytical writing that I was doing. Finally at the end of it I click for my scores, only to see a worst nightmare unfolding right there. 800 in Quants yes. But Verbal... I was just doomed.. 510!!!!

There ensued the worst days of my life. What with my parents really wild, everyone around me saying that was the worst score possible and I just can never manage any university anything remotely near top 20. Thanks to my best friend, my only ray of hope. The only person who felt I still would get a good university. After all I had everything else which would work to my advantage. The highest GRE Verbal cut-off, as I remember, to any university that I applied to was 450 and sometimes with a caution that the average of the class is 500. But I had just managed to clear the bare minimum necessity. So, I just went through it. TOEFL was not bad neither was it great. But I did try to do some 2 or 3 listening exercises for I dint want to make a mess again. The only problem in this is the very long duration of the test. Otherwise its very much more easier and comfortable compared to GRE. Though not great I had very much a better score when I think of my GRE. 110 was decent enough for any university. So, that was on the positive side.

So, after the tests start the whole long process of apping to universities. I intend to continue this later. Hmmm.. One last word.. My whole idea of describing in such great details about what happened with my GRE and how I made a mess of it, is just to lay the ground for me to tell at some later point that a bad GRE score does not mean the end of your apping and never to your dreams. So.. Here I stop to continue this later.......