Applying to US Universities

We tried the application, and found it to be user friendly and helpful with help provided on the right hand side of the page. One interesting help note is, “Help: Date of Birth If day or month is unknown, enter as shown in passport.” Obviously you need to write the date of birth as given in your passport! If the passport does not match your birth certificate or there is an error, please get that fixed before you apply for the visa. If you scan and upload the photo that you will carry for the visa interview, the system can indicate whether or not the photo meets the required specifications. As may be expected of a system for a country that leads the F-1 and H1 visa applicants, the system was slow, and carried a message, “This application has been experiencing intermittent connectivity issues. Please save your work frequently.(121)”. So completing the online form well in advance is a good idea.

We noticed one item that is going to cause a lot of headache is the field where you need to supply your ‘Full Name in Native Alphabet’. That was much easier to do in a paper based application. Here is a suggested way to do this,
1. visit www.google.com/transliterate
2. select your native language, say Telugu.
3. Type your full name in English.
4. If you typed Raghu Akkapeddi, the tool will transliterate for you as రఘు అక్కపెద్ది .
5. If there are multiple ways to write your name, you will be prompted to choose the right one.
6. Copy and paste to the textbox in the visa application.
If your language is not supported by the google tool, you can find other websites where you can do this for free.

If you have a question, you can ask in the “Student Visa” section at the app2us.com forums. If you find our blog posts useful please be sure to spread the word to your friends.

International students are at a high risk due to two factors:
1. There are cultural differences they take time to adjust to - for example, date of birth is very private information in the US, and someone who knows your date of birth can steal your identity. But in some parts of the world it is so public information that students and job seekers write their date of birth on their resume! Bottom-line, stop mentioning your date of birth, except in the required field in the application. Don’t write your date of birth on your resume or other application documents.
2. Despite being very familiar with the internet, most international students have limited experience with shopping online and using a credit card over the internet.

No matter how much precautions are taken, anyone’s identity can be stolen. In the recent past, many mass identity thefts have taken place by hacking into servers of U.S. universities. Thieves have allegedly stolen record of millions of students, including of those who applied to that university, but did not even enroll. The only thing you can do is to monitor your credit file periodically (say once every six months) and take appropriate action if your identity is stolen. For example, your credit report may show a credit card you opened last month, which you are sure you did not open. You must contact that credit card provider and explain the facts to them. Universities or other large entities whose servers are compromised usually do a good job of informing all people whose data was stolen or is suspected to have been stolen, but beyond that it is the responsibility of the individual.

We highly recommend accessing your credit report and credit scores within the first six months of getting your social security number. In rare circumstances, you might be allocated a social security number which is already being used by a identity thief. If the contents of this post appear complicated and you have a question, you can ask in the “Travel, Money Matters and Insurance” section at the app2us.com forums. If you find our blog posts useful please be sure to spread the word to your friends.

New Verbal question includes a short text with two or three numbered blanks, each blank indicating that something has been omitted. You are asked to fill all the blanks in the way that best completes the text. You can find more details here .

Questions of this type ask you to enter your answer either as a number in a single answer box or as a fraction in two separate boxes — one for the numerator and one for the denominator - using the computer mouse and keyboard. The trickiest part in this type is to make sure you pay attention to the rounding off. If you calculate the answer correctly as 9.38 and the answer is expected to be rounded to one decimal place, only 9.4 will be treated as the correct answer. You can find more details here .

In another significant change, the Reading Comprehension questions have traditionally contained line numbers that reference specific parts of the passages. Those line numbers are being replaced with highlighting when necessary in order to focus the test taker on specific information in the passage.

Reference: This article is based on the official ETS announcement which is publicly available on their website.

Dr Pachauri is someone who studied at US, returned to his country and gave a lot to his country and to the world. We requested an interview with him and he graciously agreed. In addition to US education, we talked about a wide range of topics including global warming, nobel peace prize and even cricket. In reply to a question, Dr Pachauri said one of the greatest strengths of the US education system is the flexibility and freedom it offers. The full text of the interview is published here. We believe anyone headed to USA should read the interviews on our interview series page.

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2009 was shared by Charles K. Kao “for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication” and Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith “for the invention of an imaging George E. Smith earned his PhD from the University of Chicago with a dissertation of only 3 pages.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2009 was shared by Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath “for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome” Venkatraman Ramakrishnan got his Ph.D. in Physics from Ohio University in 1976 and then spent two years studying biology as a graduate student at the UC San Diego while making a transition from theoretical physics to biology. Thomas A. Steitz is a Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2009 was awarded to Herta Müller of Germany “who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed”.

The Nobel Peace Prize 2009 was awarded to the US President Barack Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” Barack Obama earned his and BA from University of Chicago and JD from Harvard Law School.

In response to a question, Professor Hennessy said, “Stanford’s distinguishing characteristic is its pioneering spirit and focus on research that contributes to the public good. There is no better environment for innovation. The world today is facing enormous challenges, ranging from emerging infectious diseases that become global threats to the impact of climate change on our planet’s ecosystems, from threats of terrorism to the persistence of poverty. At Stanford, we believe we can help address these problems, both through groundbreaking research and through the education of the next generation of world leaders. For students who are interested in taking on the big challenges and making a difference, we hope you will consider applying to Stanford. We think you will find the university a place that will nurture your dreams and help you achieve your goals.” For the full interview, please visit the interview page.

With this exclusive interview we are making good progress with our interview series aimed at inspiring our readers. In the future we will be interviewing more Professors, successful professionals, university administrators and even recent students to bring you insights into the academic and professional life in the USA.

Since app2us.com would not exist without the Internet, we decided to celebrate the occasion by interviewing the father of the Internet, UCLA Professor Leonard Kleinrock, who started it all. We are very fortunate that Professor Kleinrock agreed to interview with us, and share his memories from that day, 40 years ago. The interview focused on Internet, his research, and of course our favorite subject - US universities.

In response to a question, Professor Kleinrock said, “I am currently working on a number of exciting research problems. They include: nomadic and mobile computing; peer-to-peer networks; intelligent agents; smart search engines; distributed sensor networks and smart spaces; distributed spheres of influence; and more.” For the full interview, please visit the interview page .

Before we move forward to the details, let us understand the concept of sabbatical. It is a type of paid leave which professors can avail after every few years during which they typically do interesting stuff like travel, writing books etc but most certainly do not teach or even be available in their university on a daily basis. Why is this important? If you are applying for fall 2012 and Dr. Smith is planning to take his sabbatical in 2012 - 2013, then your keen interest in working with him is not going to help your application. In other words, you were much better off not mentioning his name or any name. You carry similar risk in mentioning the name of those professors who may be retiring or joining other universities in the near future.

By now, hopefully it is clear that mentioning names without thorough information is a risky step, and you may never have the full information on matters like impending sabbaticals, retirements or resignations. Mentioning names can be helpful in some scenarios. There are programs like UIUC Computer Science which specifically ask name(s) of professors you want to work with. In that case, it makes sense to briefly mention with whom do you want to work and why. Mentioning names also gives an impression that you have done your homework and have not copy pasted the same SOP everywhere. So that brings up a very valuable point - if you are going to mention names in your Statement of Purpose, be sure not to copy paste blindly. Hopefully you got the idea why.

Applicants to MBA program may not find themselves in this dilemma. However if you truly believe in something like, “my reasons of applying to Columbia MBA program includes renowned faculty including Nobel laureate Dr. Joseph Stiglitz…”, then you may mention a name.

What do we recommend? app2us advisors strongly recommend that you read the department website and application instructions thoroughly to understand whether the program requires or recommends the applicants to mention the names of some professors. If that is the case, mention as many names as suggested after careful research, preferably in two areas of your interest. If there is no such indication, then mention your areas of interest - one or two - but no names.


Like this post? Forward this to your friends asking them to join app2us.com

Follow app2us.com on twitter: http://twitter.com/app2us