Applying to US Universities

Students go to US Universities for different reasons. Good Education, opportunities, dollar dreams are few of the common reasons. However, experiencing the diverse culture of US is one of the best opportunities one must utilize.

International students often neglect the opportunity and tend to spend all their time not only with people from same country but even within sub cultures from within a country. The other day someone posted a question on our forum about which University has good number of students speaking a particular Indian regional language!

There is no fun in traveling half the world if you still with people from your own village!! While it is really important for a Korean to find a supportive group of Korean students and for a Turkish student to be able find a Turkish roommate, all students should make a conscious effort to make friendships across cultural boundaries.

When students are asked to form groups for academic projects, it is a good idea to make diverse group. You learn the work ethics and styles of people from different backgrounds which will help in your future career.

Have fun and use your time well while on the campus of a US University!

Many of you will end up with admission offers from good Universities, well, without any funding. You will have to make an easy decision to join a low ranked University or the difficult decision to join a great University without funding.

Students do take some risk and go without funding. Many of them eventually get some job or assistantships in library, computer center or even other departments. You can do one small thing before reaching US which will assure you some kind of job on campus. Learn some HTML and programming skills. Make your own website which you can show to an employer to prove you really know HTML.

Students from any background even History or Biology can do this. We encourage you to learn some computing skills and use it to find on campus student jobs. Working outside the University is illegal for international students. Details here.

On the day of the GRE GMAT and TOEFL tests, there is an option to report your score to upto 4 Universities for free. This is a significant opportunity to save a lot of dollars if you plan ahead.

Identify ten Universities where you would like to apply. Then identify the middle four according to ranking and reputation. These are the safest Universities to report your score to. In case you end up with a very low GRE score then you may still be applying to these 4 Universities as against your dream school which could be ruled out due to a poor score. If you do not do careful planning then you may end up wasting this wonderful opportunity.

• Cornell University
• Texas A&M University
• New York University
• UT Arlington
• University of Cincinnati