Applying to US Universities

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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.

Visit www.app2us.com.

Fulbright Scholar grants are awarded for advanced research and university lecturing in the United States. Doctoral degree or equivalent professional training or experience at the time of application. Individual grants are available to scholars from over 150 countries. Applications for grants are made through the Fulbright commission/foundation or public affairs section of the U.S. embassy in their home countries.

Scholars need to apply in the home country for the scholarship. A person holding permanent residency of United States is not eligible. Proficiency in English is expected so that the awardees can teach at a US University. To determine if your home country participates in the program, please contact your country’s Fulbright commission or the public affairs section of the U.S. embassy.

Source: www.cies.org

Emailing professors should be done for the purpose of benefiting form the process not for the heck of it. With the challenging application process, you are hard pressed for time. Time should be carefully invested in any aspect of application and sending emails is no exception.  Most of us do not like spam emails in our mailbox and so do the Professors. The time of Professors is precious. Sending repetitive and unfocussed emails is only going to irritate them.

Here are some ideas which will help you get a favorable response. Write a grammatically correct email and perform a spell check. Write a small mail that focuses on your research interest and you want to work with the Professor. Write a new email for every situation, never use a generic email like Dear Professor my interests are same as your interests!! Think of a good subject. Do not send any attachment in the first email. But it is a good idea to send a link to your resume. Make sure you have read the website and the research interest of the Professor. The content of your mail should reflect this. Your email should very briefly mention one or two of your strongest attributes, like 800 GRE quant score or a paper publication. 

There is a decreasing order of probability of a response if you are mailing after getting a admission offer, or after sending your application packet or even before sending your application. Some application formats ask for names of one or two professors with whom you want to work. In that case your mail should mention that. Never ask for Teaching Assistantships, because individual professors do not decide that. Never directly ask for funding in your first email. Do not mail all the Professors of a department. Do not email the same professor repeatedly if you do not get a response. If you get admitted to a program, you may resend an email to the some of the Professors in that department. For international applicants not familiar with American culture, we would like to add that be very polite in your tone. Address the Professor as Dear Dr. lastname, or Hello Dr. lastname. Never write “Dear Madam” to a female professor - it is culturally inappropriate.

The most important idea is to write something interesting and unique which will get noticed and differentiate you from hundreds of students who recently mailed that professor.

For more ideas on how to make your application stand out, please visit www.app2us.com.

If you have decided on what to study and considering where to study, please checkout www.app2us.com and other resources on internet. If you have decided to study in a top US University, but have not decided what to study, you are not the only one with the similar dilemma. For a quality

US education experience, often the academic and economic aspects need to be balanced.  To elaborate on this point, there are students who aspire an MBA degree, but the prohibitive cost leads them to consider MS. There are students who are actually interested in MS degree but end up applying for a PhD program because they have heard that probability of funding is more for PhD. The more confused ones start an MS program with an aim of applying for MBA later. The MBA programs are becoming a riskier venture for international students. The currency rate of most countries makes it very difficult for students to pay their fee. Funding opportunities are partial and limited. The job potential is uncertain. As it happened on April 1, 2007, the visa quota may get filled up and students may need to return to their countries if they could not get an H-1B visa. Working outside US may make it difficult to pay back huge MBA student loans. The funding for MS programs is shrinking but still a good number of Universities offer full funding. The flexible format of MS programs makes it possible to work part time as student workers to help pay the costs. It is possible to make good money during full-time summer internship. PhD programs are the safest bet for funding. However if you are offered admission to a PhD program without funding, it is a signal that the department does not really want you, but they will be happy if you want to contribute to their research output at your own cost. Five or six years is a long timeframe to commit without getting a commitment of assured funding. So to join a PhD admission without funding is a very risky proposition. We suggest you apply for MBA / MS / PhD whatever actually interests you and helps you achieve your goals in life. However it is good to be aware of the relative financial implications.

Applications are now open for the 2008 Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholarships. The scholarship pays upto US Dollars 25000 to study abroad. The best feature of this scholarship is that there is no restriction on what you have to study.  You cannot use this scholarship to study in your own country or in a country where you have lived in the past for more than six months. The scholarship criteria include a brilliant academic record and an awareness of international affairs. Ability to be able to explain one’s own culture is an important criterion. 

This scholarship is awarded only in those countries where there is a Rotary Club, but most countries of the world have Rotary clubs. China recently allowed Rotary clubs!

For more details, see the link to the Rotary Foundation website: http://www.rotary.org/foundation/educational/amb_scho/index.html

Visit www.app2us.com for more funding information.