SEARCHING FOR THE RIGHT COLLEGE

March, April

The preparation for GRE and search for the right university goes simultaneously in the beginning. In the early phases you will be spending 90% of your time searching universities and 10% of time preparing for GRE. As the end of April approaches this ratio will be changing, preparation for GRE will be given more weightage. When May starts university research should be totally stopped. This is the time when you will be preparing for the GRE full fledged. Searching for a college is a very time consuming affair. You have to divide your time between preparing for the GRE and searching for the college. So I recommend to make your own plan so that the overlap of these two activities is as less as possible. Start with the 90/10 ratio and then every week keep changing the ration, giving more stress on GRE.

Get a list of the university rankings for your respective department. This document is not a comprehensive guide to university search process. A general outiline will be presented. While searching through the universities keep applying to send the brochures and forms through post. Finding information online is sometimes tougher than reading a book. You may just miss a very vital url which you wont while going through a book. Some universities have different formats for recommendation letters, etc. so keep applying. They should reach you much earlier. You cannot rely on the postal system. In the worst case you can always print them online but the ones they send are much colourful and better. There is no charge for requesting a brochure. If you can be in touch with professors then it’s the best. You should start pretty early communicating with the professors. In generals professors don’t talk to master’s students. So unless you are applying for a PhD you will hardly get any reply from a professor. However, if some student is in touch with a professor and is getting his recommendation for admission, then he can skip this section of the book.

Keep applying for brochure from as many universities as possible. It does not cost anything. You can apply to as many universities as you want. Later in the book its described how much it takes to apply to one university. In general you should apply to at least 7 universities. Distribute your selection of university based on rankings. That is, don’t just apply to the best universities. For example, select two of the universities ranked between 1 to 30, three from 30 to 60 and two from 70 to 90. If you are on schedule you can save a lot of money while applying. Always apply to a couple of universities down the rank. Its good to have admission offer from more than one university just to convince the visa officer how you have selected this university in spite getting admission offers from other places. This will show your seriousness and discretion. The more the number of admission offers, the better are your chances of getting the visa.

Make a chart of the universities, the rankings, application deadlines, admission criterias, minimum GPA and GRE/TOEFL scores required, etc. A very common question that is frequently asked : since you still don’t have the GRE score in hand, how will you search for an university. Its actually true. Every university has a cut off GRE score and after an exhaustive search you might have zeroed into an university and later find your GRE scores not up to the mark to apply there. Some people suggest giving the GRE early before the university search starts. Its up to you. Make sure you plan this two activities in such a way that the two does not overlap, and you have sufficient time for both.

In my opinion this is not a very big problem. University search is a very big affair and not having the GRE score in hand is not a big problem. You will have a tentative idea about how much you are going to score. The process of gathering and classifying information can go on. Make sure you have lots of options in hand. Make a condition classification, select a set of universities for a score within a GRE score range, select another set of universities for another score range. Prepare three or four such classifications. Remember at this phase of preparation your objective is to gather and organize as much information as possible, not to focus on any university in particular.

As the GRE exam approaches, you will be more sure of a tentative score, accordingly you can focus your attention to that set of universities which matches your score. You can do this in very short time if you already have a huge database of information gathered early during the process.

There are some disadvantages to giving the GRE before the university search. Since you are not sure which universities you will apply, you cannot exploit the option of sending your GRE score free to four universities, losing almost 10,000 rupees straight. Getting a date for the GRE is not in your hands. There may be a lot of delay. University search is a long process and earlier it starts the better. As you go through the rest of this document you will the kind of tasks remaining ahead may be equally or more tougher than preparing for GRE. So let GRE not take your full attention. You may later think it justified as things are planned in this book.