THE APPING GUIDE...
Greetings to one and all !
Among many openings available after U.G courses, applying to Universities
abroad is a remarkable one, because, like few other options,
this one will
unquestionably change your life in a big scale. Hence such a
decision has to
be made after cautious consideration and introspection.
The ensuing pages will give you an outlook, and a reasonably good
understanding on how to go about the application procedure.
First and foremost, the topic about timing, since time is every thing
when
you embark on something that involves postal communication
across the
atlantic.
The apping timetable :
* Within the end of the third year, if possible V semester, it is
imperative that you should have decided a 'solid' area, in
which your
interests are focussed. For example, this could be
Networking, Image
processing, VLSI System Design and Analysis, etc for the
Electrical faculty
students, Thermal fluids, Production/Manufacturing Systems
and Operations
Research etc, for the students of Mechanical Engineering
Students and so on.
It would be an added advantage if you could undertake (and
complete if
possible), a project in your area of chosen interest, during
your second
year or third year holidays. Further information on the areas
inwhich
substancial amount of research is going on in the U.S is
given in the
subsequent pages.
AUGUST 1:
This is the deadline for you to have sent your application requests, or
in
other words, 'pre-application'. Actually, there is no rigid
deadline for
anything, that is to request application, or send filled out
application
back, but since financial aid is limited and is distributed
to those who
apply early, it is very very safe for you to blindly follow
the 'time-table'
given in the following pages. This schedule is the result of
years of
observation and understanding of the process by our seniors,
and it is
especially very effective for us, the students of A.U. As a
matter of fact,
the IITians apply marginally early to us, and the students of
Madras
University Colleges apply a bit later to us, so we will not
be directly
'competing' with them. This might sound absurd to you now,
because you might
wonder when the applications are considered on the global
basis, how
important is whether we clash our apping schedule with
anybody in Madras
itself ? Our seniors would definetely have had sound reasons
to suggest this
schedule and as you read further you will begin to see the
reason too. The
appliaction forms are for free, (except that of Stanford, and
University of
California-Berkeley), and the Universities promptly despatch
you a copy of
the application forms as soon as you contact them by e-mail
or postal mail.
This 'as soon as ' would even mean 2-3 months.
You can send your pre-application, that is your request for receiving a
copy of the application either by post or by e-mail, and the
later method is
convenient.It is possible that some Universities would ask
you to file your
application online, and in that case you can do it as
instructed, and in
most cases you will be asked to send all associated materials
and the
application fee by post soon. The associated materials
consist of,
Transcript, Letters of Recommendation, your Personal
Statement of Purpose,
Rank Certificate (only if the University requests to send
one), and the most
importantly, the application fee.
So in a nutshell, all you require to complete your
application is,
1)All the Application forms.
2)Transcript.
3)Statement of Purpose.
4)Letters of Recommendation,usually from three faculty
members, in some
cases,two.
5)Rank Certificate.
(Detailed information on all the things mentioned above,
fills the following
pages.)
*Although there is no fixed format to pre-apply, a 'traditional' format
followed by Guindians is given for your reference, and you
may follow it
rigidly, or digree a wee bit and retain the original in
essence.
*You would do well to HIGHLIGHT you MAILING address and that you require
a
paper copy, because otherwise you would end up receiving
application forms
as file attachments with your mail, and needless to say, all
those files
would require adobe acrobat or someother reader to open it,
and there is a
fair chance that your file attcahment is a 0 K one!
*The e-mail (and snail mail address, in case you are interested)to which
you should bombard your application requests are given at the
back. For your
information the same is available at, www.usnews.com , and in
Peterson
Review, and Princeton Review.
