This season of UK education exhibition, the cities covered are Chennai, Bangalore and Pune. I highly recommend this exhibition to all the students who wish to pursue abroad education in 2010 or 2011. I had already attended this program in November when British council conducted this exhibition in Mumbai. I loved it. I am going again this time in Chennai. Luckily I’m in chennai now.

Last time I had the opportunity to directly speak to an experienced professor from a coveted university. I had the chance to take first hand advice from him. Also got contacts of Abroad Education agencies. This led to contacting of those agencies for direct interviews with Coventry University, Kingston University and Robert Gordon University. This is great. Looking forward to talk to more professors this time. So go to such exhibitions as many number of times you can. You will learn more about the colleges and get other information which you can’t get by sitting at home. 

Link to the actual news article at Official website of British Council.

This is not entirely the teacher’s fault according to me. Teachers are overwhelmed with a bunch of requests for recommendation letters. The students typically give minimal or no information about themselves. They simply go to the teacher an year or two after finishing their college and smile at the teacher asking for an excellent letter that praises them. How can the teacher help you if he/she doesn’t recollect any specific things about you? You can’t expect the teachers to keep a note of all the hundreds of students they teach every year.

The point here is NOT to copy paste recommendation letter from the internet and modifying it like most of the indian students tend to do. Those copied letters are useless as they say nothing about YOU as an individual. They speak of somebody but you.  And if you go straight to your teacher and ask for a letter, you may get nothing but an abstract letter that doesn’t pinpoint to the activities that you did.

Don’t give up. Don’t copy paste. There is an awesome solution to this problem. Take a print out of the document below, fill it with necessary details and give it to your teacher. This will help your teacher/professor write an essay that exactly describes the activies that you actually did and gives precise description your character.  Credit goes to Baylor university.

• What is the font size, font type that is to be used for a letter of recommendation?
• How much margin spacing should be used for a letter of recomemndation?
• How to format the heading, salutation, body, closing and signature?
• What text  should the introductory paragraph,  concluding paragraph contain? 
• Which areas should the letter of recommendation cover?
• What are the common errors commited in a letter of recommendation?

Here is the answer for all the above questions:

Ever wondered how life would be at London School of Business. Here is a sneak peak from the diary of a student of London School of Business(class of 2011).

A Month's schedule at London School of Business

Wow that’s a lot of homework for a month’s time! Hey but wait, before you draw conclusions about tough life at LBS, here’s a video of LBS students’ Christmas tradition – all students wear Santa costumes and hang around the London city centre to share the Christmas spirit, party and have fun.

So what’s your reaction about life at LBS. It rocks there, doesn’t it.

Dream high my friend!

Thanks Alex Tzukerman.

Happy Schools Blog

I’ve subscribed to their email newsletter, subscribed to their RSS feed, subscribed them on twitter and added their site to my bookmarks. But I just can’t get enough of what the blog offers. It’s a treasure trove of knowledge and advice for Indian students seeking admission in the USA and for Indian professionals seeking work at the USA. Abbreviated as HSB, Happy Schools Blog has over 800+ articles posted in it. I have read testimonials of hundreds of students who have taken value out of this blog since its inception in 2007. In that blog’s comments, there are stories of hundreds of students who made their journey to the US.

Kudos to the authors of Happy Schools Blog(HSB) to have consistently produced quality material that helped aspirants over last two years. I am not looking for admission in US universities. Technically speaking, HSB is a competitor to Interview Mantra — India. But, that fact doesn’t stop me from publicly lauding them for their work.

HappySchoolsBlog specializes at topics:

• GRE, TOEFL, GMAT Test — Tips, News and Stories.
• Statement of Purpose, Letter of Recommendation — Best practices, dos and donts, samples.
• US University Selection and rankings — produces exhaustive list of universities for various specializations. Compares colleges and reviews university rankings.
• Graduate School Application – covers A to Z of University application process.
• MS program in the US –  discusses sub-topics such as scholarships, OPT, PhD, internship
• MBA program in the US — discusses about what US business schools have got to offer.
• Education and Living Expenses –  detailed analysis of student expenses in the US based on city and state.
• H1-B news and updates — gives weekly updates and advice on H1-B status in the US.
• Job Application and Resume — gives valuable tips on sites such as LinkedIn for job search.
• Answers readers questions — asked by readers on comments and via email.
• Polls and surveys — related to graduate school application. Poll and survey results are pretty useful in making decisions.
• Live chat feature — helps aspirants to ask questions related to graduate school application live.

What I love about HappySchoolsBlog:

• The articles are written in a very simple language that is understandable by Indian students. And usually are short enough to be read in 60 seconds.
• HSB gives a real picture of education at the USA. It doesn’t distort any facts or information like the overseas education agents in India. It presents the information in a no nonsense way.
• Busts myths and rumours of students. Doesn’t encourage fake application and other illegal stuff. HSB never advocates shortcuts. It provokes people to challenge themselves to reach new heights.
• Shares plethora of information about education and living in the USA in the perspective of a common Indian Student. For that reason it ‘s very easy for an Indian student  to understand what issues they are talking about in HSB’s articles.
• Not only covers howto information but also speaks of general topics such as email etiquette while addressing a professor, how to plan education and finances in the US.
• Acts like a virtual guide and mentor to young Indian students. I have seen so many readers thanking HSB through blog comments for inspiring them to get a better GRE Score and get admit in better Universities in the US.
• HSB answers email queries of readers as public blog posts. What is astonishing is their attention to detail while answering specific questions related to education in the US.

In one of their posts, one of the authors of HSB explains the reason why HSB was started:

Students want to study in the US and that’s all they care and most of them don’t even know if the information they hear from friends or family members are correct. With so much misguided information, students make incorrect decision and end up at some university, when they could have opted for much better school.

So, HSB aims to help such students make better choices and saves them from getting into a trap of false hopes and misconceptions. I highly recommend HSB and wish their team a great future ahead!

1. Don’t mention incorrect university references

   This point has to be taken care of when you are applying the same SOP to more than one university for admission. People tend to forget checking their SOP for wrong references of universities. And they unknowingly send their SOP that is customized for a specific university to another university. For example, let us say you wrote an SOP keeping in mind, University of Southern California(USC). Let’s say that you write in your SOP about a professor at USC that you are looking forward to meet. You send the same SOP to another university say University of California, Berkeley without removing the reference to the professor at USC. When the admission committee finds the name of a non-existent professor in your SOP, they come to know that you have committed a mortal sin. They reject you outright — no matter how worthy your application may be. Be sure not to mention wrong references of names of buildings or departments in your SOP.

2. Don’t ever copy paste

   Never copy content from the sample SOPs found on the internet. Remember that those SOPs that you have downloaded from the internet can be also accessed by the selection committee. And don’t conveniently copy text from your friends SOPs. You never know, your friend might have copied from the internet. You might be feeling smug about your achievement of editing a copied SOP enough to make it look like an original one. But you can’t cheat the software that checks plagiarism. Almost all the international universities are equipped with advanced software that checks for plagiarism. Plagiarism is a serious offense in international universities of the UK, US and Australia. Serious enough to throw your application into a recycle bin.

3. Don’t distort facts

   While writing your SOP, you may get tempted to slightly amend your GRE scores or college grades to impress the SOP reader. You might think that there’s no harm distorting the scores slightly. Don’t ever do that. Never. Don’t mention false scores or fake grades. Don’t furnish wrong credentials. I have known so many students who furnish inauthentic certificates issued by non existent companies. Few students feel its perfectly fine to furnish false references, fake experience certificates. You may do such things if you want to put your admission to jeopardy. Be aware that most of the universities randomly cross check your references. They call your college/company that you mentioned about, and find out whether the reference was submitted by an authentic source. So never distort verifiable facts and objective things.

4. Don’t commit spelling mistakes

   This is the easiest way to get your admission *rejected* — write a couple of spelling mistakes or grammatical mistakes. Let’s discuss an example. Wear the shoes of a Selection committee member of a university. You come across an SOP where the student writes that he feels that higher education is impotent. The student wanted to mean important, but unknowingly misspelled the word. The spell-check that comes with the word software is not much useful. Because it can only correct wrong spellings, it can’t read your mind to find out the word that you meant in that particular context. The word impotent hazardously clears the spell check. Result — Your application becomes “impotent” to the university. Be damn sure to proofread your SOP for such misspellings and grammatical mistakes. You don’t want the selection committee to feel that you are a semi-literate person.

5. Don’t criticize someone or something

   Don’t rationalize your poor grades by blaming your college infrastructure or your teachers or your room mates or the education system. Don’t speak bad of someone or something in your SOP. Don’t use sarcastic tone in your SOP. Don’t blame anyone for your failure — may it be your team mates or your guide. Take responsibility for your failures. Criticism and blaming is a bad trait for a student. The members reviewing your SOP would instantly imagine how in future you’d blame their college for your failures. Consequently you get an instant rejection.

6. Don’t portray yourself as a loser

   There is no success without failure. Nobody is perfect. Even the highly successful people are not infallible. But, it is highly not recommended to talk only about your failures. You may sound like a life-time-loser if you speak only about failures. You may be a loser for few days but not for a life time. So it’s Okay to mention few of your failures provided you also talk in detail about how you overcame those failures. How you converted those failures to successes. You should sound like an emerging winner. Never expect sympathy or empathy from the selection committee by writing a sad SOP which tells how you have been failing continuously. And more importantly, don’t write that you are expecting your life to dramatically turn into a success by getting an admit at a desired university. The university review members know well that a loser remains a loser no matter what facilities he/she gets, until he/she works hard to overcome failures.

7. Don’t be the sole reviewer

   There is a nice analogy to explain this point. Bathroom singers like me, feel that they sing really well. I sometimes feel I should have become the Indian Idol by now. But when my friends hear my voice, they insist me to stop singing right away. They tell me that I suck at singing. To me, my voice may sound perfect, but what’s more important is how my voice sounds to others. Similarly, the SOP that you wrote may look great to you. Don’t become too complacent. Ask your friends to review your statement of purpose. Take multiple reviews of it. Your friends see your SOP in a different perspective. They would come up with interesting fallbacks in your SOP that you might never have thought about yourself.

8. Don’t abuse flowery language

   Flowery language when used subtly at the right places and in the right context, takes your SOP to the next level. Agreed. But over-usage of bombastic language makes the review experience of SOP reviewer, an annoying one. Many students come to think that their SOP would stand out, if they embed sophisticated words. Every 7 out of 10 students abuse flowery language. They write that they are superior species on the earth with dying thirst for knowledge. That they would turn the world upside down given a chance to prove their skills. Remember that a lot of students do this puffery. Do you think that an experienced reviewer who reads hundreds of SOPs an year in an average would be impressed to see a lot of sophisticated buzzwords forcibly injected here and there? In fact they hate such bloated SOPs which don’t have any material in them. Try to add some objective material that speaks about you. Include a few adjectives that truly and precisely describe you in academic angle. Don’t just push words randomly into your SOP for the heck of it.

9. Don’t make it too lengthy or too short

   Until and unless the university explicitly mentions a word limit or page limit, there are no limits for an SOP. That said, it would be a pain for the reviewers to read a 10 page biography. They wouldn’t be happy with a one page summary either. Try to fit your SOP in 2 pages and limit it to 1500 words. This is not a hard and fast rule, but just a pointer for writing a decent SOP. If there is a limit specified by the university, be sure to follow their guidelines. Don’t sideline the university requirements.

10. Don’t write in an ego-centric tone

    Your project was a success because of your single handed efforts. You have been successful in life because of nothing or nobody but you. You feel that you are Okay and all the others in your college are not Okay. The whole universe is centered at YOU. What do you think, such an attitude would grab you an admit? Never, a fair reviewer can easily see through your attitude that you steal others credit. So don’t steal credit of your team. Give due credit to people. Be modest while describing your achievements in your SOP. Use the word “we” instead of “I”, wherever you speak about team achievements in you SOP.

After I had finished editing this article, I had emailed it to a friend of mine for review. He had replied me telling that only 0.001% of students write their own SOP, rest of them copy and paste stuff from sample SOPs found on the internet. I replied him back telling that those 0.001% who write their own SOP are the ones that get admitted to the Top colleges.

One of the most important goals of this article is to unsettle the copy pasters — to make them think in the perspective of a member in the university admission committee — to boost the chance of their selection to their dream university. I wrote this articles to let the students who break their heads trying to figure out why their application got rejected by the universities they had applied for.

Special thanks to Srimannarayana Karthik and Sreerama Muthya for their contribution to this post. We hope that these pointers help you to improve your chances of selection.

Below, I have listed five of the common but weird reasons for which people come to study in the UK .

1. Dowry

   Many Indian families wish to give their daughters to a person who has studied overseas or holds a good job overseas. Overseas tag when attached to a bachelor’s profile increases his “market-value” in the marriage circles and fetch him a lot of money as dowry. Take the case of my roommate who thinks it’s absolutely worthless studying here in the UK. He enjoys his life most of the time than study. One day, I got a chance to speak to his father. I told him about my concern about his son’s future. His response was a bit unexpected. He coolly said, “Don’t worry beta, let him enjoy his life. I have everything planned for him when he gets back to India. I’ve arranged a girl for him in my community. Her father is going to pay 30 million rupees as dowry as he studied in the UK.” I was like whoa man I should have a dad like that.

2. Sham Marriage

   This is one of the desperate reason for which people come to study in the UK. Acquiring permanent citizenship in the UK takes a long time. For an outsider, it takes at least 10 years, that too after satisfying the complex point system to qualify as a citizen. But there are some loop holes by which immigrants can get a permanent citizenship in less than 5 years. The most prominent loop hole is a sham marriage. This is an agreement of marriage between a British or an European Union citizen and an non European immigrant. Few students come to the UK with the sole reason of settling in this country quickly to enjoy the benefits of being a British passport holder.

3. Dependent Visa

   Work permit in the UK is not so easy to get when you apply it from India. But, there are ways by which people can legally work full time in the UK. One such prominent way for married couples is the dependent visa scheme. One of the person from the couple especially the girl comes to the UK as a student and applies for dependent visa of her fiance. Once he gets into the country, it will be comparatively easy for him to get a job and settle here. The husband of the girl about whom I had mentioned above, is now doing a full time job as a sales assistant in a retail clothing outlet earning around 2000 pounds a month.

4. Part time work

   Minimum wage level in the UK is 5.73£ p/hr which is equivalent to around 400 Indian rupees. For people who are keen in earning money and have an average academic scores tend to come to the UK on a student visa. With part time jobs being not too hard to find, people tend to look out for earning more working odd jobs rather than studying.

5. To be one of them

   This might seem a little out of context, but is definitely true. With a lot of western culture already imbibed, a modern Indian always fancies being one of the westerners. This might not be the sole reason of coming to the UK, but it is definitely one of the subconscious reasons. This inner desire becomes profound after landing in the UK. People tend to change their way of speaking, dressing sense, eating habits and also some of the cultural habits like clubbing, one night stands, binge drinking and drugs to mingle with Westerners and eventually adopt to be one of them.

The person who was going to take my interview was the Dean of Robert Gordon University. He warmly smiled at me and wished me “Namasthe”. It took me a while to figure out that he was speaking Hindi. He politely gestured towards the chair and said “Baithiye” still wearing a pleasant smile.

He introduced himself, shook hands with me and asked me to introduce myself.

First he looked at my application profile – a set of documents which included copies of 10^th certificate, 10+2 certificate, degree certificate, fully filled copy of robert gordon university’s application form, statement of purpose and resume.

He asked me to help him to discern my 10^th and 12^th certificates. He scanned my documents and noted the percentage of marks scored in 10^th, 12^th and the class awarded in engineering(first/second/third class).

After ensuring that I had scored a score above 70% he went back scanning the 10^th certificate for the percentage of marks I scored in English. He repeated the exercise for 12^th. He was satisfied with any percentage above 68% or anything close to 70% in English. He declared that I did not need to give an IELTS test as he found my English score satisfactory. He was quite happy to know that I had a first class honours degree.

He jokingly confirmed whether a first class in our college really meant that it was first class. He was happy with my profile and agreed to give me a conditional offer with a condition that I paid the fees necessary for Visa formalities.

For the next thirty minutes, he patiently explained about a lot of things that I didn’t know about education in UK and about life at Robert Gordon University.

He discussed about the specializations that their college offers. He spoke about the subject of marketing in general for a minute.

He discussed in detail about the fee programme. He claimed that the fees charged by his university was highly competitive with respect to the fees charged by other business schools in UK. They charged around 9,300 pounds for international students. He expressed his keen interest in Indian students.

About Scholarship

He told about the 1000 pound scholarship that their college offered the previous year. And later corrected himself telling that the waiver was not exactly a scholarship as it was offered to all the international students irrespective of score or competence as an attempt to encourage students study in a weak economy. All the universities waived off a 1000 pounds on fees for international students irrespective of their scores.

About Location of the University

He discussed about the climatic conditions and geographic location of that university. Robert Gordon University was located in the north-most part of England in Aberdeen, Scotland. So, it was the coolest place in the UK. The temperatures run down below the zero degrees Celsius. And occasionally it snows for two weeks in the month of January, the heavy rains following the snow, wash off all the snow. And that the temperature is pretty stable and is called temper weather for its steadiness. It’s a kind of winter all round the year. As opposed to that of climate in the city, Chennai which has one only one season all the year – summer.

He spoke of the history of the town. Aberdeen is an important city to the UK in terms of fishing business and other shipping industries. So the city has fair number of part time jobs.

About racism

The town has little number of international migrants. There are some places of UK where the number of migrants from India, Pakisthan, Bangladesh, china are high. Usually racism exists in such places where there are large migrant communities. In the place where this college was situated, only migrants are the international students, so they are treated with respect and no reports of racism.

About night life

He said that the night life in that town starts after 11 PM and goes on till 4 AM. Youngsters hang around in pubs. They leave home at 11 PM and return at 4 AM. He asserted that it was absolutely safe in the night and there was no serious case of local violence in the recent past.

About security

Adding to what he said about security in the night, he quoted his own example of forgetting to lock their door without worrying about theives. Such was the security at that place. He said that he becomes very cautious during his trips to London, and he often checks his wallet and other belongings.

About part time jobs

He quoted an example of a student from chandigarh, Punjab who had completely subsidized his living expenses using the money he earnt from part time jobs. He told that students could earn 300 pounds per month on an average there. And that students were allowed to work for part time jobs officially for 20 hours a week and all the day long during the Easter and Christmas holidays.

About support from Staff

He said that students could approach their friendly and supportive staff anytime to discuss any kind of problem. No matter whether a student is unable to follow instructions of the teaching staff, or student is not able to cope up with the pressure of studies or the student has some financial difficulties or personal problems or wants to go home for an emergency or has any kind of problem there. He also sees students, we could book an appointment with his secretary and block half an hour for seeing him.

About concessions for students for ill health

He said they give reasonable consideration to medical problems. If the student can provide necessary medical evidence of being sick, his/her exam could be postponed or given an extension of time considering it as a special case.

About after college life and jobs

The UK visa permits us to stay there and search for work there. And once we find an job, our employer would take care of the extension of work visa.

About recession and job market

He was frank about recession hitting the UK economy hard. The UK economy was just now recovering from the most dreaded recession of the century. However he hoped that by the time we finished our education by 2012, the economy would revive fast and there would be lot of jobs that would ready. He quoted an example of a job that was necessary in a company but was just being kept in hold to save some extra money during bad economy. Once economy recovers, all such jobs start filling. He also frankly said that few students had trouble finding part time jobs last year owing to the recession.

About difference between MSc and MA

MSc involves statistics and mathematical analyses and equations, more suitable for students with engineering or science background. MA involves less math and more strategy and arts and humanities related stuff in the programme. He thought MSc would suit us better than MA as we had science background. MA suits students with arts and humanities related degree.

About MBA eligibility

He thought that we were not eligible for MBA as our age was just 23 years and that we did not have 4-5 years of experience preferrably managerial experience. And that Msc would let us focus on a single topic.

About semesters and dissertation

He explained about the 3 semester system in the UK MSc course and about the dissertation work in the last semester. I asked him whether we could choose any topic of our choice in dissertation. He replied that we can choose any topic related with the course curriculum. Dissertation was around 25,000 words and that we would get professional help from the professors.

About seeing him in the college

He said that we may not see him in the college as he no longer teaches in the university, he administrates offices. However we may get to see them when we are involved in some misconduct or any disciplinary issues. He playfully said that he didn’t want to see us in his office for misconduct reasons.

Final advice to me

The dean suggested me to get my things ready and get the necessary formalities cleared before I joined the college. He insisted that I went through their website about the course, get some books on marketing and read. Arrange other things such as visa letter, bank loan etc.

What is the eligibility criterion for MBA and MSc program? Which program suits me better?

These are two of the most common questions that pop up in the minds of people aspiring for a Post Graduate degree related to business in the United Kingdom.

I had these questions unanswered in my mind until I had visited Education UK Exhibition in Mumbai in the month of October in 2009. Education UK exhibition was an event conducted by the British Council, India.

At the venue of the event, I anxiously waited for the seminar session on “MBA in the UK” to start. I had great anticipation that the speaker of this session would clear all my doubts related to the MSc and MBA programmes in the UK.

The session started as per the scheduled time at sharp 3:30 PM. A senior lecturer who teaches Marketing in Worcester University, started speaking about MBA programme offered in the UK universities. He included a separate slide in his slide show for explaining the differences between MSc and MBA.

Generalist vs Specialist degree

MBA degree in comparison to MSc degree is a generalist degree. That means, curriculum of  a typical MBA programme covers all the fields related to business such as Finance, Sales, Marketing, HR, General Management, etc. Whereas MSc degree is a more specialist degree, it focuses on a specialised field of study.

Take the case of a course named International Marketing Management MSc in the University of Worcester. The International Marketing Management MSc develops your general management skills and explores the many complex issues associated with marketing in MSc in an international context. But it would not include any other business related subjects such as finance or HR. The curriculum would purely deal with specifics of International Marketing and Management.

Take a look at the MBA programme curriculum in the University of Worcestor. The course includes all the general subjects related to management and business.

So, if you are seeking basic knowledge in all the subjects related to business, an MBA degree is more suited to you. Whereas, if you are seeking specific and in-depth knowledge of a particular subject related to business, an MSc degree suits you better.

Age and experience

Typically, age of a student pursuing MBA degree in the UK is 28 years with 4 years of work experience. Which clearly means that universities expect the applicants to have at least 4-5 years of work experience. And some institutions insist that the applicants have managerial work experience. Some institutions are okay with technical work experience.

Whereas freshers who have just passed out of their college can apply for an MSc degree course. They are not expected to have any work history. There is no age criterion for admission of students in the MSc course.

Nature of the course

The speaker of the seminar quoted an example “If I had to take a lesson on a particular subject common to MBA and MSc students, the style of teaching would differ in an MBA class and an MSc class. In an MBA class, I’d show the lesson slides to the class, take a seat in the classroom and let the students discuss. As MBA students would have had prior professional experience, they would share their view on the topic of discussion. They would share their opinions on how this lesson relates to their past work, how they had applied those concepts in their companies, how their companies worked, etc. The classes are more discussion oriented. It is assumed that the class has knowledge of the topics that are being taught.

Whereas if I had to take the same topic in an MSc classroom, I teach the lesson in detail and give them a case study for their practice. I would not assume that they have any prior knowledge of the topic being taught.”

Administrator vs Scientist

Lastly the speaker joked, “When the recruiting companies ask me whether to choose an MBA graduate or an MSc graduate, I ask them back, Do you want an Administrator(MBA) or a Scientist(MSC)?”

What the speaker meant was that an MBA course teaches more about the administration part of business. Whereas a MSc course includes science related things involved in that business. Such as statistics or complex math or engineering related to business.

I hope that this article demystified the mystery of differences between MBA and MSc.

Comment below if you have any specific question related to MBA vs MSc in the UK.

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