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.

It’s a parents’ choice

In India, the selection of engineering college is parents decision. Students don’t decide which college they want to join. At the age of 18, having just finished their 12^th, they don’t have enough maturity to choose a college to study engineering. Nor do they have sufficient financial authority to take independent decisions. So parents take an active role during this time. It is entirely parents’ responsibility to find the right college for their ward. So this article is dedicated to the Indian parents searching colleges for their children.

Know your child

The first and foremost thing you should do as a parent is to analyze the psyche of your son/daughter. Understand what your child expects from an engineering college. Not just in the academic angle but in a general view. Find out where you ward wishes to study. Does he/she prefer an urban environment or sub-urban or rural environment. Can he/she stay without you? Do they prefer to stay with parents or do they prefer to stay away from parents to learn to be independent? Does he/she have any regional or cultural preferences? Students from South india take time to adjust to cultural differences in North India and vice versa. Find out if your ward is comfortable with the food change and climate change.

Is public opinion useful?

Asking your neighbors or friends for opinion is a good thing. But they can only tell you which college suits them, they can’t tell which one suits your ward well. Their opinion is personal to their situation and not to yours. Their children may be smarter or dumber than yours. Their expectations from a college may be different from yours.

Rely Newspaper advertisements?

Don’t trust newspapers alone. Advertisements are meant to be advertisements. The very purpose of an advertisement is promotion. Don’t believe whatever is written in advertisements. Nothing can be a better check than a personal inquiry.

Get the inside story

I advice the parents to at least go to the college 2-3 times before deciding to join their ward in a college. Visit the college campus and observe. Don’t do anything else. Simply observe. God has given human beings a wonderful skills of deduction from observation. If you observe the college environment for half an hour or so, you will get a little idea about the college, how it works and about the students’ level of thinking.

Asking students for opinion inside college is a bad idea. Because students would not give your their frank opinion inside the college campus for the fear of talking against the college that holds the education and future career. You may ask students outside the college campus for a frank opinion. It is also a good idea to talk to the parents of students studying in a particular college. Again, asking teachers may not be a good idea. Teachers can’t voice a frank opinion against the colleges for which they are working.

Careful while paying admission fees

Do not pay the admission fees to unauthorized agents. Be sure to pay only to authorized agents registered with the college. I have known a case where parents of student from Bihar have lost 1 lakh rupees by paying to an unauthorized agent in Bihar.

College that fits your budget

Carefully plan your budget and decide whether or not to join your ward to a college. Think long term. Be sure whether you will be able to pay fees for all the 8 semesters in span of 4 years. I have known parents who had to sell their lands to pay fees of their students owing to the lack of forethought about the fees.

Placement is not everything

Career placement is not the only criterion for selecting a college. You should carefully examine the teaching standards of teachers in the college, facilities provided by college for education, food and health.

Make the best use of what is available

And after joining a particular college, you can’t compare the facilities of a particular college with other colleges. Once committed it’s done. You can do nothing complaning about the facilities in the colleges. Try to make the best use of the facilities given by that college.

About the author: Kanniga is a Professor in Bharath University, Chennai. She has a teaching experience of over 10 years. She holds Masters degree in Engineering and Business Administration.(M.E, M.B.A). Professor loves her work as worship. You can ask education related questions to professor via email kannigatruth@yahoo.com

A venn diagram to choose Business Schools

I guess this diagram says it all. This post doesn’t require any further explanation.

Comment below on your version of understanding of this picture.

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!

Here are common reasons for rejections divulged by Admission Committee experts. Watch the video with attention, note down the reasons and try to prevent your rejection by following the advice given by the Admission committee members.

I liked this video very much. What caught my attention was the point put by a speaker at 1min 26sec in the video.

If someone does something either in the interview process or in their essays that suggests that they are not a team player, we reject their application.

This is such an important point to ponder. Never write in your statement of purpose suggesting that you were the only person who worked in your team project. Give due credit to your team or whoever helped with your accomplishment. Stealing credit and portraying a self centered picture hurts your chances of selection.

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.