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.

Coming back to the topic,  let me give a disclaimer first. This tip is only useful for those aspirants who have written Statement of Purpose on their own and are ready with a basic draft. I am certainly not a proponent of plagiarism and unoriginality.

The biggest difficulty that an average Indian student faces after having written a basic draft for SOP is polishing it. How to add Business English to it? I mean how to add words that make the essay sound professional, polished and sophisticated? What to write when you run short of ideas to write?

Don’t worry at all. Just get a prospectus book of a University that offers the degree that you wish to pursue. Prospectus Book only. Not an ebook or website of the University. Now go to the pages where there is an explanation for why you should study at that University. This page(s) is very important to you.

Let me explain you with an example how to proceed. Here is a quote from Kingston University”s Business Programme Postgraduate prospectus.

We know that undertaking postgraduate study is a major commitment and we want you to succeed, whether you are hoping to use your qualification to stand out from the crowd when applying for jobs, to help you gain that all-important promotion, or simply to expand your knowledge of a subject that interests you. We pride ourselves on offering you top-quality teaching, support and resources, and are keen to provide you with a programme that suits you and takes into account your work and life commitments.

Now edit these lines and write it from your perspective. Here is what I wrote for starters.

I am committed to undertaking postgraduate study as I wish to stand out from the crowd when applying for jobs. I also wish to expand my knowledge in a subject that interests me — XYZ subject. I believe that ABC programme at your University suits me taking into account my work and life commitments.

I hope you got the point. All the Universities in the world market their study programmes with the help of marketing material and prospectuses. They explain in great detail how an educational degree from their University can benefit you in your professional life. A simple trick is to take inspiration from their ideas and make them yours. The more prospectuses you refer, the more ideas you get, the better. But beware, don’t use the prospectus of the University that you are applying for!

Is this not a KEKA idea?

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.

So how about the rest of the 35%? How do they fund their education?

By doing part-time jobs. Part-time jobs in the US pay on an hourly basis. International students try to fund their living expenses by working in part-time jobs.

Are the international graduate students legally allowed to work part-time jobs?
The international students who hold F-1 visa can’t accept any off-campus employment at anytime during the study. Period. Before discussing about illegal off-campus jobs, let’s review the difference between “illegal and Legal jobs”, the difference is “Legal means paying taxes to the government and following the rules as an F-1 student” where as “Illegal means receiving a pay without paying taxes to the government and breaking rules as an F-1 student”.  If you pay the taxes, the government is aware of what you are doing and if you don’t, yes, you are in a risk. (F-1 is the visa status given to the international students who come to the USA to pursue academic courses).

On-campus jobs
Almost every college and university in the US have part-time jobs for students. To name a few on-campus jobs, Research Assistantship, Teaching Assistantship, college website maintenance, desktop maintenance, campus security personnel, jobs at the university’s international office, university library and college cafeteria. These jobs also called as on-campus jobs and are absolutely legal and safe to work. There is no problem with these jobs as long as the duration of work is 20 hours a week or less while school is in session. Students may be employed full-time during vacations and recess periods as long as they intend to register for the next term. Other legal  jobs include internships, Curricular Program Training(CPT), Optional Practical Training (OPT).

Curricular Practical Training is an opportunity for international students in F-1 status to participate in professional, temporary employment such as an internship or similar situation, prior to the completion of studies.^[6] Optional Practical Training is an opportunity to get professional work experience which will enhance their overall educational experience in the US.  OPT can be obtained for off-campus employment and/or practical training completed prior to (pre-completion) or beginning after (post-completion) the completion of studies.^[6] CPT is compulsory part of curriculum whereas OPT is optional.

OPT, CPT programs grant legal authorization to work in professional off-campus jobs.  After the graduation, one can work full time or part-time with F-1 student status on OPT (Optional Program Training). OPT starts 2 months after the completion of graduation.

Off-campus jobs
There are also a lot of part-time jobs available outside college/university at external agencies. Such as jobs at malls, restaurants, gas stations, etc., These jobs are also called as off-campus jobs. It is illegal for international students(holding F-1 visa) to work in these jobs. Since most of the students come to the US with the desire to earn money and supplement family support or enjoy with that money by leading a luxurious life in the USA until the end of the graduation, Indian students tend to look for off-campus part-time jobs which are relatively easier to manage.

How much money do on-campus vs off-campus jobs fetch students
If its TA/RA they get about $12-15/hr with a waiver for 3 course credits. It will be for a semester or for an year(mostly for PhD but not always). This is because some courses are taken by only few students and if you are the first person in the ranking of class then you can get a TA. On-campus minimum wage is $8/hr and will be till $15.

Off-campus jobs pay just about the minimum wage as per the Fair Labor Standard act. It depends upon the state where you reside, approximately around 7$/hr.

Ease of finding an off-campus job vs on-campus job
The most common complaint against on-campus jobs by the students is that, they are hard to find and that they don’t allow students to work for enough time to be able to pay their bills.

Whereas off-campus jobs are ubiquitous. The US being an international hub for businesses attracts a lot of businessmen from Asia. They own motels, restaurants, fast food centers, sub-ways, pizza huts, conventional stores, gas stations etc. These owners are in constant need for some young people who are ready to manage their stores at minimum wages. They don’t prefer to employ natives because of the fear of being dominated by the natives. And another reasons for favoring Asians over natives, is because of the image of Asians for being more hardworking and less complaining.

Indian students tend to choose to work for Indian owners to keep themselves safe from the being caught. Indians students have a confidence for that their owner would support them in case something wrong happens.

Chances and consequences of getting caught
There is only one type of security in the USA who handle the illegal duties done by F-1 students. They are the “Home Land Security”.  The US department of Police doesn’t involve in the issues of F-1 visa holders. Even if cops come to know about illegal activities by F-1 students they delegate the issue to the Home Land Security.

There is a general notion among students that “Home Land Security is not strict. And tries not to involve much in these matters until an F-1 student is caught red-handed.” Chaitanya, a grad student from California supports this notion, says, “The chances of getting caught may increase only when a mishap occurs at the place you work.”

The chances of being caught are low. But the consequences of getting caught are extremely severe. There are no further steps to proceed with except that the student’s visa gets canceled and gets deported to their country of origin.

Incident of getting caught
I have known an Indian student who got caught red handed working in an off-campus job at a gas station. He was immediately deported to Canada and was asked to undergo a visa interview for entry to the US.

He had admitted his breaking of the rules and had promised that he would not repeat such violations. He pleaded guilty telling the visa officer that he had to take up off campus job to be able to repay his loan.

The visa officer had warned him that they would put a red stamp on the student’s visa and deport him to India. The visa officer was kind enough to let that student resume his study at the USA. But this is just a case where the boy was lucky. There is no guarantee that you would be acquitted if you were caught working in an illegal part-time job.

Fred, a top contributor at Yahoo Answers on the topic Immigration reacts:
“You need to quit your off-campus employment before you get caught, arrested and deported. Don’t you believe that it is foolish to jeopardize your education by making your self deportable?

In addition to being foolish, you are very unethical. You have knowingly violated the terms of your admission. When you applied for your F-1 visa, you submitted documentation attesting to the fact that you had sufficient funds to support yourself while in school without needing to accept employment. Did you deceive the visa officer?”^[2]

Off-campus jobs and academics:
In the US, grad school are geek schools and any one who attends them are considered as a scholar. Grad students are looked at as matured and independent individuals. So they are easily considered for off-campus jobs. But on the flip side, grad students are loaded so much with courses that they wouldn’t be able to spare even 10 hours a week for a part-time job. So off-campus jobs undoubtedly affect students’ academics.

Conclusion:
Graduate student life is precious, instead of studying for your masters degree, doing an illegal part-time job is certainly a bad choice. In master’s you learn a lot of things. Doing illegal part-times could ruin your learning and hamper your career opportunities.

If you came all the way from India to the US to really study, then you better focus on learning. It’s not in your best interests to find ways to earn quick buck. If you are poor, then try for getting Good score in G.R.E and try to get admission in a good university with some funding. If you think that you cannot pay your tuition fee, then try to get some internship and work for projects through which you can earn practical experience and also money. And remember that there is a special provision for students to apply for permission for working off campus jobs in case of unforeseen financial hardship.^[3]

Don’t ever misuse your F-1 status.

References:

1. International Students in the USA
2. Yahoo Answers – F1 student work off-campus
3. F-1 Student economic hardship employment
4. USCIS – Students and Employment
5. Core77.com – Can I work part time while study at US
6. Gannon University – Employment Benefits for International Students in F-1 status

We have taken a lot of efforts to furnish accurate information. In case errors have crept in, or wrong facts have been presented, feel free to point the mistake by writing it in the comments.

• What is Research Assistantship?
• What is eligibility for Research Assistantship?
• Is Research Assistantship available in all the universities in the USA?
• Does prior industrial experience count while applying for Research Assistantship?
• Does RA help in future employment of a student?

This interview was conducted by Sridhar Jammalamadaka with Sreeram Kasyapa. Sridhar is the editor of Interview Mantra- India. Sreeram is a graduate student of Gannon University.

Please note that the language used in this video was Telugu.