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Why
Shortlist
You
should first make a broad list of colleges to consider for application.
Remember, application is an expensive process, with application
costs per college in the region of $ 50 for an MS to $ 130 for an
MBA (1999 figures). Add to that the additional scores reporting
cost of $15 per college for GRE and another $15 for TOEFL, and then
add the cost of courier-ing the application packet, and you're looking
at a cool $ 100 (minimum) per college. Plus the added tension of
getting extra recommendation forms and extra copies of the transcripts
(mark sheets) for each college. Therefore, you should finally apply
to less than 10 colleges. An ideal range is 5-8 (less is you're
confident, more if you're insecure).
How
to Shortlist
To determine the colleges
to choose, you should first determine the benefit you want to acquire
from your degree. For instance,
do you want a good IT job in the US, do you want to start your own
business in India, do you want a choice between technical and management
study (or jobs) at the end of the course, do you want to pursue
research in the US. This will give you a direction in which to search
for what sort of universities and courses to apply for. Also consider
any special requirement that you may have. e.g. restriction to a
geographic area or a particular elective.
ranking of universities in your field of interest.
US News (www.usnews.com) provides the current ranking of US graduate
schools in many professional fields. See the following links:
Your shortlist
should have a uniform mix of rankings i.e. choose 2-3 universities
in the top 10, 2-3 in the top 50 and 2-3 lower than that. Based
upon your honest assessment of your personal ability, you can reduce
or increase the number of univs in any category. Your final shortlist
should reflect this. Remember, usually only about 50 - 75% of the
universities you sent a pre-app to will reply (in time). So you
need to send many more requests than you intend to actually apply
to. This is not the case with Internet based research, though. You
can get information on as many universities as you desire - fast
and guaranteed. So you need to search lesser universities.
You also need
to determine the reputation of universities in your field of interest.
Ask your friends, faculty, current students, people in the industry,
and if you can, recruiters.
Go through the list of degrees and courses offered
at the university. You may have to check different departments with
similar courses. For instance, at Carnegie Mellon, you can get a
degree in a Computer related field in the Engineering School, the
School of Public Policy, the School of Computer Science, the Information
Networking Institute and more ! Each has its own course structure,
its own focus area, its own fin aid options. To find such detailed
information, you could check out the comprehensive university handbook
at USEFI, or visit the university website. Click
here for a list of websites.
Also see presence
of research labs with adequate funding (useful for fin aid)
and see faculty research interests, including papers written
by them. If you are using the net, all this can be done at the pre-app
stage itself. If you're writing to univs for an app packet, then
do this on receiving their brochures.
Check whether
the university offers financial aid. See the total annual
research budget of the university, the percentage of incoming students
who are offered any form of aid, and whether aid is available for
the program you are applying to (e.g. while Carnegie Mellon
offers aid generously to almost all incoming students, applicants
to the MSIN degree are given none). Be careful. This could be an
expensive mistake. Email current students, faculty and the admission
office of the college about this.
Finally, look
at the total cost of attendance of the course, if there is
a possibility that you are not offered any financial aid. This cost
includes the tuition cost and cost of living for atleast one year.
In most multiple years courses, you can get a job or assistanceship
after your first year (or even first semester), so you needn't worry
about further costs.
There are many
other parameters like climate, number of international students,
closeness to big city etc. which may also be used here. But I think
that those I have mentioned above are primary. If you feel the need
for any more factors, feel free to add them.
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