Where to apply?

You made the decision to go to grad school. Decided whether to do MS/PhD. You also decided on your field. Now, where to apply among the hundreds of universities around the world?

Wherever you go, you are going to stay there for quite sometime (2 years for MS and 5-6 for a PhD). Needless to say, your career is built on where you go. So, obviously you would like to go to the best place you can go to.

So, how do you decide where to apply? There are various metrics to evaluate universities. Rankings on certain websites are a good starting point. Then, you have the location of the universities - placements and other facilities are affected by them. The funding scenario is another. So, which metric should one follow. Here is my personal opinion regarding how one should go about selecting universities.

Each field has its own top conferences. The publications in such conferences are a direct index to many things. The universities from which these publications come, are the places where the good work happens. The sub-fields in which they publish are the areas in which the work is being done in the field. The existence of a good number of such people (who publish) in a university makes the university a good place to apply.

In case you haven't decided which field you are going to apply in, it becomes tough to go about this way. In that case, it would always help to start with some pointers (like university rankings) and then look at how "my" process fares in the fields you think you might be interested in.

This is all fine, but should everyone apply to these top places? No, some one who doesn't have enough "measurable" credentials (one might be very good, but his percentage and scores might not show the same) should apply to a lower ranked place also. In such a scenario, one can apply to places where there are fewer people who are doing the very good work or to a place where there are many people doing mediocre-to-good work.

It is a general practice that people apply to 2 top ranked places, 2 medium ranked places and 2 "safe-apps"(applications to places where they are sure to make). I have a slightly different opinion. One can have 1 safe-app and apply to a lot of medium-to-top places. It is always a good idea to apply to a place even if you think you have 0.1 probability of making it.

All said and done, the best of the students might not make it to a certain place while others do. It might help to see if the university has offered admits to students from your university in the past. It would also help if a fewer number of people better than you at your university are applying there.

With so many indeterministic factors, it is definitely a tough job to make a list of universities to apply to. One might need to go with the gut feeling (especially while choosing between two similar universities). I wish you all the luck in choosing the universities and hope that you would make it into universities of your choice.

Anyways, this is not all. There are more important things to do in the application process.

Note: In all cases where I call someone better, I mean better at measurable credentials.

GRE/TOEFL

Now, I am supposed to blog about something that I do not know. Let me try going about it. But, I seriously advise you guys to look out elsewhere as to how to fare well on these tests.

GRE/TOEFL are very important. It always helps to have a good score. There is no harm in that. Please try to get a good score on these.

TOEFL: I particularly like TOEFL iBT style of testing language and conversational skills. I would say the standards set by TOEFL are required for comfortable living in the US.

• Preparation - Get yourself a copy of the Kaplan/Princeton book. Go through it on the surface to acquaint yourself to the test format. Take a practice test and see for yourself how you are performing. If you are not very good at spoken English, it could be a good idea to ask someone who is good at it to sit next to you. Take feedback. Practice a bit. Take the second test. You should be fine to go ahead and take the test.

GRE:

• Quant-It is mostly high school arithmetic. So, you should sail through pretty easily. The only key is not to commit mistakes in calculations. Solving a couple of tests would definitely better your performance and boost your confidence. It is a nice idea to refresh some of your geometric/other formulae.
  
  
• Verbal-Everyone follows the Barron's book. There is nothing like a syllabus for GRE. By following Barron's, you would learn a few words of a whole lot. Though it is advisable to go through the words in Barron's, I find it more important to try memorizing words as and when you see them - in movies, books, newspaper etc. I read that it is tough to learn words starting with the same letter. It would help if you keep learning words randomly. Some sites allow you to do so. Also, a huge mistake that people do is they learn all the words but they would have no idea as to how to apply them in the test. It is the practice tests that are more important. GRE Verbal gives you very less time. You should have done at least half a dozen tests to be able to manage the time well in the exam.

Sum-up:

• Take GRE/TOEFL roughly at the same time.
• Practice tests are the most important.
• Do not restrict yourself to one book. Try reading for different places.
• Look at the most frequent lists before you go to the test. People found this very rewarding.
• Focus and give the test well.

Note: Good GRE/TOEFL scores do not get you admits. But a bad score might influence your admit in a negative way. Give them your best shot and try to score well. But, please do not get discouraged if you have a bad score. There are lots of people who scored low and made it to top places. Universities look at what you did before - your course work, your projects, research, publications and experience.