Graduate School Guide

The Visa Experience...

2008-06-23T10:48:00.001+01:00

I got done with my visa interview and appointment on the 20th of June, 2008. It was definitely a unique experience. Imagine a nail biting 5 hour wait doing nothing but imagine and think of all the possible paths the interview can take and have a 15 second interview, which essentially just consisted of exchanging pleasantries =D, and being granted a visa. I guess given the amount of time to think, you must be surprised that I didn't think of it =P!

Anyway, I got the chance to see people getting grilled at the visa counter, so here's some free advice.

If you would have gone to many "overseas-studies consultants", they would have dumped you with tons of documents, and asked you for a lot of money.. Well, mine did and they were absolutely useless. They made me take the following documents

1. Affidavit of Support: A document that was notarized by a practicing attorney employed with the Government of the state in which you are residing stating that the sponsor would be supporting you in all your finances abroad.
2. CA Summary of Financial Holdings: I paid INR 5000 apart from what I paid the consultant (INR 7000). This was considered apposite by the consultant. It provided a summary of all the financial resources you are using to prove to the US Consulate that you can finish your studies in the USA.

Packing all your original marksheets, your X, XII certificates, originals of all the communication with the college, the financial resources proofs, and the aforementioned documents, you would have a Mahabharatha in your hand by the time you reach the consulate.

Now, there's a concept within the US Consulate called the "Pre Registration", where in an embassy representative asks for the following documents

1. DS forms
2. Original HDFC Bank Receipt
3. Original SEVIS Receipt
4. Your GMAT&TOEFL scores
4. Original Degree certificate
5. Passport

According the consul officer who has been issuing visas for the past 17 years in over 40 countries, this Mahabharatha is NOT going to help your cause.

According to him, the visa officer makes up his/her mind within the first 20 seconds of the interview. The only thing that is going to help you is your first impression. So, here's the tip

1. Smile and say Hello/Hi (DITCH THE VARIOUS OTHER SALUTATIONS LIKE MA'AM or SIR VISA CONSUL OFFICER and other crap)
2. Give your documents, where it says you should put it
3. DO NOT PUT ANYTHING ELSE INTO THE PRE-REGISTRATION FOLDER other than what the first embassy officer decided to put in. (They have grounds to reject your visa as you tried to commit fraud by adding/subtracting any documents to/from the pre-registration folder)
4. It is OK to be nervous. Many people offer advice that you should be confident and answer them. Great!! But when you are telling a lie / trying to pass off as someone you are not, then you are going to muddle up and the visa officer is trained to catch on to such signs of weaknesses, so IT'S OK TO BE NERVOUS!!
5. The important thing is that you give only what you have, do not try and commit any form of fraud, as they may issue a visa, but have you arrested as soon as you reach the USA. Then you just get mothered =P!

Anyway, that's all from my observations, which I did aplenty while I was waiting for 5 hours @ the Embassy in Chennai. My passport should be given back to the VFS guys in the evening on Monday. I hope to get it back in the next couple of days

The Ultimate GMAT Guide - References

2008-06-07T17:08:00.001+01:00

After a bit of time, here is a single link that will contain all the reference materials I used for preparing for the GMAT

It's an esnips account, and you may require an account to download it.

There are 4 self-explanatory zip files that you can download, unzip and use. Please note: I am not sure of the copyright of these things. So, please be discrete!! =D!

I might take these down at any point, if I receive a subpoena *looking here and there*

GMAT Reference Material

Preparations for B-school - Part 2 - Software - Note-taking

2008-05-10T11:09:00.001+01:00

This is Part 2 of an ongoing series of articles - Preparations for B-School. Click to see Part 1 of the series...

Software
Your B-school education requires you to be on top of your studies, your activities and have a complete picture of what's happening around you all the time. To aid you in these tasks, there are a few software packages, both desktop and in the cloud that can aid you in this process. Today I will be concentrating on Note-taking software.

Why note-taking software?
During school times, one ingrained habit that was followed without much thought was note-taking. Students usually used a notebook for each subject. Of course in the Indian system of education, you had a myriad of notebooks to struggle through
Class notebook
Rough notebook
Assignment notebook
Project notebook
and this was for each of the subjects.

While this was a cumbersome process, it _did_ help organize the content of the class.

The premise behind note-taking software is the same as well. It's a two-fold objective -
a. Serve as a receptacle (a source and a sink if you will) for all the things you need to have for future reference
b. Help you organize the various bits of information so that retrieval would be easy

While you are more than welcome to carry notebooks to organize this thought process, I personally believe that it's redundant as you will be carrying your laptop wherever you go during the various activities. It's lighter on your back-pack and serves as a single point of reference for all your activities.

Personal note: I am organization freak and want the information that I have stored in my fingertips. Consequently, I have tried and tested most of the note-taking software that's available for the Windows, Linux and Mac platform.

Things to consider
As different people want different things from their note-taking software, I will try and keep this as generic as possible. Depending on your needs and my listing of pros-and-cons of the software packages, you might be able to hazard a useful guess =)!

1. The note-taking software should be light on the system: Over the course of 12-24 months, the amount of information you gather will be humongous. Typically note-taking software save the information in their own formats (could be text/binary). Now, this information needs to be loaded and processed every time you run the application. Consequently, the application must preferably keep it in the text format and be fast in loading the information, processing it and be light on the system resources while doing so!
2. The information should be organized easily: As the information increases, the user will typically be forced to bring in an organization method for referencing the information in the future. The application must provide taxonomic methods of organizing the information - tags. It should also preferably be indexable by various desktop searching methods (Windows Desktop Search / Google Desktop Search / Spotlight / Beagle) etc.
3. There must be an easy way to sync the information: The notes that I am taking down should be easily synced across various platforms - Windows / OS X / Linux / hand-held devices / internet. Only this would truly allow me to obtain my information anytime, anywhere.
4. It should handle various types of information: There will be various types of information that I will throwing at the application - serial numbers, passwords, web-urls, pictures, snaps, and the likes. The data should not only be seamlessly organized, it would be preferable if it will be able to store it properly as well

The Contenders
Let's have a look at the contenders. Taking into consideration my requirements and the packages that I have tested, here are the major contenders with platform information

1. Evernote (Windows/Mac/Handheld(soon)/Cloud)
2. Yojimbo (Mac)
3. Microsoft OneNote(Windows)

Now, let's evaluate each of them

1. Evernote Platforms - Windows, Mac, Handheld, Cloud (Internet)
One of the strongest note-taking / personal information holding package that I have seen. Instead of providing a review here, what I will do is give you a quick and dirty glance of its pros and cons and provide links to the reviews as footnotes!

Pros:
+ Multi platform
+ Can store images as well as text
+ Has a very user-friendly Clipper functionality
+ Synchronizes with the cloud - so the information is truly available anytime anywhere
+ Has the image-text recognition capability, which is phenomenally useful!

Cons:
- It's still in Beta (and has some associated bugs)
- The minute it goes out of Beta, it could move into a paid platform
- Tags (if used excessively) can be hell to manage
- No dedicated types - Serial Numbers, Passwords, etc
- Limited number of beta invites
- ~~No way to index the information (only way to search is via the application)~~
- Cannot handle ~~.pdfs,~~ .docs, and such information types

Update (2008-May-12): With the latest version of Evernote (1.1.0) you can manage .pdfs as notes. Furthermore, Spotlight also indexes all the note contents!! (Yay!! This rocks)!!

2. Yojimbo Platforms - Mac only
This was the be-all end-all application for information management prior to Evernote days. Furthermore, this does a beautiful job with the interface which allows intuitive running of the application and makes the usage a pleasure. What Yojimbo lacks in functionality from Evernote, is the image recognition capability. However, it more than makes up for that with its robust quality and integration with the Operating System!!

Pros:
+ Amazing integration with OS X and applications
+ Synchronization with iCal, Mail, iTunes etc
+ Intuitive, easy to use interface
+ Dedicated types of information - Serial Numbers, URLs, Images etc..
+ Amazing range of information data types - You can throw anything at it and it will store it
+ Indexable content - Spotlight can be used to search for the information stored in Yojimbo

Cons:
- No Image recognition system
- No true Windows application so there's a platform lock-in
- No synchronization mechanism other than .Mac
- $39 for a single user, $69 for 5 users

3. Microsoft OneNote Platforms - Windows Only
Part of the Office suite, Microsoft OneNote is a very professional note-taking application. It stores the notes in its proprietary format, which is non-indexable. However, it has a very rich feature-set, and a very professional interface (albeit Microsoft(y)).

Pros:
+ Uses a traditional 3-ring binder approach
+ Can take a wide variety of rich information to make up a note - text, graphics, web-pages, audio, video etc
+ Has this ability to attach scribbles to main notes (via side-notes and labels feature)
+ This is more of a note-taking application and less of an information management tool
+ Powerful sharing features in the Office eco-system

Cons:
- A copy of OneNote costs somewhere south of $100.
- Windows only
- No presence in the cloud (Have to confirm with the Live Workspace / Mesh tho)
- Not indexable

My Take
I prefer Evernote to any other note-taking / information management software as of now because of the powerful synchronization capabilities and the slowly maturing feature-set. However, I would love it if the clients for Evernote were a bit more robust and they continue to maintain it as a freeware.

Do you have any other note-taking software which you use in class? If so, please feel free to share the information in the comments!

More software packages will be analyzed in Part 3 of Preparations for B-school

Preparations for B-school - Part 1 - Specialization, Resume, and Hardware

2008-05-10T08:03:00.001+01:00

There are quite a few things that one needs to consider when one prepares to embark on a B-school journey. It's usually a 12-month to 24 month period of intense activity. The activities furthermore are varied and have different impacts on your life and career at the end of your education (experience ;-) ). Anyway, here are a few thoughts that I have been mulling over..

Your major / specialization
This forms a crucial part of what you will be doing in your time at the school. It's best that you are aware of the various options and the opportunities / career paths that it provides. It also determines your experience at the B-school. For e.g. a major in Consulting would also demand that you attend workshops / activities specific to the specialization. It determines the networking that you would try and put in place during your time at B-school apart from garnering as much information as possible from your professors and recruiters during career fairs etc.

Suggestions:
Read about each of the specialization your B-School provides.
Typically, your college would also provide you access to the various groups that are related to that specialization mentioning the various activities that they usually indulge in.
Vault Guides: Read about the career opportunities and the nuances of each type of career from these amazing guides. Don't forget to check out the companies who would think of hiring you and the life within that company as well. Your school would typically provide you a special code to access these guides (else you have to pay to access them legally)

Revamp your resume
The Career Management Centre (or equivalent) of your b-school is your sanctum-sanctorum for your career after your education. So, make sure you contact them ahead of time. They would need your latest resume and an idea of what you want to do after your education. So, make sure you reformat your resume to their specifications. Furthermore, also read up as to what all they want and be prepared with the necessary information.

For e.g. I have been a techie and have ~36 months of technical experience. Now, I have to formulate it with a business flare and furthermore, implement some very important tips I recently read
- Use active language
- Give specifics and activities you did than a general outline of what you did

Your IT infrastructure - Hardware
Every B-school today demands that you have a laptop and required paraphernalia which will aid your education. Now, the hardware part of it one part of it. Rahul Gaitonde has an interesting piece on the various hardware devices which would render themselves useful during your period @ a B-school and beyond here. I have a few additional information.

For the Mac enthusiasts: If you are a Mac hardware enthusiast like me, you would often find yourselves at ends with what the IT department of your B-school would usually provide you aid with. If you are not capable of solving problems yourself (with/without the aid of the net), then as much as possible, be in line with what the B-school suggests you do.

Operating System: Typically all B-schools suggest that you have a Windows version (2000/XP/Visa) as your main Operating System. Before I say what I say next, let me say that I work on both Windows machines (at work) and Linux (as an enthusiast) and OS X (as an owner of Mac hardware). If you don't understand how to get things done on your own, please install a copy of Windows visa Bootcamp.

The IT department usually have valid reasons to suggest this. Apart from the support deal they would have with the bulk-deal vendor on-campus, there may be OS specific software required as part of your course that you _have_ to run. So, unless you want to depend on the computer lab machines, install the required OS (or at least have virtualization software).

Now, for all practical purposes, you can run Windows under OS X using Virtualization software like Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion 2.0, without any serious conflicts. Else you always have the option of running Windows under Bootcamp. (I personally use Parallels as I have a license for it, but have heard some really rave reviews about VM Ware Fusion as well). My suggestion - try all 3 and use the one you are most comfortable with!!

Software: There are some more aspects I would like to discuss specific to software packages which will make your life a bit easier while going through the B-school. Please find the post soon as Part 2 of this series.

How to: Choose the right set of schools to apply to

2008-05-01T06:55:00.001+01:00

The decision to opt for a graduate business school is a life-changing decision. The choice essentially moulds your life after graduation, and unless you want to spend the gargantuan amount of money all over again, you better have made that decision after some thought, unless you are adventurous!

There are many aspects to an MBA that you need to consider. For e.g. there are some basic questions that you _just_ have to have a compelling and honest answer for!

1. Why are you pursuing your MBA?
2. Why do you want to do your MBA now?
3. Is there are any area of specialization that you want to pursue?

We can further complicate / move down the ladder once we have the basics cleared.

Furthermore, answering these questions will help you narrow down your choices from the plethora of business schools that are there in the market. They also help you write some of the cliched questions that are asked by the MBA institutes. :D

Rankings
There are many ranking institutions that regularly rank all the MBA schools based on many criteria. You have
- Financial Times
- US MBA rankings
- Business week rankings

There are many more ranking systems as well. From what I have observed though, there are typically the high-fliers, prestigious graduate business schools of the likes of Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, London School of Business, INSEAD etc that always top the charts.

My take is that while these rankings definitely help in choosing the colleges, you shouldn't rely _just_ on them. For e.g. these are all rankings based on various factors! They are pertinent factors, however, they cannot be the only factors as far as choosing the colleges go.

They are not beyond propaganda and are not completely impartial. You should also talk to the admissions committee of each college, interact with the students there and only then make up your decision.

For e.g. the college that I chose - Thunderbird School of Global Management, which I will be attending from Fall 2008, is not ranked high in these rankings. However, it's ranked _the_ best college for International Management. Furthermore, talking to the students and the AdComm, was a completely different experience as compared to various other top institutes including Duke, Darden and a few more. The warmth of response was something that I was looking for and I found that in Thunderbird.

Similarly, you may have a region choice, a major choice, even a paper choice, let alone recruitment choices, international exposure, languages etc! Consequently utilize the rankings to check up on the colleges and then make conscious efforts to talk to the colleges to see if you are indeed a fit there.

I call it the 3-step-process
1. Decide on the area of study
2. Go through the rankings
3. Talk to the colleges you have chosen based on your preferences and then apply!

It saves you a lot of time later when deciding between colleges and furthermore helps you present an honest and earnest file to the Admissions Committee of the various colleges!

Share your thoughts on the process and how *you* chose your graduate business school or how you are going about doing it! And check out later posts on "Deciding on the various offers from Graduate Business Schools"!

My Story

2008-05-01T06:32:00.001+01:00

My decision to pursue an MBA may be slightly off the normal distribution. I have been a techie all my life. I pursued my Bachelor's in Computer Science and Engineering owing to my passion to learn more about the high-technology world, especially the computing industry. As in India, I decided to follow the role of a "software-developer" with an international firm, developing medical-imaging products. They are one of the 2 biggest players in that segment. I worked as an IT-consultant/developer to develop 2 major products for them. A year into my work, I was hired as a consultant to develop a new product in Germany. The year in Germany allowed me to glimpse and taste the bigger picture.

I had a few realizations:
1. I loved technology from a wholesome perspective - i.e. not just the specific development of software products, but also visualizing and developing new products, analyzing the market, estimate the time lines, target the time-to-market and all the related efforts.
2. I had a strong analytics - I had always been good at Math. But more than crunching numbers, I was good at understanding the crux of the situation, the gist of a problem and tackle it!! It could be a 1000 line C++ code, or a multi page Physics derivation, or the balance sheet of a company, I would be able to analyze it!
3. I had good people-skills: I could interact with a variety of people and be comfortable with them and make them comfy as well. More importantly, I genuinely enjoyed conversing with people!
4. I had already been marked as a star within my company having the potential and capability to lead teams and interact with global customers. This was one of the major reasons that I was chosen as a representative for the assignment in Germany, despite being the youngest member of the team, both in age and experience.

Now, this got me thinking if I am eventually going to end up in management, I want it to be done right and with the right backing. This got me started thinking of a graduate degree. I was still presented with 2 options - I could specialize in the domain that I was working - medical imaging / broader bio-medical engineering - which would be an MS degree or go gung-ho into management by pursuing an MBA.

Deciding between the two was one of the longest time I have had to brood in my life over various options. What it finally boiled down to was if I wanted to continue to contribute as a technical-consultant or as a management-consultant.

Another realization that I had during the course of my work was that I loved variety in my challenges/life/work. Sticking to one thing tends to be too monotonous for me. So, what I was looking forward to was also a variety of challenges, and the world of medical imaging was a tad too slow-paced for my liking. Mind you, I love the work that I did/do, it's just that this is the age where in I have the energy to expend into challenging and dynamic situations :P!

So, all these put together really pushed me towards an MBA.

GMAT: The first step to a graduate management degree.

2008-04-05T09:07:00.004+01:00

Over the course of the next few days, I would be describing the steps involved in pursuing a graduate management degree, well at the least the steps that I took to grab an admit with 50% tuition waiver @ Thunderbird School of Global Management.

Please note that this is in retrospection and these must be considered as journal notes and is to be considered neither the _only_ way nor the _best_ way, but merely a way. However the mistakes that I have made must and should be avoided as much as possible!!

GMAT: The first frontier

The first step to a graduate management degree is the GMAT Test. The Graduate Management Aptitude Test is a computer adaptive standardized test. There are a lot of details explained various GMAT resources. To save redundancy in information, I will just link up to those resources in my list of links and utilize the space for giving my perspective/gyaan on how to tackle the GMAT and what are the mistakes that you don't want to do!

All in all, it took me 14 days of moderate preparation to take my GMAT. Now, that's not something that people advice to do. In fact, my own advice is in consensus with the mass that if you are aiming for a score of 750 and above (and yes, the GMAT score has some good results associated with it), please do consider investing at least 30+ days of rigorous and meticulous preparation. Unfortunately, my objective was to cross the 700 mark. Furthermore, I just did not have the time or energy to invest in preparing for GMAT as work took precedence.

Setting a target GMAT score!
Every school has their average GMAT score. It's important that we realize the GMAT score of the schools we want to apply to. Now, it goes without saying that schools are not going to reject you because you have an abnormally high GMAT score (as compared to their average/median). So, apart from the minimum score demanded by the college, make sure you can do your best.

The target GMAT score is dependent on many factors. It includes, your work experience, your international exposure, your GPA during your undergrad and many other factors. For e.g. the required GMAT score of a 10 year old industry veteran would be lower than the required GMAT score of a fresher off undergrad.

Resources for GMAT!
There are many resources available for preparation. The GMAT essentially tests 3 things -
1. Your quantitative analytical ability
2. Your verbal analytical ability
3. Your analytical writing ability

You would have noticed that the key term here is "analytical ability". There are tons of resources available that help you in your preparation, however the first thing to cracking the GMAT is that you need to improve your analytical ability. Once you are familiar with the various patterns, cracking the GMAT is a simple thing.

Now, make sure that while you go through these resources, you are concentrating on the larger picture of improving your analytical ability. GMAT question patterns are set and the way to crack it is to get to the mind of the person who set that question. What _are_ they trying to get me to understand.

Make sure you come back soon to my follow-up post containing links to some resources that I have gathered over the past year!

How To: Decide on Which Universities to Apply for your Graduate studies - United States Part 1: Finding your Top Preferences for Graduate Studies

2006-12-30T12:05:00.000+01:00

So, you've finally decided that you are going to do your graduate studies, or at least are pondering about it. What are the first steps you need to do? I was faced with a plethora of information - courses, Universities, Tests, Scholarships, Financial Aid, Research Assistant, Teaching Assistant, GRE, TOEFL, SOP, Recommendations, applications and deadlines. So, I had to sort the information out. I wanted to apply for the Fall of 2007.

However, I realized that I was way too late and this got me thinking that it would be nice if someone would create a page that would hold the application deadlines of the Top 50 Universities in the United States. This got me thinking what _were_ the Top 50 schools in the United States?

Well, there's always Google for help. So, searched for "Top 50 graduate schools United States" I came across the search result : http://www.library.uiuc.edu/edx/rankgrad.htm from the Educational and Social Science Library. They have a compilation of further links which you can check. I picked

Customized Graduate Program Rankings - by phds.org: They boasted of giving me customized rankings based on the stream as well as a multitude of other personal choices [really cool] and they polled the National Research Council Data to finally factor me the results
Top 20 Graduate Engineering Programs - The Princeton Review
Graduate Schools Ranking - StudentsReview

Now I was lucky to find these particular guide items. So, this is the process I came up with.

Now, I can put in my personal choices in the site provided by phds.org and get a list of Universities that fit my personal category for the broad subject of Computer Science.
The Princeton Review would give me the Top 20 Graduate Engineering Programs - now these span across the Engineering discipline and they span across the Universities as well. This should give me an idea of the various types of courses and the granularity of the the same. [I just knew that I wanted to do my masters in Computer Science, which was my major during my Undergraduate Study]. These are based on certain criteria and the courses are within certain Universities ranked based on these factors.
Put the name of the Universities I select based on intuition and some data analysis in StudentsReview - which will give a lot more personal opinions based on experience from the students studying there. [At least theoretically]

So starting on step1, I entered the numerous choices offered by phds.org! Well for starters, I perused through the various heads under which these options fell. You have

Educational and Quality Measures
Faculty Reputation and Activity Measures
Program Size Measures
Funding Measures
Program Composition Measures

So, what do they mean as a whole? Let's take each of them and analyze their options. At first glance, I was baffled as to how are we supposed to prioritize our choices. Obviously you want everything high. Of course you'd like an excellent quality of education from the University. And who wouldn't love studying under the people who actually wrote your Undergrad textbooks, like studying Microkernels under Prof Tenenbaum or studying Operating System Security Policies under Dr Peter Gutmann [although he's in New Zealand ;-)]? So, the obvious choice here, let's analyze the sub headings - dig deeper if you will. Please note that the ratings are all a personal choice. I would strongly urge you to analyze and choose the ratings that pertain to you!

Educational and Quality Measures

Program is effective in educating researchers: Well I sure hope so. However, I am still unsure as to what career I am planning to take out of my graduate course. A PhD will surely be on the cards, if I find something really interesting along the lines of my course. Else, I am looking to double up a business major and use that experience to form a career for myself. So, I would say that the "effectiveness" of the course in educating researchers should be fairly important, but is not the most pertinent factor me - so 3 [Medium]
Program quality has improved recently: Very very important. What is actually making me study further is actually the plethora of technologies that are coming out there. Everything is expanding in terms of knowledge and technology. As I am interested in the latest technologies, the program course content and quality should definitely have been improved recently. I would rate this at 5 [High]
The time required to earn a degree is low: I have been working for almost 2 years now. I would be lying to myself, if I say that the salary being credited at the beginning of every month in my bank account isn't soothing to my nerves. Furthermore, it scares the daylights out of me that I would be relying on a student's income during my student life. Consequently the turn around time for my degree is indeed important to me. However, NOT at the expense of learning time and research time. So, I would rate it a 4 [Medium/High]

Faculty Reputation and Activity Measures

Scholarly quality of program faculty is high: My first reaction to this question was - Are you kidding me? Of course that's important. Else what's the credibility for the course? You would obviously want to study carpentry only from a skilled carpenter. However, on a little bit more rational thought [Yes, I am capable of that sometimes], I realized this was more like learning to paint. You need not always learn to paint under Pablo Picasso! For, he certainly did not learn painting under him. However, analyzing it a little bit more rationally [Ok, don't get shocked], I realized that the scholarly quality of the program faculty would lend itself to a lot of other factors - directly and indirectly. The obvious and the direct being my first rationale, and the indirect ones being that if you are interested in doing a research project headed by one of these professors, funding would never be a problem considering that they are famous figures within the scholar community! I am fully capable of weaving magic from what I study- so yeah I would rate it 4 [Medium/High], coz honestly I was more than impressed with some of the authors of my undergrad study!!
A large percentage of the faculty has published recently: Now, this I think personally is related to the quality of the education as far as their keeping up with technology is concerned! Ok, there _is_ a probability that they are still publishing papers on old theory/technology. However it's justified the following way!! Any papers being published is a revelation of something new. Consequently, the professors are up on their toes and are actively participating in research, which amounts to a lot of things - research work, new technology/finding directly as far as your course is concerned. As far as the "meta" details like paying your course is concerned, that means that you have more opportunity as a research assistant even in doing something related to your course! Amounts to $$$ to paying your course fee :-)! So this gets 5 [High] for me.
The average number of recent publications per faculty member is high: This is fairly important. The previous factor just ensured that there's active research. However, this ensures that there's active research by a majority of the faculty members. This would also ensure that there are more opportunities for you to dabble your hands in research. Helps in broadening your perspective during your graduate study. Also allows you to earn money from more sources in case you are not happy with doing research in database optimization. You can always shift to neural networks research, or computer graphics research :-P! Hmm, 5 [High]
The average number of recent citations of faculty's work is high: More to do with the fact as to how relevant was the research. The higher it is, the more important was the research what the faculty member performed and achieved in result. Then again, recent citations would only mean that the technology / research outcome is NEW and prevalent. It does factor in for me, but then again, doesn't rate _the most pertinent_. Personally 4 [Medium/High]
The distribution of publications per faculty member is uniform: Whilst this is ideally good, and ensures that there is funding spread uniformly across the faculty members are their corresponding individual area of expertise, you should also make sure that your specialization interest has a little bit extra publications, as that should ensure that there is slightly more RA seats available. While the dynamics of college finance does factor in and complicate things, I am a realist, tending towards optimist, so this wouldn't matter too much to me. 3 [Medium]
The distribution of citations per faculty member is uniform: What this amounts to is that the relevance and importance of the publications are uniform across the faculty members. Not so much a factor for me, although ideally still High. I would say 3 [Medium]
The percentage of faculty who are full professors: This basically amounts to the number of professors versus the number of non-research faculty members. The more, the better. Implies that there is more opportunity for RA. However, if you find that there are not many full time profs, then there is a chance that the college is using guest lectures as well in the form of teaching. This might be good if you are hoping to experience and listen and understand a lot more real-world lectures and experience as part of your graduate study and not just looking into the theoretical research aspect of the same. For e.g. this would be helpful if you are taking up some business courses and of course who better to explain stock-market dynamics than a Financial consultant for a stock-broker company? He would obviously _not_ be a full time professor. I am sure I am missing out on a lot of scenarios here. However, you choose the scenario that's applicable to you and find out from your University if that's the case so, and then decide :-)! Personally 4 [Medium/High]

Program Size Measures

Faculty Size: Personally, I do not want too large a faculty, however, the only 2 options are "large" and "small". I would choose a larger faculty owing to personal reasons and choice along with the concept of "broadening my perspective" as a significant reason behind my pursuing the graduate degree. Now, the more the number of scholarly people I come across in the University, the better my chances are in learning something new daily :-)! So, I am demanding a seemingly large faculty. So 4 [Medium/High] for a Large faculty
Number of Students in the program: Now, this is a crucial thing. I have done a majority of my studies in India. I am used to having a large class. To the tune of 60-70 students a class. However, I do know that some of the things that I learned well and cherished in school/college is when the class of medium and interspersed with a variety of students having various perspectives. Now, if I try and achieve that, Id want variety in my class, however I still don't want an overloaded class. So, 3 [Medium] for a Large Class
The number of Ph.D.s granted recently is: The greater the number of PhDs, the better the chances of them staying back and taking up a teaching position in the college, furthermore, the better is the alumni in case they are serving the corporate research world :-)! 4 [Medium/High]

Funding Measures

A large percentage of faculty have research support: This is definitely good. Because it means that the faculty are not only interested in having research assistants, they are most probably going to have the funding for the same :-)! Rated 4 [Medium/High]
A large percentage of recent Ph.D.s were supported by research assistantships: Definitely important considering that I am interested in looking towards RA as a major source of bread earning policy 5 [High]
A large percentage of recent Ph.D.s were supported by teaching assistantships: Definitely important considering that I LOVE teaching and this is a major source of moolah. 5 [High]

Program Composition Measures

The percentage of female students in the program is high: Not really a factor for me, however personally I think it should be more or less the same. Considering 2-3 facts. Females bring a totally different perspective to any task at hand. An all-male population can definitely solve something, however with even ONE female component involved, the solution is a lot clearer and well, it's a lot more wholesome, for some reason I still haven't put my finger in. So, the percentage of female students in the program should definitely NOT be NULL! So, 3 [Medium]
A large percentage of recent Ph.D.s were granted to women: Doesn't matter one bit Rated 0 [No Importance]
A large percentage of recent Ph.D.s were granted to underrepresented minorities: Doesn't matter one bit Rated 0 [No Importance]
A large percentage of recent Ph.D.s were granted to U.S. citizens and permanent residents: Hmm, this might be something that is of interest to me. Being an international student, I'd rather have that recent PhDs were granted impartially at least independent of nationality! - So 3 [Medium] that only a SMALL percentage was awarded to US Citizens/Permanent Residents

I clicked on Continue and boom, here are my results! There are a 108 institutes offering a graduate program in Computer Science. The green ones are higher than mean [read: favorable to my criteria] and the red ones are below the mean, means unfavorable to my criteria. So, reading and analyzing the results. I knew those DI classes in TIME during the CAT preparation would help me serve one day!!

Continuing, I had now a dedicated page which I can always refer to whenever I want to find out more information about the University and the courses offered by it :-)!

Coming next: Step 2 and analysis of the Top 20 Engineering Courses by The Princeton Review

How did you come up with your Top University choices? Feel free to let me know in the comments...

The Grad School Guide Blog...

2006-12-29T11:44:00.000+01:00

Yup, I have finally decided that I have to do my graduate studies. I am about to complete 2 years of working in the software industry. And I have learned a lot of things in these 2 years. One of that includes the fact that I have to do my graduate studies. This got me thinking that I should probably post the process that I am following including my thoughts and processes whilst I am applying to colleges, deciding where to do my graduate studies, what kinda course I am targeting, etc in a single blog that should be useful (hopefully) to other people as well.

I will be posting here the details on courses, colleges, guides I find on the competitive examinations, scholarship information, financing information etc required for a college degree.

As of now my plan is to get my GRE done and apply for my MS in a University in the United States of America. However, I am also looking at other options including Masters degree options in Europe, within India itself.

As a starting point, I wrote an article on a GRE guide back when I was thinking of taking my GRE.