Got Reply from Professor – Disappointing!

Getting in touch with Professors before applying to Universities should be part of your Graduate School Admission strategy. You can use the sample email template to contact professors. One of the blog reader used the email template contact a professors and got reply, but he feels disappointed with the reply

I contacted a professor in XXXXXXX. But his response isn’t very encouraging. What should I reply him? Did I go wrong anywhere in the mail I sent him?

Email to Professor

Following was the email sent to the professor.

Dear Dr.XXXXXX,

I, XXXXXX, am pursuing bachelor’s degree in electrical  engineering at Anna University, Chennai, India. I am applying for MS(EE)  program offered by XXXXX  in Fall 2010. I am interested in joining your research group at the Multimedia and Networking Lab.

I studied your article “Hand Gesture-based Computing for Hearing and Speech Impaired,” which appeared in the IEEE Multimedia Magazine. I am currently working on a voice controlled robot for physically challenged persons. I am very much interested in the part that deals with generation of gestures from  speech input. I would like to contribute to your work in that area.

Will you be accepting students into your lab for the year 2010? I would be glad if you could direct me to few other related publications.

Thanks for your time. I look forward to hearing back from you soon.

Reply from Professor

You can touch base after you arrive here. However, I do not have any funding for Masters’ students.

MS or PhD

What do you expect a professor to say to you? Getting financial aid is not as easy as you think, you have to prove to them, your ability, skills and problem solving skills when work is assigned to you. You can do that by working for a professor for 1 or 2 semesters.  You said 3 lines about your project, with that you cannot expect to get financial  aid.

We have said many time about very high chances of getting admission to PhD with financial aid along with admission in numerous blog posts. Above reply makes things very clear about financial aid.

You approcah is right and not many professors usually respond to prospective students applying to Masters degree. If you have stated thta you are interested in Phd, response will be very different ( positive according to you). Feel happy that you got reply and they have funding for PhD, so consider applying for PhD to the same University.

How To Prepare Financially for Fall 2011 Semester in USA

If you are planning to come to US for Fall 2011 semester, you have to prepare yourself with lot of things, with good information, you can make informed decision. Read more

You Cannot Get Financial Aid – Do You Know Why?

US Education for international students is expensive. Unless you have lot of money to spend. So, every student applying for US Universities, College want to get aid to study in U.S. Read more

‘I Scored 1490 in GRE, but I’m Confused’ – Anand

nand is one of the frequent visitor of Happy Schools Blog. He had left a comment to the article Universities for GRE Score 1340. Here’s what he had to say about his GRE Score, University Selection and College Admission. Read more

Writing Email to professor – Think Again!

Sending an email to professor during Graduate School admission process will increase the chances of getting admission with scholarship. Dr. Vivek Pai Associate Professor have written a page (Q&A format ) that talks about Do and Dont’s about Email.

Email Contents

Typically every student sending email, expects to get reply and financial aid with admission. Read the Email reply from a Professor to a Prospective International student planning to apply to Masters in Electrical Engineering.

Professors are very busy and they don’t usually reply to all Prospective student, unless you are applying for PhD.  When writing email to a Professor, most of you it will be the first email to a Professor in US University. Most International students are not used to writing email in Professional way (without typos and grammar mistakes). It’s hard for anyone to respond to email with mistakes. (Even, here at Happy Schools, we don’t respond to comments that has lots of mistakes. )

Most of the students ask for Financial Aid within first few sentences in first email. That clearly show how IGNORANT a student can be. Dr Vivek has  some strong words for students applying for Graduate School those send email asking about Grad School admission and financial aid.

If you are in processing of applying to schools in US, you better read his graduate school application guide .

(Updated)Letter of Recommendation that gets Graduate School Admission

Have your ever wondered what should be the contents of Reference letters?

In on the of previous articles Letter of Recommendation : Do’ and Don’t I gave an overview about how to write a reference letters for U.S. University graduate school admission. In this article I’m going into details of what should the contents of the reference letters should look like. Graduate School Admission committee is looking to find specific information about the student.

There are two different way to write a reference letters. Some, universities have their own letter of recommendation form to be used, while other universities accepts in written A4 size sheet. In the previous article about letter of recommendation, I have given a link to Good Sample reference letters. If you look deep into it contents, you will understand, what different area it projects the students capabilities.

1) Research Potential

2) Ranking of student among peers

3) Analytical Skills

4) Communication Skills – Oral and Written

5) Team work – Get along well with others

6) Potential for higher education

7) Creativity/Imagination

Intellectual Achievement

9) Emotional Maturity

10) Leadership Skills

11) Volunteer Activities

Some of the professor who’s giving students reference letters for U.S. University admission might not be aware of the what to write about the students or he might fail to highlight few areas. So, you can use the above 11 areas as reference and ask the professor to write about you. Sample reference letters can be given by you professor, lecturer, manager at work,..

Some of students have asked me the following question:

Does the degree, recognition of the person you get reference letters for graduate school admission matters. Does the reference letters from someone with PhD and someone with just the Bachelor’s degree matter? Keep checking the articles, I will talk about that in next post.

If you enjoyed this article, you may subscribe to email updates from this blog for getting notified about similar articles in future. Also, you can pass the information about this blog to you friends. Also, you can talk about Happy Schools Blog to your friend who are looking for details about U.S. Universities.

Coming Soon : Sample, Original reference letters used by students for Master’s admission.

You might be also looking for information about Statement of Purpose and tips to write high impact SOP.

Letter of Recommendation : Do and Dont’s

College admission requires atleast 2 Letter of Recommendation (LOR ). Graduate Schools Admission committee evaluates the candidates credentials and reference letter plays an important role in that about what recommendation providers have said about you.

Some college requires LOR to be submitted online and I have seen graduate schools, requiring LOR to be sent via email directly to the graduate school or to specific department. Some graduate school have their own form (template) that has to be completed, instead of traditional LOR in letter form. Here what to include in LOR, and the right way to get the LOR for graduate school admission application.

The process is very simple, but it might be time consuming.

1. Identify the person who is going to give recommendation letter
2. Ask them to include details on your research skills, problem solving skills, team work, communication ( written and oral ), analytical ability, leadership, social skills, ..
3. Get the LOR in the Referring Personal letter head, make sure you get it signed and if possible seal ( or Stamp )
4. Put the LOR inside a cover ( envelop ) paste it and get sign on the Envelop joint. So, it will ensure, its not tampered.

Now, your recommendation letter is ready, here list of top 8 skills to include in reference letters. I have collected sample recommendaition letter from current students in U.S. I will be posting in few days time. If you like to be notified by email, subscribe to email updates.

Spring 2008 students : Did you decide on universities?

At this point low GRE score or low TOEFL score doesn’t matter. Admission is given to you and now its time to decide on universities. I’m getting lots of emails about selecting graduate schools from list of universities they got admission from. So, I decided to give a recap from my previous posts on how to shortlist universities. You can consider this post to be continuation of previous post on shortlisting schools and deciding on which graduate college to attend.

By now most of the students should have admission status for Spring 2008 semester. Some who got only one graduate school admission will not have much problem in deciding on which schools to attend. Students with more than one admission from graduate school will have big decision to make, that you will have to live with rest of your life. To help make you that decision, I’ will give some pointers with examples. This would avoid getting transfer to different university after 1 semester.

I had to make the same decision few years back when I applied for 5 universities and got admit from all 5 universities.

Example:

I have admit from SDSU, TAMUK and Fairleigh Dickinson University for Masters in Computer Science. Now, I’m confused on which one to select. I’m sure you must be confused.

Answer from Student perspective who doesn’t have much information will thin about the following questions

1) Which university has more scholarship chances?

2) Which university will have more part time jobs available?

3) Which universities of above 3 will help me to get job after M.S.

4) Then comes how much would it cost to study?

5) SDSU look better then other 2 universities, but its expensive. Shall take risk and go to expensive school or since cannot afford more than 2 semesters fee from parents, I should choose TAMUK?

5 Tips to make your Graduate School application Stand Out

After lots of time spend browsing for universities, talking to current students, friends from college, Orkut community friends, you will have shortlisted some schools that you strongly believe and of that some schools, might be little tough to get admission considering the academic credentials, GRE, TOEFL score and other credentials.

Did you ever imagine every student will be almost doing the same process and some of the schools get large number of applications. So, there must be certainly something you can do to make your application stand out.

Have you ever though about what additional information that can be sent along with application packet that will make your application stand out. There are so many creative ways to send the documents, resume, project report and other things. But. before talking about the creative ways, I’m going to talk about 5 import things that you can do to make your application stand out.

Usually, students will send Transcripts, SOP, Recommendation Letter, Application, Application Fee, Bank Statement and few other mandatory things universities ask for.

Additional documents and idea I’m going to say are not hard to get. All it takes is few extra days of work, time and effort. That might be what graduate school admission committee will be looking to give admission. If you have 50/50 chances, maybe idea I’m going to propose will increase your chances to 60/40. So, here are those 5 most important tips that you can include within graduate school application to make your application packet stand out.

• Additional Documents
• Be original in College Essay
• Extra Curricular Activities
• Contact professors
• Include project reports

There is nothing in the above 5 things that you cannot have access to while applying for graduate school and colleges in America. Let’s dig deeper into each topics.

Additional Documents:

If you have the question in you, what additional documents that I can send other than what Universities asks for. You can send certificates, even if its small achievements. Something like participation in Essay writing, debate, stamp collection, computer training courses, and so on.

Be original in College Essay:

Its very tempting and easy to copy someone essay and send it. But, its very easy for the graduate school admission committee to identify that. They receive so many number of applications and each application have statement of purpose. If college has database of all the SOP all it takes to hit the search button and it will spit out the results. And, if you copy the college admission essay, its very easy to figure out, by comparing your AWA, TOEFL writing score. If you have 5 backlogs and say I was in top 2% in class, its very obvious its an copied essay.

So, make sure you write in own words, 30% copying is tolerated to get nice quoted and catchy sentences. But, the way the essay should be framed must be your own idea expressing your background and need to apply for graduate school admission.

Extra Curricular Activities:

If you good at sports, arranging functions, to other events where you have proved your leadership skills, make sure you include some kind of proof as part of your college admission packet. That will make your application stand out from other who have similar profile, but no leadership skills.

Contact professors

I have written a very detailed article on how to contact professor, with email format and what type of contents to include. Makes sure you contact the professors. It doesn’t matter if you have already applied to colleges for admission. If you applying for PhD makes sure you contact Professors before applying for schools.

Include project reports

Including projects done in soft copy format will definitely prove the you have worked on the project. you can include, readme file on how to run the project. If you own a website, make sure you send the link to the site. If you have presented paper’s, make sure you include paper’s abstract. Not more than 2 pages for each paper.

If you do the above, I’m 100% sure it will make your graduate school application stand out and increasing your admission chance by more than 100%.

GPA Converter : Percentage to GPA

How to convert academic percentage (1 – 100) and CGPA(0 – 10) score to GPA (0 – 4.0)?

Every student when filling out the graduate school application try to find GPA Calculator. I was in the same situation and few years back searching for different ways to use the GPA Calculator.

I sent emails and posted messages in the groups, asking about methods used to how to calculate GPA ( Grade Point Average). I was not able to find the procedure to do the calculate gpa, but today I know the answer.

GPA 4.0 Scale

I got one email asking for profile evaluation and he said GPA of 4.0. So, I wrote back and asked him how did you calculate GPA. His reply was, he just assumed GPA of 4.0, since he didn’t know how to convert gpa. Universities convert academic percentage to GPA in order to calculate the academic capability of the student and reject those applications that doesn’t satisfy minimum GPA.

There is no universal way to convert Academic percentage to GPA. So, how universities convert academic percentage to GPA. Answer is subjective and varies between universities. But before explaining some formulas used by colleges, let me explain how Grades are calculated in U.S. Colleges and University.

What is Grade Point Average (GPA)

Percentage system( 1 to 100) is used to grade a students performance in some countries, similarly, in U.S. Universities use GPA for grades.

GPA and Percentage – Are they related or equivalent

Even though both the system evaluates the students performance, they are not the same or its not possible to equate both the grading systems. So, can we calculate gpa from percentage?

How to Calculate GPA

Like percentage, Grades will be assigned to student for each course. Grades are A = 4.0; B = 3.0; C = 2.0 ; D = 1.0; F = 0; And for each course based on difficulty level weights will be assigned. Its called Credit Hours.

Usually Graduate courses in Masters program will have 3 Credit Hours. For our example lets assume all 3 courses have 3 credits each. Lets say at end of the semester, professor assign you following grades

• Grade B to Course X
• Grade A to Course Y
• Grade A to course Z

GPA is calculated as follows

Total Grades = Sum of (Grade * Credit Hours) = B*3 + A*3 + A*3 = 3*3+4*3+4*3 =33

Total Credit Hours = 3+3+3 = 9

GPA = Total Grades/Total Credit Hours = 23/9 = 3.66

And the way in which Grades are assigned is another whole topic of discussion. Students performance will be evaluated throughout the semester which includes Home work, Programming Assignments, Pop Quiz, Exams, Presentations, … Now, you will have an understanding of the Grading System in U.S. and its very clear to say – Percentage will not exactly correlate with GPA calculation. But, Universities will have some general mechanism to convert percentage to GPA and that varies with each University. They have their own GPA calculator. 

If you are still not satisfied with explanation, Percentage to GPA Converter formulas will give an idea about various methods available to convert to GPA

So, you really can’t convert academic percentage or CPGA to GPA. Best way to to say is mention your current academic percentage and Colleges will know what to do with your percentage score.

Application Process

Next step is select the right University that matches your profile, instead of randomly selecting university based on the input you heard from your friend’s friend. You can follow 12- Step University Selection process.

While filling out online application, make sure you dont make these common 11 graduate school application mistakes that will potentially delay the admission processing.

Bank Statement – For Graduate School Application

Bank statement for graduate schools application is one of the mandatory documents. Without that, you cannot get admission in majority of the graduate schools.

Happy Schools had record breaking number of visitors few last days and hope the trend continues. Students are talking and creating the Buzz about Happy Schools. I’m happy to see the positive response and lots of emails with questions they want to be answered in here.

Today the topic of out interest is Bank Statements. Under this topic you can find information about

• Why colleges and universities ask for Bank Statement?

U.S. Education is expensive. It considered expensive even for the domestic students. So, universities want to make sure students apply for admission have enough financial resources to cover the cost of the education.

• How much bank balance to show while applying for graduate school?

For International students, universities ask for bank statement showing proof for atleast for 1st year of college expenses. That typically includes Tuition Fee, Living Expenses, Books, Health Insurance. Tuition fee might be for 9 month period or for 12 month period. If its 9 month period, universities will calculate tuition fee for 9 credits. For 12 month study tuition fee for college will be calculated for 24 credits ( 18 credits + 6 credits in Summer ).

Check out tuition fee estimator for 12 month study. You can find that information from International Students Admission link or some schools will ask for Financial Affidavit along with Bank Statement.

• How long that balance should be in account for Graduate School admission?

As long as you need to get enough number of bank statement ( on original letter head with bank managers seal and signature). Some of them would have accounts in different bank and in different forms of money. In that case, you can move money from different banks to one bank to get bank statement.

• What if I have part of money in form of Fixed Deposit/CD and part as cash?

It’s necessary that you need to have required bank balance in Cash in bank account. If 50% is in terms of Savings Account and 50% as CD or Fixed Deposits, you can get statement to say you have cash in 2 different forms and total is equal to 100% in one single statement.

• What should be the contents of the bank statement

I will try to upload a sample pdf file.

Name of your sponsor

Relationship to Sponsor

Type of Account(s)

Current Balance ( in local currency Rupees, Euro, Yen,…)

Equivalent in U.S. Dollars

Conversion Rate used for calculation ( Say 1USD = INR 39 )

• Does universities accept photocopies of the Bank Statement?

You need to get bank statement in original letter head from the Bank with Signature and Seal from the Bank Manager. Universities usually don’t accept photocopies of bank statement.

• Do colleges accept attested copies of Bank Statement?

Even if its attested by the same bank manager. Why take the risk or sending photocopy and universities asking you to send a original copy at the very end before issuing I-20. Majority of the schools don’t accept the attested copies too.

• When to send Bank Statement – Along with graduate school application packet or after getting the acceptance letter?

It’s based on graduate school policy, for instance NCSU will first issue Acceptance Letter and then ask the student to send Bank Statement. Unless otherwise mentioned specifically to send bank statement after issuing Acceptance, its always better to send the Bank Statement for graduate school admission along with other application documents to Graduate School.

• Can we get admission to graduate school without sending Bank Statement?

Refer to previous answer. If you couldn’t send bank statement along with application package, send a note along with graduate school application, saying you will send bank statement in specific period of time. Some schools will consider your application to be incomplete unless they receive the bank statement.

• How long is the Bank Statement valid?

Universities in U.S. consider Bank Statement to be valid for 6 months from the date when Bank Statement is issued. So, you would need to take 2 bank statements. One for admission and one for during visa interview. Even though if both admission and visa comes within 6 months, I would try to get a recent bank statement while appearing for visa interview.

• At what stage of graduate school application process, bank statement is used?

Bank Statement is used to check if students have enough financial resources to afford the cost of education in U.S. And International office need the financial proof to issue I-20.

• Does the location of the bank matters ( City or Village)?

Nope, not at all. Unless its written in English, location of the bank doesn’t matter.

Do you make these 11 Common Graduate School Application mistakes?

Almost every graduate school have online application along with paper application format. Sometimes it takes long time to fill out online application and some terms and convention followed in U.S. will look different and you it will take some time to get used to it. As, you apply for more schools, you will understand, they will all follow almost similar style, format and arrangement.

I have listed some of the common mistake students make while filling out online or paper format graduate school application.

Always the first application you fill, submit and send documents will be good learning experience. I have seen some people ask so many questions for each field, before they type or write. And that’s agreeable, because we can see our future career in front of us while filling the application. Hope the following list of mistake will give you general overview on what to expect while submitting graduate school application.

Student ID or SSN

If you are an International Student, and you haven’t submitted online graduate school application, you will not have Student ID. Social Security Number will be issued only after you come to U.S. ( Find how to get SSN ). If you have submitted online application, some form of ID will be assigned to you. Make sure you include the ID number in all pages while sending hard copy of the documents.

For example your Reference number or Student ID after you submit online application is : 444-023-5555. Make sure you include that ID at the top of the page in SOP, Recommendation Letter cover, Resume, and other documents you send with the application package.

Type Name or Print Name

Most of the students have hard time to understand what do here when they come across Print Name or Type Name in paper based application. Those 2 are equivalent to ‘Write your name here’. If its online application, type your name in the space provided.

Missing Last Name

I have seen 2student so far asking me what shall I do, If I don’t have Last Name in the passport. It’s simple, universities will not give admission. They might give admission, but cannot issue I-20. You cannot survive here without having Last Name. So, I strongly suggest to get your name changed in the Passport to include Last name even before booking dates for GRE and TOEFL exam.

Last Name is also said as Family Name.

Given Name is your First Name.

I read about a student who applied for a graduate school in Oregon and he was not given admission since he didn’t have Last Name.

Date Of Birth

You have to write in the following format MONTH/DAY/YEAR. Different places in the world follow different formats. but in U.S. Make sure you fill in Month/day/Year format.

Transcript (Name)

You will be asked what other different names used in the documents that will be submitted. In India we use Initials before our First Name. Your name could be as per in passport.

• Given Name: John
• Last Name : Young

But, documents in India will have Y.John If that’s the case, make sure you write that name under the field asking for Alternate Names that would appear in the documents ( Transcripts, Recommendation Letter, SOP, Resume,..)

How to attach Resume

When attaching the Resume, it would be always better to upload the well formatted ASCII format resume ( *.txt file ). If you attach the resume in word document, it will look distorted when schools downloads the resume. Here’s a link on how to convert word file to ASCII file.

Wrong Email Address

I have few student ask me, saying they gave wrong email address while submitting the application. Make sure, you give the right email address. Try to use professional looking email address.

Examples

• sweetberry@abc.com ( Not its doesn’t look good for applying for college of jobs )
• john1234@abc.com ( It’s ok, but I would try to avoid using such id’s too)
• john.young@abc.com ( it looks perfect )

How to Paste Documents while Submitting Online application

Some online applications will ask you to paste SOP, Resume into free form fill text box, as I said in How to Attach Resume, don’t past the content from Word document file directly into the form fill. Instead convert into Ascii file or atleast copy DOC -> TXT File -> Past into Application.

Recommendation Letter : Email and Hard copy

Even though you have submitted SOP, Recommendation letters online, its always better to send the hard copy of all the documents you had submitted online. So,that they will have formatted copy of your documents. If you had some certifications images in the resume, those will not go through very well when submitting the document online. Again, I strongly suggest to send all the hard copy of the documents.

Student Signature

If you have to sign any of the documents, make sure you use blue color ball pen. So, if in case the paper gets wet, your signature will stay on put. Reason for blue color is, if you make photocopy of the documents, its hard to find if the documents is original copy or copy of original document. So, using blue pen will eliminate that difference.

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