Video : Interviewing at Google – Inside Look

Google tops the Fortune’s list of 100 best companies to work for – 2008. It’s everyone dream to work for companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon. If you wonder how it will be to work for Google, you got to view this video.

Inside Look : Working at Google

Hope you enjoyed the videos.

It’s been a while

Hello everyone, I know its been more than a month, I haven’t posted any article. I was busy lately. My parents were visiting me from India and had few deadlines to meet at my work. I should be posting regularly from now on. I have been chatting with few students who applied for Spring 2008 and majority of them got F1 Visa. I have asked them to send me a write up on their experience so far and what was the impact on Happy Schools Blog in there decision making. Once, I have the article, I will post it here, till then enjoy the rest of the blog entries.

One of the reader have asked to post an Index page of all the articles. I’m working on that, in meantime, you can search the archives to look for previous articles in the blog.

You can chat with me, just write a comment.

Hello Guys, I have been chatting with few of the readers of this blog and I haven’t added anyone for last 1 month. So, I decided add one more student to my chat friends list in next seven days. Rules are very simple.

1) You need to write a comment to this post.

2) One Winner will be selected randomly.

3) I need to have atleast 10 comments to select the winner.

4) You can write a comment and refer your friend to write a comment. If you say my friend Rohit will write a comment, your chances are more to be added to my chat list.

5) It’s marketing for me and lots of benefit for you. So, its mutual.

I will answer all the queries you have in chat session. Some of the friends in my list are Alok, Raji, Priya, Munna, Keerthi, Wilson, Mohit, .

If you wonder what kind of questions students ask and how I answer, here is a sample chat transcript

priya: hey how is the job opportunity for Software engineering and systems specialization?

 

Happy: u can get testing jobs

not high paying

 

priya: since iam non-cs ,i feel that this i can take up easily do

companies look in to the specialization what we have done in particular?

 

Happy: no

 

priya: then with SE i can get in to programming also right,which is high paying?

 

Happy: if u have programming courses it will help else it will be difficult

Sent at 10:53 PM on Wednesday

 

priya: how about networking and mobile computing?

5 Common Questions About Universities asked by Students

When student are in 3rd year of engineering, there will be someone who will bring up the topic of GRE, TOEFL and Master’s degree in U.S. University. And it all depends on the college and the exposure among the students, seniors that will ultimately decide how many student from a college will be pursuing Master’s in U.S. When, few are talking about U.S. Universities, I’m sure some students will not even think about that option, considering the family situation, or maybe because, they could have assumed, its highly impossible to study in U.S. University, or maybe because Read more

Happy Schools Blog gets New Look

Finally after 2 weeks of importing contents into Wordpress and updating the internal links, I was able to launch this site/blog 2 weeks before I actually planned to. With my own domain, I have more features and flexibility over the contents and ad placement and possibly more revenue too

I strongly suggest the readers to sign-up for Email Subscription. It will automatically generate email when new article is posted and give you a short summary of the article. Also, you will receive featured articles that are not posted in the blog. In the featured articles, you will receive exclusive contents like, details about specific universities ( low GRE score, no GRE score admissions universities, ..) Also, I’m working on creating E-book and weekly news letters and all these features are available for Blog Subscribers. So, feel free to subscribe to email updates.

When you subscribe, confirmation email will be sent to the email address provided. You have to confirm the email address, before receiving updates. Also, see if the email no delivered to your to Junk Mail Folder.

I will not be posting articles in old Happy Schools Blogger Blog. But, it will re-direct the traffic to this new blog. I’m still trying to re-direct the traffic to specific page, but experiencing some technical issues.

Majority of the posts for last 2 months were targeted for students who are planning to get to U.S. I will be equally writing contents for students who are already in U.S. and who have graduated and looking for jobs. So, the contents will include, job searching tips, proactive job search approach techniques, internship opportunities, and other similar interests.

Hope you all enjoy the new layout and fresh looks to Happy Schools Blog. You will see small purple heart icon at the end of the post. If you enjoy any particular article, post, feel free to submit to any of the social media sites. If you are not sure of what social media is, spend some time to explore those sites ( Digg, Stumble Upon, Technorati,..) It a wonderful sites to find other similar blogs. And again, pass the word to your friends.

This site is best when Viewed using Firefox.

Cheers!

Low GRE Score Universities, F1 Visa tips, and more

I’m doing lot of research for the posts in coming weeks. But it’s time consuming work. I’m sure that will benefit lots of students. Some of the topics I’m working are

1) Common Universities

This will include the list of schools where majority of the students apply for safe admission. So, rethink before you apply there. Also, checkout how graduate school application in reviewed by graduate school admission committee in universities.

2) Low GRE score universities.

This list would include universities that accept students with GRE score from 900 to 1100. I know this list would have helped many, if I had posted it long back. But, it takes time to collect information. Previous related posts Low GRE, No Problem, Secret of getting Scholarship

3) Universities that accept students without GRE.

There are many schools that accept students without GRE score. Sounds good right?

4) Visa tips, document guide.

This will include how to answer Visa interview questions, what documents to carry, how much bank balance to show, how to show, how to dress for the interview, how to answer tough questions and much more.

5) E-Book for easier access to different posts.

I have written about wide variety of topics. For a new visitor, unless they spend considerable time, it will be difficult to navigate and get all possible information. So, I’m creating an e-book that will have links to all posts in different phases. Before GRE, After GRE but before submitting application, After application submission before Visa, Visa tips, After visa,.. So, it will be easy to access information. But, I’m to going to give this E-book for free, but you have to subscribe to this site and refer few friends. I’m working on adding that features to this blog.

It will be a while before I can finish the research and write the articles. I usually spend time talking to current students, and once I have first hand information, then I write about the schools. So, far I have some 8 universities that doesn’t need GRE score for admission.

For common universities, I have some 10 schools in my list. And the size of the list is growing daily as I get input from current students. Check out

My long term goal with this blog includes to create a job board for students graduating to get jobs, internships. So, keep visiting and let me know if you have any queries. In meantime I will write other short articles, answering queries from students.

I strongly appreciate if you enjoyed the articles in here and if you think it will help your friends, let them know. You can send them email, add happy schools blog to your message message, add it to your Orkut profile, post a printout in your college notice board, post in forums and discussions group. Its just me who is trying to do the marketing and if you can volunteer to spend few minutes per day, I will really appreciate your work. Thanks in advance.

Largest U.S. Universities by Student Population

If you are enrolled at colleges in U.S. there are so many new terms you will have to learn and also find what that means. Once such term is census date. Usually, it’s 21st day after college starts. Some schools dates vary. That’s the official date when number of students enrolled will be counted. They use that calculation for requesting fund from the University System or from State for the coming academic year.

Following is the list of top 10 largest U.S. Universities based on student enrolled in Fall 2006.

Rank	University	Enrollment
1.	Ohio State University, Columbus	51,818
2.	Arizona State University, Tempe	51,234
3.	University of Florida, Gainesville	50,912
4.	University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Minneapolis	50,402
5.	University of Texas at Austin	49,697
6.	University of Central Florida	46,907
7.	Michigan State University	45,520
8.	Texas A&M University, College Station	45,143
9.	University of South Florida, Tampa	44,038
10.	Pennsylvania State University, University Park	42,914

Social Bookmarking explained

Definition from Wiki – Social bookmarking is a way for Internet users to store, organize, share and search bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share.

Bookmarking, in general will save the links to the pages for future visits on your computer.

But, Social bookmarks lets you at add tags of your choice are usually public, may be saved privately. People can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, via a search engine, or even randomly.

Social bookmarking sites:

Some of the commonly used Social Media sites are

• Digg
• del.icio.us
• StumbleUpon
• Reddit
• Netscape
• Magnolia

How does it work?

Its new way to organize information with tags and since it’s visible to other users, users can connect with other users of same interests. Users can also see how many other users have bookmarked the same site.

How to Social bookmark this site or webpage?

You must have seen the following icons below my posts. You will have to create an account in the above sites and click on the icons to bookmark and assign tags to them.

For example :

I created an account in del.icio.us for Happy Schools Blog http://del.icio.us/happyschools

You can see the tags below each link. This way it gives much power to look for information on similar tags and what others have bookmarked.

Say, someone have found a good link about GRE Online Exam, and they have bookmarked it, it should be visible to you and you.

So, if you like any posts you read in here, I appreciate you can social bookmark it. It would benefit you and will help to find more webpage’s of similar topic and also it will drive more traffic to my page.Go ahead and get started. Its more like Orkut, but for sharing your webpage’s that you enjoyed and wanted others to enjoy them.

Free Resume review : Winners

Last week, I had a post for Free Resume Review for student readers who read the posts and comment on topics with their email. There were lots of comments, but few didn’t have email id to contact them back and some were anonymous. I have selected Nikhil and Alok and their Resume will be reviewed. Resume format used here is quiet different from the format followed in India while you are in college or formats used for applying for jobs.

So, what’s included in Resume Review:

• Resume template evaluation
• Guide to highlight your strengths, achievements instead of listing your experience
• How to guide for creating positive approach in your resume to get noticed
• How to minimize negative factors in resume that distracts the readers
• What keywords to use to gain attention

Interesting Reads:

How to find part time jobs

How to email professors during admission process

My experience with Happy Schools : 2 months

Last few days all posts were related to Graduate Schools admission, short listing universities, colleges, GRE, TOEFL. All were education related topics. It’s been a very long day today and I don’t have any pre-written posts to publish. So, I’m going to talk bout personal experience. This doesn’t dosent’ need any time from my part to do the much needed research about college and universities and admission and scholarship details. You will find answers to following questions today in this post

• • My experience with Blogging for Happy Schools
  • What types of comments Happy Schools received
  • What types of email I get daily and my response
  • What future plans I have for Happy Schools

My experience with Blogging for Happy Schools

Main motivation behind Happy Schools was to share the knowledge I have to students. Even now, I feel students are not well informed about the various options they have for Graduate Schools Admission and life style in U.S. and much more. I have been in U.S. for almost 5 years and I’m still learning. Which means I have 1800 days of learning experience to write about. So far its been just 89 posts. So, I’m still left with lots of topics to write about.

I’m learning a lot as I blog. How search engine Optimization works, how to write contents that will get relevant ad’s placed from adsense. For the time and effort I’m putting for this, I do expect to earn a little and that depends on how popular this blog gets. That will attract advertisers.

What types of comments Happy Schools received

If you happen to read the comments below the posts, you will see lots of questions for me and lots of wishers and compliments.

To name a few

“8 work dude…”

“Hi dude..Read your blog.Really encouraging Thanks a lot for the details..”

“the info is really gr8…i was relieved to see the info provided by u regarding backlogs……”

“Interesting, waiting for more thanks. “

All the comments are very encouraging for me to write more and I’m to see the reach Happy Schools and impact its creating within students. All my posts are not targeted to specific student or graduate schools. It’s targeted to help majority of the student readers.

What types of email I get daily and my response

Most of the email I get are for profile evaluation. I try to respond to everyone, but time is a major factor. I don’t have a team behind me. Its just me who can respond to all your emails. Weekends and sometime in weekdays I spend online talking to graduate student readers about their GRE, TOEFL, grad school application. I try to respond to almost all emails daily with all possible information I can. If the questions re general and if that will help others, I make a note of it to write about that topic in future. So, if you don’t get reply, just hand on, I will reply you.

What future plans I have for Happy Schools

Depending on the response from student readers, popularity among students, and based on monetary rewards I get for the time I invest in, I will keep writing.

Firefox shortcuts

Here are some of the shortcuts for making your experience with Firefox more rewarding.

- CTRL + T
Opens a New Tab.

CTRL + R
Reloads Current Tab.

ALT + Home
Loads your Home/Start Page.

CTRL + TAB
Changes to Next Tab.

CTRL + SHIFT + TAB
Changes to Previous Tab.

CTRL + Z
Undo.

CTRL + SHIFT + Z
Redo.

ESC
Stop.

CTRL + Click a Link
Opens in a New Tab.

CTRL + ENTER
Auto Complete URL to .com

SHIFT + ENTER
Auto Complete URL to .net

CTRL + SHIFT + ENTER
Auto Complete URL to .org

CTRL + SHIFT + T
Restore Last Closed Tab.

ALT +
download the linked file

SHIFT +
opens the link in a new window

F5
reload the current tab

CTRL + F5
reload the current tab and override the catch

CTRL +
change to the tab with this number

Space
scroll down

CTRL + F4
close the current tab

ALT + F4
close the window

CTRL + N
open an new Firefox window

CTRL + S
download the current website

F6

Move Control to Address Bar

I have highlighted the most frequently used ones.

Do you use Firefox?

Its been 1 month and counting since I started this blog. SO, far I had nice comments that are encouraging me to write more for students and share my personal experiences from student life. I’m using Google Analytics and StatCounter to track Happy Schools performance. You will be surprised to see what features and capabilities those 2 tools provide. It helps to drill down to so many details that will help a blogger to write and focus contents based on customer needs.

So far Happy Schools had some 3000 visitors and around majority is split between Firefox and Internet Explorer. I started using Firefox, 4 years back and since then I never turned back to Internet Explorer. I was much impressed with the capabilities it provides and make browsing more user friendly and help to get things done faster.

Why do I use Firefox

- Tabbed Browsing ( helps reduce number of open windows in Task Bar )

- Session Manager ( if you have windows crashed and all the windows had to be reopened and sometimes, hours must be spent to get to a page and after reboot, its gone. Session Manager make it easy for me)

- Search and Highlight feature. ( Helps to highlight the term within the browser as you type in the search window, no need type in separate Find dialog box as in IE)

- Above all, most of the time we search for address, we need to copy and paste every single line, into search box. In Firefox, all I need to do is highlight and get directions.

- Above all so many number of extensions and themes that you can customize and make browsing more enjoyable.

- Google Toolbar make life much easier by allowing access to bookmarks anywhere and anytime

If you haven’t tried Firefox before, I strongly encourage you to give it a try. It might just cost you few minutes to install and 1-2 hours to get used to it. Soon or later you will realize the power it will unleash to your browsing.

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