U.S. Universities - College Admisison Process Flowchart

U.S. Universities application process is different, but having an idea about what goes on after graduate school application is submitted will help students to know when to contact professors by email for admission.

In one of the previous article about how graduate school application is reviewed will give idea on what major factors is considered by U.S. Universities for admission. In this article, I happened to get a flow chart that describes in detail about graduate school application process flow from San Fransisco State University.

Even though the flow chat is from SFSU, it will apply to any U.S. Universities admission process and certainly will apply to all the departments.

U.S. Universities - Admission Process

As you can see when International student submits application, its first reaches Graduate School Admission office. As far I know only very few US Universities will ask students send the college application packet directly to the department as in SFSU.

Graduate School Review

If the student doesn’t have the minimum requirements, like GPA and GRE scores below required by the school, application will be denied by the graduate school. If all the documents were submitted, along with other requirements, then application will be forwarded to the department for review. If university doesn’t receive application fee, they will not process the application.

Department Review

Computer Science department in the university will evaluate the application. If they feel the student doesn’t have enough academic credentials, admission will be denied. In some cases for instance when student has bachelors degree in electrical engineering and have applied to computer science in M.S. then conditional admission will be given, where student have to take few pre-requisite courses, before taking graduate courses.

University Specific Admission process

Every universities in U.S will have different admission process, but the above flowchart give an idea of how student is admitted to the program. But, the factor universities use to give admission might vary, but the flow of documents will be almost the same.

Department - Grad School - International Office

Above chart doesn’t show what happens after department sends the acceptance form to graduate school. When the graduate school in the University receives the acceptance letter from department,  bank statement from the student application and other details will be forwarded to the International Office. Then IO will issue new I-20 to the student.

Some schools will mail the acceptance letter and I-20 only through regular mail ( not fedex or dhl courier service), so it will take 2 to 4 weeks to reach different parts of the world.

Image Credit - Ctd 2005

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