I am planning a series of posts on Applying to US universities for a Master’s degree (especially engineering and technology). I had this thought lurking in my mind from quite some time but it never came about. So finally here are some quick facts that I learned the hard way. This is specially for those who want to get into tier-1 universities like ucla, ucb, minnesota, or even suny-sb.
Here are few things worth knowing about the admissions:-
1) The most important criterium that will decide the fate of your application is your academic performance at your undergradauate level. This comes as a surprize to many who believe GRE is everything and that US universities rely on a more “holistic” approach to select students. No they dont. Your academics are given about 80% wieghtage unless you have a solid research experience (which is really rare btw, average performers generally dont get into research jobs). So what’s a good performance? While the IIT certainly carries a lot of value, for the non iitian — Suppose the top performing student has scored 88% and you have scored 75% you have a good chance at top universities. IMO, However you need to apply to 8 top ones of your choice to be sure to get into one.
2) The second important is GRE. Now exactly how important is it? For a science and engineering student, you have to concentrate more on Math. Now I know a lot people end up worrying about verbal but it doesnt carry as much wieght as a perfect 800 in Math. Work on getting a perfect 800 in Math and just about 550 in verbal and you should be fine. I havent seen too much emphasis on analytical wrting. A 4.5 in AWA is good enough most of the time.
3) If you have average academics say between 63-69%, do not aim too high. Sure apply to 4 top universities however chances of you getting through are slim simply because there are too many students for too few places. Your best are tier 2 or even tier 3 universities. However if getting a job in US after MS is your goal then tier 2 universities are not bad at all. Infact some like sjsu and sdsu have a good placement record especially for computer science students.
4) Do not go to any consellor. They dont know any shit about anything. I mean do NOT go to ANY cousellor.
5) Fork out a little dough and subscribe to US news rankings. Ofcourse I am not suggesting these rankings are perfect, but you will come to know of a lot of schools that you never thought of applying to and you will have access to various admission statistics which will give a good idea of whether or not to apply to a particular school.
6) Do not bank your work experince to make up for that average performance at school. Unless your work is heavily nerdy and reasearch oriented, they dont give a shit about which fancy MNC you are working for.
7) Toefl-ibt is only as much important as the cut off level that each university prescribes on it’s website. A very high score say 115 will not give any extra advantage to your profile. A safe score is 100 which should cover most universities.
There’s my little bit. Do feel free to comment 
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Posted by bathildaa 