CSE BUET Students and Alumni Web Articles>Applying to graduate school
Applying to Graduate School in the USA
by Ragib Hasan
Copyright: Ragib Hasan, 2005+
Table of Contents
- Applying to grad school
- How to rank grad schools
- Writing a good Statement of Purpose
- Doing research on schools
- Getting funded
Applying to Grad School
Applying to graduate school is a long process; you should start at least 1 year before your intended start of classes. You need to decide several things:
- MS or PhD
- Country
- Which test to take
- How many schools to apply to
Writing a Good Statement of Purpose
A Statement of Purpose (SoP), is perhaps the most important thing you can write in an admission package. Let's see some reasons:
- This is the only piece of your package that you write yourself
- It gives a lot of information not captured in the transcripts
- The recommendation letters, unless they are from a very famous professor, are usually ignored
- Anyone willing to know about you, will likely read it (Especially the admission committee people)
So, this is where you can impress people as well as bore people, and this is where you need to focus.
Getting funded
Most of the PhD students in the USA are funded through Teaching or Research Assistantships, or via Fellowships. One important thing to remember is that, in your application, you shouldn't explicitly say that you REQUIRE financial aid. Many application forms have a checkbox asking you this. If a university is cash-strapped, they might reject applications needing financial aid in the first cut. Usually, the PhD students are awarded assistantships that, in most cases, also include tuition waivers.
Even if you don't get funded right away, there is a chance that you may qualify for scholarships. Many universities have scholarships that are awarded to people from particular backgrounds/attributes, such as country, gender, profession, etc.
Then, if you still don't get any funding, look into the news groups, mailing lists, and web pages of different departments of the university. There are many assistantship jobs that get posted in such places.
If you are a US citizen, you'd get many more options, for example, NSA scholarships, NSF Graduate fellowships etc.
If all options fail, you can get an education loan. The rates for such loans are quite low, and you only have to pay once you graduate. If you are a US citizen, you can get Federal student loan. Of course, if you are not a US citizen or permanent resident, you might need someone to endrose your loan from a financial institution.
