The New York based, Institute of International Education has released its annual report detailing the state of international admissions at US universities. In its Open Door’s report, they say that with 94,563 students coming from India, makes us the nation with the highest amount of talent coming to US universities to pursue higher education options. Here is a quick jist from their study.

Total foreign student numbers up 7%; New enrollments up 10%

Top three sending countries post double-digit increases

India up 13%, China up 20%, South Korea up 11%

USC is top host university; California is top host state; NYC is top host city;

Business and Management (20%) is top field of study followed closely by engineering (17%)

Here are some more graphs for …

Two years ago, Minal Khodani was one of many students from Mumbai University who thought of going abroad for higher education and making it big. But Minal was one of the few who actually dared to dream big and worked towards it and lived it! Minal came to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for a MS in Wireless Networking. After doing well there, she was offered a job at Oracle Inc in Redwood Shores, California. We took the time to speak to Minal about her decision to pursue MS and how she went about the preparation. Minal gives a detailed outlook on things and mentions important pieces in the application process that people should take care of. Here is Minal her self…
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The University of California at Irvine is one of the fastest growing UC campuses. It has some of the most renowned names in Computer Science on its faculty list. The machine learning group at the university has some of the most renowned names on its list. People like Pierre Baldi have been instrumental in UC Irvine’s rise as a top notch CS department. But now, another big wig in the world of computer science joins UC Irvine as faculty. Mike Carey, a National Academy of Engineering member, is acknowledged as one of the 50 most influential computer scientists in the world by a UCLA-maintained Web site that tracks research citations. He is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery …

Amandeep Khurana, from Thapar Institute of Technology, is part of the fresh crop of grad students to join the Department of Computer Science at University of California, Santa Cruz. In this short but sweet interview - Amandeep gives us a glimpse on how he is adjusting to life away from home, and trying to adjust in with the new settings. Many times when you are unfamiliar with the new environment, the grad student community which is living there already - often pitches in with a great deal of support. Here is Amandeep talking about his initial few days as a grad student in the US:
1. Which program did you get into here in the US and when did you …

Many students have expressed anxious feelings about deciding to go for an MS to the US given the current situation of financial institutions in the country. The financial situation inside the country has not been the best as compared to the last few years. In fact in many ways, its similar to the situation which was present in the 1987 economic slow down. However, many the dent caused will be felt slowly across many sectors. The first and primary harm is caused to the banks. Hence, a job in he financial sector is hard to come by - not too hard though as banks still need to operate and still need talented people - however, investment banking as …

In the recent past, the management education in the US has come under fire from a lot of people. The MBA programs have had to deal with a lot of heat from various quarters - for lacking a focus on professional aspects of management - for encouraging learning the textbook - and not encouraging bright ideas coming from students themselves.
However, one of the biggest assets of US educational institutes lies in their ability to react quickly to constructive criticism and do fast non-bureaucratic curriculum reviews - unlike most other university systems. So schools like Graduate School of Business at Stanford, Kellogg School at Northwestern, Sloan School at MIT and the Johnson School at Cornell are among the schools leading …

Well, one thing is for sure - if you are applying to a US univ from Asia - chances are that you are cash strapped - meaning - in many cases you can barely afford a US college education! Heck, people in the western world find it hard to pay their way through college and with the dollar growing strong against the world currencies, its even harder for people in the developing world to think about education in the US. Many universities hence make it mandatory for students to send in proof of finances at the time of admission - while others require proof of finances after admit is issued for I-20 release.
The proof of finances - is to …

Many students want to give a impetus to their applications for MS or PhD in the US by working with a professor at a good research lab - for example in India there are the IITs and IISc and in places like China there is the Tsinghua University and in the US - there are so many good schools. Many people also apply for internships at EPFL, Switzerland and INRIA, France and so on. Here are a few tips when trying to approach professors at such places. In general, these tips hold true for emailing university professors in general.
1. Try to show why you are interested in the work going on in a particular lab
2. Try to do a …