Its that time of the year that students who had applied for MS slowly start hearing back from the universities that they applied to. Such times can be very anxious for students. Its not easy to hide anxiety when so many of your fellow students start receiving news of admit of rejects from universities. So one fine morning you get up and see an email pop you in your inbox from the admissions committee of a university that you applied to. And with God’s grace it has an admit to that university for you!! You are all ecstatic and announce to all your friends that you are in!! And you relax in knowing that at least one univeristy is securely in your kitty of admits. Which is a good thing, having at least one admit come your way before you hear back from others great to get some anxiety off of you. But now that you have the admit - what are the next steps. Well, depending upon where you got the admit from, things may vary. For example, if you get an admit from a top notch university which was your dream - then you probably dont need to worry about much from that point on as far as other admits are concerned. All you need to do is make sure you send your confirmation of the admit. But apart from that, irrespective of where you get the admit from, in case you have nt still received any news about funding/scholarship, your fight for aid would begin.

Now aid comes in varied formats - as you may already know - could be a TA or an RA or some form of fellowship/scholarship. Now, TAs, in many cases, are students in the second year/PhD students - but again this depends from school to school. RAs just need to fit the requirements of the lab and beat other students who are competing for the positions - so basically brush up on you skills and some interview questions. For such positions such as RA and TA - you could as well start applying to professors who are already out there in those universities. Get to know their interests and start emailing them about a possible chance to work with them on the projects going on in their labs and how your previous skills and projects are in alignment with what is going on in his lab.

So as s next sep after getting admitted you could start to look at the website of your department at that school. Also, the other thing would be to get in touch with other students already at that school - and see if there is an Indian Students Association there. Try to become part of their mailing list. Also, look up communities on orkut or other forums of students who have gotten into that school. Get to know other students who are also admitted to that school. Finding out about your future classmates should always be fun.

Aside from that, if you are still waiting to hear from other universities - you could wait a bit - otherwise, you would need to get start on requesting the I-20 from the US university so that you can apply for a visa interview appointment with the nearest US consulate/embassy.

Congratulations on your admit! Dont forget to party!