We recently spoke to Krishna Chaitanya from NIT Suratkal who has recently made it to the Ohio State University for MS in Computer Science. We thought it would be the right time to ask him about his journey to OSU. Krishna tells us what the admissions committee there values in a students’ application. He also has advice on how to approach the GRE and about career prospects after MS. He also talks about the funding scenario there. Here he is himself..

1. Hi Krishna. What do you think are important aspects the admission committee looks for candidates at ohio state university?

Krishna: I have observed that most of the universities give a lot of importance to good grades. Its a different story if you have a bunch of papers to speak off. But, at the undergrad level, only a handful of us can get close to publishing a paper. It certainly helps to apply from an IIT/NIT background. However, I have come across a few others who had worked for about an year or so in places like IBM or NI and were able to make it to good universities, despite being from other engineering colleges. It also helps to have a GRE score of above 1300. I have noticed that students with GRE scores in the 1200s find it slightly hard to get good admits, even though they have decent acads. But this may not always be the case - and so no generalization may be drawn.

2. Why MS in CS and how does it help with you future career goals?

Krishna: I have been interested in areas related to High Performance Computing since the 2nd year of B-TECH. At the undergrad level, we get to have utmost 1 elective on such areas and I knew I needed to go through a graduate level course to get a better perspective on the subject and to enhance my brand value. HPC is still an emerging area in India and there are not many educational institutes that have the required hardware. So, pursuing MS in the US was almost a default choice in my case.

3. How are u gonna finance yourself? What are the job opportunities like at the univ which may help you to finance yourself?

Krishna: I am told that the on-campus job scenario at OSU is decent, if not great. AFAIK, at OSU, very few MS students are offered funding to start with, since the number of MS students admitted per year is slightly on the higher side. However, I am in touch with a bunch of MS students who are working as RA’s. I am being optimistic about being funded in the first year since I have done good work in HPC. Also, Columbus is not a very expensive place to stay in. We can manage to keep the living expenditures around 500$ per month.

4. What was your preparation like for the GRE?

Krishna: GRE is a very simple exam but the format of the test makes it a little interesting. Ofcourse, you need to put in some effort for the verbal section. But most of it boils down to how you manage time during the test. I am not too sure if they have made any changes in the pattern now, but when I took the test, the first 15 questions contributed a major chunk to the final score. However, we were also being penalised heavily if we ended up missing a quiestion or two due to shortage of time in the end. Hence, it is important to pace oneself during the test. This is all the more important in the verbal section as the reading comprehensions do consume time. The section on quant is not all that hard, but one shouldnt be overconfident at the same time. It would be ideal to prepare for about 2-3 months and take a bunch of computer based practice tests to get a good feel of the pattern.