Can you tell us about your background? Your undergrad institute and what you are doing now?
I have graduated from IIIT Allahabad in Information Technology. Before that, I did my schooling from my home town and secured a rank in IIT JEE in 2002. But that is an old story and I don’t think anybody is interested in those details.
After graduation I took a job in CSC India as a Windows System Administrator. Since 26 June 2006, I am bruising my ankles in CSC only.
Why did you think of applying to US universities?
I never thought of doing MS in my college. In fact I was surrounded by many talented technical geeks (whose life style scared me) and I used to think …

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 …

So what exactly is the right timing for applications? When should you be done with your GRE? When should you start looking at universities and their deadlines? Here are a few deadlines i have come up with that you might be benefited in following. Remember, this is not the only way to time your apps business - this one way which has proved successful for many. Many people start so late in the game, but they still make it to some top tier universities.
GRE Deadline: Try to be done with your GRE as soon as possible. Even getting done with it by 3rd year of college is a good idea. But if you are a bit of a late …

Many universities ask for resumes from students as part of their application process. We thought it might be of interest of you guys to read about some of the techniques we have found successful candidates adopt in their resumes for applications. The ideas are what most of you must already be aware of. Its just a question of putting things in perspective and taking another look at it given that you are applying to a university for a graduate degree. Here are 10 tricks that might be useful:
1. Cover Letter: Depending on the application - you may or may not choose to write a cover letter. In most cases this is not required, but in cases when you do …

I generally prefer to have interest provocating titles to my articles in order to encourage people to read through them. But let me warn you at the outset that if you are looking for a procedural way of putting together a good application packet, this article is NOT going to help you at all. The hard fact is that an application is only as good as the person who is evaluating the application thinks it is good. The only chance of a grad school aspirant is to prepare an application that is more likely to be evaluated by more people as good, which, in itself is a pretty daunting task.
The following discussion holds more or less both for students who …