Assalam-O-Alai-Kum everyone,
I would like to add to Junaid's comments. Please read my comments below:
At 04:38 AM 4/10/2002 +0600, Junaid Asim Khan wrote:
>Salam All,
>
>Sorry for the mass email, but I think it is good to mention
>something here.
>
>1) GRE and TOEFL requirements are different for different
> universities
>
>2) RA ship in good universities has nothing to do with your GRE
> and TOEFL (mostly; in some cases it is important), it depends
> upon the requirement from the professor who will offer
> admission to you.
RA ships do not depend on the GRE and/or TOEFL, while TA ships (which are
offered by the dept.) strictly depend on TOEFL, GRE, GRE subject and the
spoken English tests. RA ships depend on the following:
1. RA ship is strictly provided by the professor, it has very little to do
with either the department or the univ.
2. The professor has to have money for research to hire you as an RA
otherwise no matter how outstanding a person you are he cannot offer you an
RA ship
3. You have to contact the professor personally either through email or in
person and he has to be convinced that you can do the project he has
funding for. Just remember, the professor is not looking for the brightest
individual in the world, he just wants someone who has the relevant
background for the position and he picks the best person(s) amongst the
candidates he has at hand. Here is what he is looking for:
a) someone who will be with him for a long time, for at least the
duration of the project => prefers Phd over MS candidates.
b) someone who has proven experience in the (professor's or the
project's) field. Either job experience or class projects.
c) someone who has good recommendation letters and a good statement of
purpose
d) or someone who he knows personally, yes you guessed it right PR
really works
So remember, to get RA, the project(s) you have done tied with the
statement of purpose (which is like your resume) and the recommendation
letters are the most important factors. In this case the recommendation
letters should mention that you are most hard working person in the world.
Because RA ship is like slavery, the professor is looking for slaves who
can spend 24 hours a day 7 days a week at his lab and get paid very little.
Of course that very little is a lot to the student because tuition becomes
free (in most universities not all, e.g. RA's at UC's don't normally get
their tuition paid.).
>3) I am really sorry to mention one thing that, our teachers in
> NED are the biggest cause for the difficulties that students
> face in obtaining admission in GOOD universities (there is
> very small percentage of NEDIANS in top 10 universities)
I would disagree to a certain extent. I think the single biggest factor is
the GRE score. If you have a good (more like perfect) GRE score you will
definitely get admitted to one of the best schools.
>4) The reason is that, they are to happy to give less marks in
> exams. Average percentage is normally below 65%. This small
> %ange means (a) Either teachers are not good (b) Average
> student is not good (not the case) (c) papers are not related
> to the material covered in class OR the instructor is unfair
> in grading.
Again marks don't matter. Every good University in US does know about NED.
They know what the average grades are. The problem is, we do not have a
standard. It keeps changing and is very inconsistent. Their is no guarantee
that the 1st positioner from NED would do well in his/her graduate studies.
IIT's in India have established their reputation. The candidates from IIT
with good grades are GOOD and thats what is missing in NED. Our system
and/or teachers cannot differentiate between the good and bad students.
>5) Last year I had a meeting with one of the professor from Marry
> Land, he told me that they consider following things before
> offering admission
>
> a) Student must fulfill minimum GRE and TOEFL requirement (he
> has not mentioned that it has to be too high)
>
> b) The most important thing is student's score in UNDERGRAD (it
> is the drawback for Nedians)
Score is always relative. So if the average is 50%, someone who gets a
score of 70% is really good. Thats how it works.
> c) Letter of recommendation (counts around 40%), it is a big
> problem in NED, needs from one to two months. And some
> professors specially one of the department chair has some
> strange requirements for that, I will mention some of these
> (i) Submit all your marks sheet and he gives recommendation
> letters to only those who are in top 10 (others have no
> right for higher studies)
>
>(ii) Wait for around one month (seems he has no importance of
> time or his typing speed is too slow or he has to go to some
> English teacher to write the letter) (iii) he does not give
> more then 3 recommendation letters to a student (it needs
> only a photocopy and a signature to make extra letters)
Well, I think we have misunderstood the importance of recommendation
letters. And by the way I did the same thing when I applied to US
universities. I looked for people and/or teachers who had graduated from
MIT and Berkeley for recommendation letters instead of getting them from
those who knew me well. So let me summarize what the purpose of
recommendation letters is:
1. The Universities are looking for recommendation letters from people
and/or teachers who know you very well rather then heads of the departments
or people with Phd's from top schools
2. They want to read real personal comments from these people about you
3. Remember, if every student gets the same recommendation from a professor
i.e. a very good recommendation then the value of the recommendation is
zero. And don't assume that you are the only one from NED applying to a
particular university. I believe more then 50% of the students in NED apply
to universities in US. You should always assume that you are not the only
applicant from NED. So now lets say you have 10 applicants from Electrical
Engg. dept. of NED to the same university and all have exactly the same
recommendation letter from prof. Abdul Ghafoor, what would be the value of
that letter?? ZERO. So this is very important. The prof. must make sure
that only the best students get the very good recommendation letter. The
best may or may not be the one who got 1st position but the one who is most
capable in the opinion of that prof.
> d) For PhD if he has some publication then it helps a lot
Of course that would be a big help.
>6) The most important thing is the contact with the professors in
> your field in that particular universities where you have
> applied for admission, with this you can get admission even
> with all the efforts against you by NED teachers.
Yes this is specially important if you want to get RA.
>7) Also don't consider that every body knows about NED in USA and
> Canada, in fact more than 98% don't even know about its name,
> so if you will obtain a letter of recommendation from that
> department chair after one month effort or from any other
> teacher within one hour, it will make no difference
Thats not true. All major universities know about NED. At least the
admissions department know NED very well. So do not under estimate the
process here. They do have a very rigorous admissions process.
>8) It is not the case in KFUPM, because sometimes some NEDIANs
> evaluate your application, if you are applying in Computer
> Engineering at KFUPM then Mr Noman is one of the best choice
> for obtaining letters, someone has recommended his name for
> this purpose there.
You know what, Mr Noman should be the best choice to apply to any
University. If he is your department head, you should definitely get a
recommendation letter from him and have him mail the letter to the
university directly. If Mr. Noman is reading, I would highly recommend him
to give good recommendation to only the best students otherwise the value
of your recommendation would be reduced to nothing.
>Salam, and I am really apologize from NED teachers for all my
>comments, but these are the facts, and I have faced all these
>problems myself
>
>Junaid
I hope my comments would help.
Tauseef
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