Know about Scholarships and How to get them

Types of scholarships

Three types

ü      Fellowships

ü      Assistantships

ü      Grants

FELLOWSHIPS

·        Offered at the beginning of graduate level

·        No work obligation

·        Granted to any one on the basis of merit

·        Range $ 1K- $15K (Thousand)

·        Covers living expense, sometimes also includes tuition and fees

ASSISTANTSHIPS:
Assistantships are not just employment relationships. It is an integral and important part of graduate education. Assistantships range from $ 5K-$ 30K per year, with 10-20 hours of work per week.

• Teaching Assistantship (TA)
  * covers salary with full or partial tuition fee remission
  * Health benefit may or may not included
  * involves teaching undergraduate classes, grading papers, and monitoring labs.
  * may involve attending undergraduate classs and carrying lighter courses loads which will kill your time.
• Research Assistantship (RA)
  * Similar to Above
  * involves research assignment in your discipline
  * the best part of it is that it supports your thesis dissertation.

GRANTS

v      Mostly advanced level graduate students are qualified for the grants.

v      It is provided to pursue special projects.

v      Amount ranges from $1K- 3K, more than $10 K is rare

v      it does not include living cost

v      Skills required to receive grants are, originality, importance of the research work and ability to carry out research successfully.

HOW TO WIN SCHOLORSHIPS

o       Professor control must of the assistantships.

o        Go to department webpage; communicate; write to them and know about the professors

o       Email to professor and assure him how you can contribute.

o       Present polished and professional application.

o       Correspond properly,
*use proper email address (not like crazyheart@gmail.com), don’t forget to include your email address on the body of your email.
*Write your full name, academic history, years of study completed
*proposed field of study
*which semester/ year you are applying for
*write about your professional work experience.
*Write your GRE, GMAT, and TOEFL scores if you have them now
*Attach your CV.

How to increase your Aids?

·        Request colleges to match your current aid offer

·        Apply to colleges in clusters, most competitive colleges compete for same students

·        Beat the priority deadline

·        Ask politely to speak with the director of financial aid

·        Research outside funding sources available

·        After getting AID do politely bargain to make that aid match to your expenses.

Scholarship myths
* Guaranteed scholarships with high TOEFL/ IELTS scores (Scams)
* High GRE is automatic Scholarships (no guarantee)

* There is no international student scholarship or diversity scholarships (Scams)
* working outside the college (you may not get time)

WHERE TO GO TO FIND RELEVANT INFORMATION

• USEF Library, Look in Petersons Books
• Websites of college and universities
• American library
• Join USEF e-group
• Useful books are:
  Funding for US study (Latest edition)
  Open door (latest edition)
  Petersons Graduate Program Handbook (2009)
  Petersons grants for Graduate and post doctoral study. 5^th edition
  Petersons Scholorships, Grants, and Prizes (2009)

Useful websites are
Funding for US Study: http://www.fundingusstudy.org/
FinAid! Financial Aid, College Scholarships and Student Loans
http://scholar.google.com/  (go to advanced search, type the name of professor or Key words)
Still confused, leave a question here!!!!!!!!!!

General Do’s and Don’ts: While Writing a Successful Application Essay

General Do’s and Don’ts: While Writing a Successful Application Essay
Do’s

ü      Do take a lot of time.
Don’t do this at the last minute. Plant to spend month or so preparing for the essay. Plan to let it rest for a week, so you have time to mull it over and get a perspective on it. Don’t be hasty and sloppy.

ü      Do read the question carefully.
If they ask you why you want to go to law school, answer that. If they ask what your career goals are, answer that. Don’t go off on a tangent or get too verbose.

ü      Do write length of the essay they ask for.
If they ask for 200 words give them that or 190 or 220. You don’t give them a 1000 and you don’t give them 50.

ü      Type your final draft unless they tell you not to.
Type it well with no mistakes. Buy some good paper. If you’re writing it, see that it is clear and legible.

ü      Do write a separate essay for each university.
There is no reason why you can’t take a paragraph from one essay and apply it to another. Your essays don’t have to be every word different but each university would like to think that you are especially interested in their program. Each university is different. Make something about your essay distinctive to that university and mention its name. Don’t write an all- purpose general essay. Admissions faculties don’t like that.

ü      Do as much research on the university as you can.
If you can get hold of a catalogue, read it. If you can find someone who went to the university, talk to them. Find out as much as you can about the university. You don’t want to say ‘I am always wanted to go to Harvard because I wanted to find out about the Great American West’. As most of you know, Harvard is not in the Great American West. It is in Massachusetts.

ü      Accentuate your positive qualities.
If you had the highest mark in class, make sure that they know it. Make sure that they know that you were able to hold a full – time job while going to school. Make sure that they know that you won any awards. Make sure that they know that you were captain of a team.

HOW TO WRITE A SUCCESSFUL Application Essay

HOW TO WRITE A SUCCESSFUL
Application Essay
(Source: The US-UK Fulbright commission. Based on a presentation in Madras by Professor Hower, Comell University, Department of English)

The personal statement is a difficult piece of writing, may be the most difficult piece of writing you will ever do, and therefore you have to do it very carefully. It is an opportunity for you to give a picture of yourself. It may take a great deal of time and energy but at least you will have written something you are proud of, which says something important about you. So I would suggest first of all: write it for yourself as much as for graduate schools in America; do a job that you like, something that has integrity, which says something important about you. If things don’t turn out the way you hope, at least you will have written something difficult but satisfying.

Importance

How important is the essay part of the application? This depends on your marks to a certain extent. If your marks are very high, then it may be as important as it is for someone whose marks are not so good. Nevertheless it is important. A person with high marks can spoil his/ her chances of admission with a bad essay. At highly competitive schools, where most applicants score at the 97^th percentile level of standardized tests, a winning proposal statement may be the deciding factor in admission.

What are universities looking for?
First of all don’t second guess. Don’t try to figure out what you think they want and supply it because you won’t be able to do that. Nor can you understand the mind of a 50 year old American who is living 10,000 miles away from you and may have woken up that morning with a headache and then was bitten by a dog on his way to the office. There is no way you can second guess, you can not read their minds. Having said that, I can tell you some things which all college admissions officers want to see in the application.

GRE VOCAB: SPEECH or/ SPEAK

1. Ventriloquent (n): some one who can make his or her voice seem to come from other person or things.
2. Articulate (adj): fluent and clear in speech

3. Bombast: high sounding language with little meaning.
4. Colloquy (n): informal speech; conversation
5. Colloquial (adj): pertaining to conservation or common speech; informal
6. Drawl (v): speak in a slow, lazy way with prolonged vowel sounds.
(n): a drawling accent