Application Timelines

A new application season is upon us. Whether you are applying for the first time or with a new profile, the end is nigh. It's game time! This article sets out with the objective of outlining the timeline that you should have in mind for the application season. Too often, students start out too late and end up not applying to all colleges that they want to get into. So, keep this in mind while looking out for GRE/TOEFL dates and letters of recommendation. Application requirements and deadlines vary across colleges and even departments. But, as a rule of thumb, most US universities have their deadlines between the first week of December and the last week of January. Each of the following points will be dealt with in much more detail in the coming MLA’s.

1. University Selection

University selection is one of the most important parts of the application as that will decide where you will be pursuing your studies for the next 2-5 years depending on whether you plan to pursue a masters and/or PhD. Applying to Universities is not a cheap affair and can cost up to 100$ each depending on the University. University Selection should be done on the basis of the overall rankings, tuition fee, possible funding opportunities, chances of admission and other relevant statistics. A few comments are in order here. By examining the BITS2MSPhD database from the last 1-2 application cycles, you will get a realistic idea as to how good your chances are at a particular University. Also, sometimes the University may be highly ranked but the department ranking (School of Engineering) may not equivalent. For example, University of Pennsylvania has a very good ranking for MBA/Liberal Arts but has a lower rank for Engineering and Applied Sciences. You should rank a university based on the research output of the university in the field that you are interested in. A way to do that would be to see the citation count/h-index/other metrics of the professors/labs by searching on Microsoft Academic Search or Google Scholar. The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t follow the rankings blindly. Based on the above information, try to have a list of Universities ready by the first week of September.

2. Resume

A resume is required at many universities as a part of the application package. A resume must be objective and must contain all important information about you – colleges attended, grades, relevant projects and courses. It is a good idea to include publications, papers under review, awards, links to homepage and Github pages. It is a good idea to get a resume prepared and critiqued by seniors, friends and prepare the final draft by mid-September.

3. Statement of Purpose

The Statement of Purpose is one of the most important documents in your application package. The SOP should include subjective components of your application like the reason for applying to graduate school, long-term and short-term goals, why the particular school interests you and so on. The information you would get while researching universities during the University Selection phase would really help you answer why you want to apply to a particular university. The SOP should also ideally tell about some of your research projects and other subjective parts like work ethic and other details. Prepare a Generic SOP that should talk about your experiences in research, previous courses, why you decided to go to grad school and so on. Try to get this SOP reviewed by peers and seniors, especially ones with experience in applying before. Even though a tentative date has been mentioned in the infographic, you need to take into account that the first draft of your SOP will not be perfect and you may have to revise it many times depending on the feedback received from seniors and that the delays that come into the picture when dealing with seniors, who may have their own work/deadlines to meet. To this, you should add the facts that attract you to a particular university. The SOP for a specific university should be prepared by the end of October.

4. Test Scores (GRE/TOEFL/IELTS/WES)

The ideal time to give GRE/TOEFL dates is in the summer of the application year (May/June) in the cycle that you will be applying. That way, you can give the GRE again if necessary. Depending on the universities you are applying to, you may be required to submit GRE and TOEFL scores to the university. These scores are sent by the testing agencies themselves (ETS, Prometric etc.). During the peak season, which is in mid-November to January, expect delays in processing your requests due to the number of students sending their scores. It is advised that you send the scores to the universities even before applying for it and well before the deadline. In case you have a low GPA, you might want to get a WES evaluation done. A common heuristic for BITS transcripts is to convert the B's and B-'s to A's and all the grades below to B's. Score reporting works similar to the GRE/TOEFL and will require a fee for every evaluation sent to your selected institution. However, not all universities accept the WES evaluation.

5. Letters of Recommendations

Applications to US universities generally require 3 letters of recommendation from academia or industry. This is a very important part of your application and the one that will need you to constantly follow up on. You should inform your prospective referees’ starting from early September. Finalize your recommendations in September itself. Every college application will have a form where you have to enter details about the potential recommender. Most application portals allow applicants to send out recommendation requests as soon as the online application form is started; take advantage of this to ensure that your recommenders have ample to submit their recommendations on the portal. The key is to keep checking the application site to check if the recommendations have arrived, and informing your recommender in case it hasn’t. All recommendations must reach before the university/department deadline.

6. Transcripts

Universities require sealed transcripts to be mailed to them by BITS as a part of the application process. These transcripts can be obtained from the AUGSD website and may take time depending on the rush. Only mail them to the universities that explicitly mention them as a requirement. If you have shortlisted your universities, go ahead and order the transcripts. Universities begin accepting applications in September itself. Order the transcripts as fast as possible and send them to the University. That way, you have ample time if there is a problem/delay in the mail. For recent graduates, the charges for a transcript request made within 10 weeks of graduation is only Rs. 50 but after that, it shoots up to Rs. 400 for applicants residing in India. It is always beneficial to select residing in India as an option (through parents or friends) as the other option for applicants residing outside the country is $40 (~Rs. 2400). Postal services like DHL, FedEx allow pickup of transcript packets from the campus itself. The cost incurred in sending out transcripts is usually around Rs. 1000 per university. ARCD on some campuses has set up a portal to allow applying for transcripts online; for more information, contact the respective divisions in each campus. [Note: These charges can change].

7. Final Application Folders

Using the above information, you should ideally have folders for each University which includes the soft copies of SOP for that particular university, degree certificate, relevant research papers and resumes. The application of almost all universities tends to be entirely online and organizing your application materials as mentioned above will help you greatly to complete the application. The application is quite long and it is very difficult to complete the application in one go. You should try to get the application in at least three weeks before the deadline and let the recommendations flow in. Your entire application (including letters of recommendations should come in by 2 weeks of the deadline). This would be mid-November for an early December deadline.

8. Miscellaneous

Make use of free cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive and others so that you have copies of documents in case you lose them in the event of a hard drive crash. This is absolutely important throughout the process from pre-application to departure.

Too long; didn’t read?

No worries. The infographic below summarizes the document. The height of each bar signifies the importance of that part as a whole for your application process. The assumption for this infographic is that the deadline is 1 December. For universities with earlier deadlines (for example, the University of Pennsylvania normally has the first application deadline as 15th November), pull in the dates mentioned on the schedule below by at least 2 weeks.