How to utilize your summer to improve your admission chances

Are you planning to apply for MS this year? Then, don’t let your summer go waste!

If you are studying in final year or have just graduated (applies to BE, BPharm etc), then this is last chance to improve your profile. Many students spend summer in enjoying and traveling but if you are serious about your applications, then gear up and make the most of this summer. Here are some ways you can utilize it to get ahead of your competition-

1. Intern somewhere and do effective projects – Interning is the best way to add some meaningful experience in your resume. If you didn’t plan ahead, try to find last minute internships using www.letsintern.com These can give you 3-4 solid lines for your SOP. For e.g.-

While interning as a data analyst at Flipkart this summer, I was exposed to upcoming technologies such as Big Data. One of my projects went live that added the capability to track the duration for which a product was looked at before being added to the cart which in turn helped determine the sales probability of products. This has only piqued my interest in the field of data analytics that I shall focus on during my Masters program.

As you can see, talking about internship projects is a great way to tell the school that you are capable of job hunting on your own (which is always nice to improve placement statistics of any school) and that you have some work experience in the field of your interest. It ALWAYS helps to do internships.

2. Hands-on training – Not able to manage a good internship? No worries, look around for what help you can offer among family and friends businesses. May be you can learn a new software to help manage accounts at your friend’s Dad’s shop? Any kind of real experience will give you something to talk about!

3. Skill development – You can also look at improving some skills that might be helpful in your further studies. You can self-learn or look at some courses online too (check out www.udemy.com) Developing good projects in these classes can be a great way to show you are a pro-active learner! Few skills that are helpful to be learned are web development (helpful in getting assistantships), excel modeling etc.

4. Community projects – Engage in any community help projects to add that human element to your profile. Working with a non-profit, tutoring kids or teach for India kind of organizations can show that you believe in contributing to positive causes. Take leadership roles if possible. Teaching subjects in your fields may be better than teaching generic ones.

5. Miscellaneous – If nothing else, go and meet people in your stream and get insights into what path you are trying to pursue. Meet Profs at IITs with insightful questions and who know you might get some interesting lead for a project. Use your imagination, the only thing that limits you is YOU. So, think what can you do in next few weeks!

Need more ideas or advice? Contact us.

Best career options for engineering students

Know what Arvind Kejriwal, Vikram Pandit, Shankar Mahadevan, APJ Kalam, Mukesh Ambani and Harsha Bhogle have in common? – They are all Engineers!

Engineering has become a multi purpose degree these days. Anyone who has good aptitude decides to go for Engineering as this is one program that can open your door into virtually anything (except Medical or Law, possibly). Here, we discuss what are the different career options for an Engineer –

Engineering jobs in your field – It is the most common option when an engineer takes up a job profile directly related to what he studied. E.g. a software engineer joining Microsoft as a programmer, a mechanical engineer joining Tata Motors as a design engineer and so on.

Engineering jobs in a different field – Sometimes an engineer shifts gear slightly and takes up a job profile not related to his area of study. E.g. an electrical engineer joining Morgan Stanley as a banker or a civil engineer joining TCS as a software analyst. Joining as a consultant, marketing analyst etc. also falls under this category.

Further specialization through MS, ME, MTech – This is the route engineers take when they think going to a better school can improve their job prospects. Here MS from esteemed universities in US and Europe is a more lucrative option as it opens the door to jobs abroad.

Switch to business roles through MBA – Usually done to get into higher paying jobs, many engineering grads try to get into IIMs and other elite management schools in India right out of college. Rare few from IITs are able to get into Business Schools abroad as well but it’s still a very small percentage since MBA in America, Europe etc requires non-trivial work experience.

Entrepreneurship/Family Business – Still fewer end up working for themselves or their family owned businesses. Entrepreneurship or startups are particularly in rise in recent times as students find it best to experiment ideas during college and pursue any viable ideas upon graduation when the opportunity cost is still low.

Non-traditional roles – There are handful who spot lucrative opportunities in totally non-related fields such as civil services (0.3% success rate), teaching (yes, a few academically successful engineers join as teachers in coaching institutions which offer handsome packages), creative fields etc.

In next couple of articles, we will elaborate over each option and provide a clearer picture on why you should go with one of these. We will also tie up this to why an option of going abroad can be a smarter choice in the long run. Stay tuned. 

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Want to study abroad in a top university?

Ever felt frustrated about competitive exams in India? Ever felt you are not getting the education worth your money? Ever wished building your career was easier? Ever wondered if YOU can find your way to Harvard, Stanford or MIT?

Welcome aboard, you are not alone. And no, it’s not too late. People who get into these schools are not born to succeed, they just focused on the right things. And, so can you.

Indian Institutes are great – but only a handful. Even the IITs don’t rank in Top 10 engineering schools in the world. Education in India is getting extremely competitive and on top of that, it is not the best. So, why not study in top schools of the world, get a better quality education and that too without going through ridiculously designed entrance exams or paying donations?

With little planning, you can study in best colleges in the world and plan a brighter future for yourself. And, its not rocket science.

I am Nistha and I’m starting this blog to share the learnings that I have acquired through academics, jobs, my own ventures and most importantly, life in general. I graduated from an average engineering college in India in 2004, then headed to world’s 5th best Computer Science Engineering school – University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, for Masters, then spent some insightful years on Wall Street, went for an MBA from world’s 10th best MBA program at the most happening New York University (and then dropped out of it. Why? That is a story for another time). The bottomline is that I got to a point where I could proceed in life on my terms. And, so can you. With my fair share of global education, I am developing strategies that can help Indian students find their way into TOP INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS.

Try it out for yourself. If you are an Indian student and want to increase your chances of succeeding at bigger things in life – stop fretting about entrance exams and stop compromising.