Improving your Odds : Read More Papers

Reading more papers is a sure-fire way of improving your odds at gaining admission to a top grad-school. If you are still in college in your third year or final year, you may not be able to grasp all the concepts in these papers, but you will gain some basic know-how slowly. Use your statement of purpose to display the knowledge you have gained, by reading papers regularly. You could even talk about trends that you see in the papers or future lines of thought for research.

Where can I find papers?
So if you are studying at a university which doesn't have complete subscription to all IEEE journals (or journals in your field), this can present somewhat of a challenge. I am sure none of us want to spend $40 to read one paper. Usually the method I follow is to first look at the abstracts of papers on IEEE Xplore and google the authors. Many times if these authors are professors, they will keep an online copy free, or a similar paper online on their university homepages. "Google Scholar" is another useful tool when searching for papers.

If you are just getting started on this, try to look for survey papers, which summarize the major advances in a field for novices. Persistence pays... don't get disheartened if all of it doesn't make sense.

Graduate School Applications in a Recession

The word is out. Last week a group of American economists declared that the American economy has been in a recession since December 2007. The outlook for the broader economy has never looked as bleak as it now does (in my 28 years). Already many prominent engineering employers have enforced hiring freezes, Intel has predicted that it's revenues could be down by as much as 20%. Some prominent start-ups in the semiconductor business like Ambric have folded, because VCs aren't willing or able to fund these early-stage ventures. There are massive layoffs galore... AT&T fired 12,000 employees last week, and the Dauphin Obama said "it will get worse before it gets better".

What does this mean to you as an applicant?
So if the technology industry suffers a major downturn, chances are that experienced engineers will head back to school to either get an MS or an MBA or a PhD while the economy goes for an overhaul. The trouble is that when the economy is doing badly, it is harder to get a job after getting laid off. A secondary effect is that grad students who were about to finish their degrees, will likely postpone graduation until they can find a job.

This implies that admissions this year will be far more competitive than last year. If someone with credentials similar to yours got into a top 10 university last year, you may have trouble getting into the same university this year. So my suggestion would be to apply to a few universities as backup in case your safe bets are inundated with laid-off worker applications.

A job in India anyone?
If you are from India, and you have a job offer, you should consider taking up a job during the recession. My assumption here is that as India is a cost-saving measure for many companies, they may not fire as many employees in India as America. This is a guess, and I am liable to be as wrong as a trained economist. ; )

I don't know how long this will last. I hope we are out of the woods soon. If I lose my job and I can't find a new one for a couple of months, I would have to head back home to India too. Immigration in the US is related to employment, so I definitely need to keep enough money around to buy me a one-way plane ticket home. : ) It is best to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.