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.