Questions from Prateek Singh : A Wannabe NASA engineer

hi....myself prateek singh...i m doing btech currently in third year from electronics and communication...

1.i m in 6th sem right now from ECE....and m planning to give my gre in month of oct so that i can apply for fall 2010....is this a right decision....
2.i have got to know the importance of projects & papers,work exp..etc recently.... plz help me out abt these paper projects... i have very little knowledge abt it....r these the project which we usually do in 8th sem in our colleges ?wat kind of work exp..is needed?plz elaborate....
3.i m going to do coaching classes frm june till sept...is this much of time devotion enough for prep. of gre.....how much dailyhour of practice shud i give to it?
4.what is this internship & co ops...which comes under the work exp...?
my last que
5. i have a dream of joining nasa....thats why i m gonna apply in a us univ.....can u suggest me some subjects which i shud opt so as to get max benefit for my respective purpose...
also tell me the univ ..providing these subjects....
i wud be very grateful to u if u provide me the answers....thanxssssss

On 1) The timing sounds correct to me. Usually for ECE programs international application deadlines are in the November to January months. For instance when I applied many years ago, November 15th was the deadline for University of Wisconsin-Madison. It does sound like you are preparing many months in advance, which is always a good thing to do. You have plenty of time to prepare and improve your GRE score. Just be careful about the score reports. You'll probably need to give your TOEFL before so that your scores are all ready before the deadlines.

On 2) Virtually any work experience towards a concerted goal helps. Projects could be third year projects or final year projects. The final year project would probably not be completed by the time you send your applications for Fall 2010, but others could be. It is a tough market job-wise these days with the recession, but if you can get an internship (a job in the summer) you could mention that work experience in your applications too. You could take part in some student paper presentation contests to improve your chances too.

On 3) Should be more than enough. From my personal experience the hardest part of the GRE is learning the words and expanding your vocabulary. I have been working on this site http://www.americaahoy.com with the intention of helping students overcome this obstacle. I am trying to set one quiz per day based on words from the Barron's wordlists. If you like you could spend an hour a day learning the words, and then check your learning by solving some of the quizzes on my website.

On 4) In the US, internships are usually summer jobs that last for 3 months. Co-ops refer to jobs students do for a complete semester (5 months) in the industry. It is a really good learning experience and in fact some schools in Canada like the University of Waterloo, force their students to study for one semester in college and then do a co-op for the second semester of every year in engineering.

On 5) NASA probably needs lots of computer scientists and electrical engineers. Embedded systems engineering, operating systems, telecommunications, networking are fields in engineering that might be a good fit. Just to warn you though, NASA only employs US citizens. Most of the universities in the US News top 20 list are good for these specializations. Universities close to NASA centers probably directly collaborate with NASA. University of Florida in Gainesville, University of Alabama in Hunstville, Stanford University in California are examples I can think of. Good luck and hope you get to work with NASA very soon! Keep visiting this blog and feel free to post your suggestions and comments.