American Dream – Bringing it to Reality (Part II)

In the US education is closely associated with philanthropy.  Individuals do not own universities.  The famous Carnegie-Mellon University is a case in point. Its governing council may have a couple of members who belong to founders’ families but the university is essentially managed by a Trust. Grateful alumni donate generously to their alma maters.

The US Government offers generous grants to universities. Deserving students get attractive scholarships from universities. Students are provided every possible opportunity to work as teaching and research assistants and take up campus jobs to earn so they can lighten their financial burden. American culture respects the dignity of labour. Working part time at a McDonald’s outlet is not looked down upon or considered below one’s dignity.

In India, the  founders of educational institutions, which have mushroomed all over the country, are scarcely concerned about the quality of education they impart. They often find it difficult to appoint good teachers to their faculty. On the other hand, in the US, Nobel laureates are professors in universities. Therefore, it should hardly come as a surprise to any of us here when India lags woefully behind the US in research. In America every university is a centre of research.

Sadly, in our country, education and research are thought to be mutually exclusive.  We seldom encounter researchers teaching at our universities. In the US, on the other hand, university professors are actively engaged in research Out there the course curriculum is revised every year to meet the ever-evolving requirements of industry and the job market.

Classrooms in the US are not crammed to capacity but have far fewer students, making it possible for professors to pay individual attention to every student.  Each graduate student is assigned a professor as his or her graduate advisor, and the two actively collaborate to configure the course content of the student by selecting the most appropriate courses for that particular student. This method and approach is unique to the US. Is it any wonder, therefore, that our students entering the US educational system, realise for the first time that education can be enjoyable, and become genuinely interested in the process.

In India the student is evaluated almost entirely on the basis of his or her scores in examinations. In the US, on the other hand, evaluation is based on the level of the student’s subject knowledge. This has a direct bearing on the employability of students as job opportunities in the US are directly linked to the education or training they have had at university. The student automatically qualifies for a job if he has performed well academically.

American Dream – Bringing it to Reality (Part I)

The United States of America presents a wide range of exciting opportunities for higher education and employment to ambitious young Indians.  However, this indisputable fact was not widely accepted in Pune, when I first pointed it out, way back in 1996.  Punekars were mostly skeptical of it..  Actually, this was not entirely surprising. In those days, someone travelling to the USA was such a rare occurrence that it made news.  However, now things have changed quite dramatically.

When I founded Dilip Oak’s Academy in 1996, only 24 students had enrolled.  Eight of them went to the USA eventually. Gradually,  the number grew over the years and, in 2016 alone, we sent as many as 1,500 students to a wide variety of the universities in the US.  These students were not from Pune alone. Many of them hailed , but even from small cities and towns in the hinterland of Maharashtra, such as Sangli, Vita, Satara, Belgavi, Kolhapur, Amaravati and Aurangabad. Some belonged to  and other states like Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat as well.   Now, in 2017, we expect the number to climb to an unprecedented 1,800 at least. We have come a long way, indeed.

Looking back, clearly, the two Bills, Bill Gates and Bill Clinton, opened the floodgates to American education for Indian students.  Bill Gates needed intelligent young computer professionals and Bill Clinton desired stronger ties with India.  Since then, the rising number of Indian students travelling to the US has completely shattered the myth that an American education was exclusively either for the most intelligent or the super-rich.

I am often quizzed about the perceived preference for the US when it comes to higher education or employment.  In my opinion the chief reason is the immense size of the US economy.  While the Indian economy amounts to US$ 2.3 trillion, the size of the US economy, the largest in the world, is a whopping US$18 trillion. As you would see, the US, which accounts for only about 6% of the world’s population but contributes 24% (almost a quarter) of the world’s total GDP, which is mind boggling.  This has made the USA a magnet for immigrants from across the globe.

Most Americans cannot afford a university education.  One reason for this is that many American parents expect their children to become self-reliant immediately after school. Typically,   American parents do not pay for their children’s university education. Young people aspiring for higher education have to raise the money themselves.

Besides, a big chunk of many of the American high school graduates prefer to study psychology, music, languages, etc., over  science, technology, engineering and mathematics, which have collectively become known by the acronym STEM.  The humanities rank much lower on the demand scale in the job market.   American corporations have historically had a short supply of STEM-trained professionals. Therefore, they have had to depend on immigrants particularly from populous countries such as India and China, to meet this ever-growing demand gap. India and China have traditionally accorded top priority to education.  Even economically backward communities in India, for instance, somehow find the means to educate their children as best they can.

To meet its insatiable need for technically trained manpower, the US grants about 85,000 H1B visas (work visas) every year.  This annual influx of immigrants is quite negligible when compared to the country’s population which is a sizeable 320 million.  Having said so, it must be stressed, that without this import of human resource, the American corporations would not have progressed so much.

The US attracts intelligent and creative persons from all over the world because it is a “melting pot” of great diversity.  In its constant social churning, race and religion, class and culture, do not matter. Only merit is the overriding consideration for career advancement or upward social mobility. What immigrants have found to their benefit is that merit is duly rewarded without any prejudice whatsoever. The American system catapulted Mr. Sundar Pichai to the helm of affairs at the head of Google in recognition of his contribution to the organisation. Similarly, and Mr. Satya Nadela was picked to head at the helm of Microsoft for his proven merit.  A South African, Mr. Elon Musk founded Tesla, the electric car company in the US ; Steve Jobs’ father was a Syrian immigrant.  The US offers to anyone who has a dream and potential, the opportunity to live that dream, the Great American Dream.

Americans have a penchant for innovation. Venture capitalists in the USA have historically displayed an enormous ability to take risks when they invest in innovative ideas.  Almost 80% of the ideas they invest in turn out to be duds, but the rest of the ideas that work catch on and rapidly evolve into great and innovative corporations like Amazon and Facebook.  And these more than makeup for the loss.

Centre Shock: The Unexpected Challenges Your GRE Test Center May Throw at You!

Hi folks! Today’s post is a write up by Shraddha Barawkar, an engineering student (see brief bio below) about her GRE test experiences at the Prometric Center at Goregaon. We thought it might be interesting for all you GRE candidates out there to hear about how things worked out for her.

 


  • Name: Shraddha Barawkar
  • Branch: Mechanical Engineering
  • College: Pune Vidhyarthi Griha’s College of Engineering and Technology
  • GRE Date: 5 December 2014
  • GRE Center: Prometric Testing Pvt Ltd
  • Center Location: Techniplex I, Goregaon (West), Mumbai

 

Ideally, you should enter your GRE test center full of pep and leave it with a smile! But if you don’t prepare for conditions at the test center or think about travelling there, you may be in for an energy drain that can wipe the smile right off your face. And that can throw off your performance in the GRE!

One of the first things I realized is that it would have been better to be at the test location the day before. I live in Pune and my GRE test center in Goregaon West, Mumbai, was about 120 kms. away – that’s for non-Maharashtrian readers! (Google map and more details here) So, I had to wake up at 4 a.m. and eventually left my house at 6.30 for Mumbai. Not a good idea on the day of the exam!

However, it was early morning, there was only light traffic and so we reached the outskirts of Mumbai at 10 a.m. I heaved a sigh of relief: I had a 12.30 p.m. slot, there were still 2-½ hours for my test and we thought it would take only half an hour to cover the approximately 25 kms to the test center. But by then, the traffic had started up and so, it took us 1-½ hours. As a result, I didn’t even get to have breakfast in peace. Luckily though, my father was able to grab a couple of wadas for me from the vendors outside the center. Finally, at 12.25 p.m., I walked into the center.

My test room was on the 8th floor. As I entered the room, I saw 50 expressionless faces looking blankly at me: those of my fellow test-takers. Simultaneously, I was hit by a sharp temperature drop, from 300C outside, to around 180 inside. I felt as if I had entered a graveyard, and my hands started shivering. Nevertheless, I put a smile on my face and tried to converse with some of the folks there, but they were very reticent, adding to the nervousness I felt because of chill in the room. I could feel myself losing focus and giving in to the desire to just to get the exam over as soon as possible! The atmosphere at the test center, I realized, doesn’t help you to settle into the right frame of mind to take the test.

Shraddha's Overall Evaluation of the Test Center

Somehow, eventually, the formalities got over (passport, ID checking etc.) and, a painful half an hour later, we were asked to put our bags and accessories in the lockers. Then, one by one, we were sent to the main exam room. I relaxed a bit at that point, since I thought that the formalities were finally over. But I was wrong! Inside there was yet another room where I was asked to remove my blazer, unchain my back pockets, raise the collar of my formal shirt and unfold the lower portion of my jeans. This was all done by male authorities, which as a woman, I found quite embarrassing. Finally, I was sent to the test room.
During the exam itself, I encountered two important problems: firstly, typing with nearly numb fingers was a tough job in the analytical writing section. Secondly, during the 10 minute-break halfway through the test, I thought going to the waiting room would be a simple matter. But again I had to complete formalities involving signatures and time entry in order to check out. After the break the whole process of apparel checking was repeated which, took another 3-4 minutes. I was not aware that I had to include time for these things in the break as well and it was only by luck that I had come back early from my break. These circumstances made the GRE a tougher nut to crack!

You might wonder, why I am telling about you my frustrating experiences. It’s because I don’t want you to get demoralized by these things; I want you to be prepared for the worst. The first challenge lies in overcoming the unfavorable conditions at the test center. Only then can you attain the calm state of mind that you need to solve tricky GRE questions!

In conclusion, here’s my advice: if your test center is not located in your home town, you should be at the test location a day before. Find out about nearby places to eat and travel routes and times. Take into consideration traffic conditions too, and try to reach an hour early! You should also eat properly before the test and wear warm clothes. Sometimes the washrooms are far from the test rooms. So, be prepared for a long trek there and, if you are at the Goregaon center, all the formalities of signing in and signing out too!

Hope this helps folks.

This is Shraddha wishing you all the best to give your best!

Success Stories of Indians Who Made It Big in America – Ajay Bhatt Inventor of the USB and Other Achievers

If you use a desktop, laptop, mobile phone, tablet or external hard disk drive, it’s impossible not to know about the USB (universal serial bus) port. The news is that this port, used to transfer both information and power between devices, is now about to become more versatile – there are plans to make it flippable and also able to deliver the power required by larger networks. But did you know that the inventor of the USB port is an Indian? Well, it’s true and his name is Ajay Bhatt.

After graduating from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda Bhatt went on to The City University of New York, where he received his master’s degree. In 1990, Bhatt joined Intel Corporation as a senior staff architect on the chipset architecture team. Currently, he holds thirty-one U.S. patents, and several others are in various stages of filing. Some time ago IEEE Spectrum did an interesting interview with him about how Intel made the USB truly universal and other things like an ‘all-day’ computer project he is working on (read: a computer that you can use all day on a single charge) and some of his past achievements (click here to see “Ajay Bhatt: Intel’s Rock-Star Inventor”).

However, despite his ‘rock star’ inventor status Bhatt is only one of a highly talented group of Indian movers and shakers in the field of technology in the US. Here are few of the many other outstanding achievers in the list:

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Success Stories: Indians Who Made it Big in America

Indians have made tremendous contributions to America in a variety of fields including technology, business and education. In fact, they have become such a prominent part of American society that Indian characters have started appearing in American films and comics (think of the Harold and Kumar film series made in 2004 onward and Raj Patel, a character introduced by Archie Comics in 2008). One reason why Indians have been so successful there is that America has provided a great platform for them to grow.

So, to encourage you as you move towards your goal of higher education in America, from time to time we will be posting stories on Indians who, like you, went to America for education and then became great successes. There are dozens of inspiring success stories to pick from. Our first one is on Vinod Khosla, co-founder and first CEO of SUN Microsystems, the company that, among other things created:

  • the Java programming language
  • the Network File System (NFS)

and also significantly evolved several key computing technologies, including

  • Unix
  • RISC Processors
  • Thin Client Computing and
  • Virtualized Computing

We hope that you will enjoy and be greatly motivated by the enormous achievements of those who went to America before you. (See next post for Vinod’s story).

Indians Who Made It Big in America: Vinod Khosla

 

An entrepreneur is someone who dares to dream the dreams and is foolish enough to try to make those dreams come true.”

~ from the website of khoslaventures

Education Track:

  • B. Tech (Electrical Engineering), IIT Delhi
  • Masters in Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
  • MBA Stanford Graduate School of Business

Achievements:

  • Net worth 1.5 billion as of March 2013 (according to Forbes)
  • He has created 6 jobs for everyday that he has been in America
  • One of the founders of Indian School of Business

His Story For a superb read on Vinod Khosla’s life, philosophy and achievements click here

Vinod Khosla Quotes:

“My philosophy in life is I don’t mind failing in trying new things. But it better be relevant if we succeed. I don’t mind the low probability of success, but I better be impactful if we do succeed.”

“Our willingness to fail gives us the ability and opportunity to succeed where others may fear to tread.”

and here’s one from Michael Jordan, who is obviously a role model for Vinod Khosla

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Dr. Harchol-Balter on the Recommendation Letter

Ideally you would like to make all your letters of recommendation count. Consider the following two letters:

(i) Letter 1: “I highly recommend student X for your graduate program. Student X received an A+ in my undergraduate algorithms class. He was ranked Number 2 out of 100 students. He got the highest score on the final. He worked very hard all semester, never missed a class, and was always able to answer the questions that I asked in class. This conscientious attitude makes him an excellent candidate for any graduate program. ”

(ii) Letter 2: “I highly recommend student Y for your graduate program. Student Y received a B in my undergraduate algorithms class. He was ranked Number 29 out of 100 students. Halfway through the semester we started working on network flows. Student Y seemed extremely excited by this topic. He disappeared for 4 weeks and even missed an exam. However when he came back, he showed me some work he had been doing on a new network flow algorithm for high-degree graphs. He had done some simulations and had some proofs. I’ve been working with student Y for the past couple months since then and he is full of ideas for new algorithms. I think student Y’s initiative makes him an excellent candidate for any graduate program.”

Which letter do you think is stronger? It turns out that Letter 2 is very strong. Letter 1 actually counts as 0. At CMU we mark all letters like letter 1 with the acronym D.W.I.C.. This stands for “Did Well In Class” which counts for 0, since we already know from the student’s transcript that he did well in class. By contrast, student Y’s letter gives us a lot of information. It explains that the reason student Y didn’t do better in class was that he was busy doing research. It also tells us that student Y started doing research on his own initiative, and that he is quite good at doing research. The professor was impressed enough with student Y’s ideas that he took him on as a student researcher despite student Y not having high grades.

You want your letters to all be of type 2 (this doesn’t mean that you should skip class!). Remember that letters of type 1 will not count. You want words like self-motivated, strong research potential , own initiative, independent, and driven to appear in your letters. These are the words that we circle when reading recommendation letters. You therefore want to ask letters from people who have seen you do research. These may be professors or employers.

Related Blogs on Application Documents

Related

Dr. Harchol-Balter on the Statement of Purpose

The statement of purpose is an extremely important part of your application packet (click here for an explanation). A well-written SOP that brings out the most important facts about you as a candidate for higher studies, can open the doors of opportunity for you. On the other hand an SOP that tries to impress but focuses on facts that the admissions committees consider irrelevant can lose you the opportunity that you have dreamed of.

In the extract below Dr. Harchol-Balter, an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie-Mellon University points out two common mistakes that many applicants make:

The grade regurgitator – “In my high school, I was ranked Number 1. Then I got a perfect score on my college entrance exams. Then I competed in a statewide math competition and I was the best. Then I competed in a national programming competition and I was 5th. In college, my GPA was 3.95 out of 4.0. For these reasons, I believe I will do well in your graduate department.”
What’s wrong with this? This portion of the essay is a waste of space. Awards are certainly relevant, however any award you won should be listed on a separate piece of paper which is titled “Awards and Honors” and which you can include with your application. There is no reason to tell us all this in your essay. It will only piss-off the people reviewing your application because they already read all this information earlier in your application and they now want to hear about research.
The boy genius – “When I was born, my mother gave me a glass ball to play with. I would lay and look at the prisms of light shining through my ball. At age 3, my father brought home our first computer and I disassembled it and then put it back together. It was then that I knew I wanted to become a computer scientist. By age 5, I had taken apart every appliance in our house. At age 6, I became a chess whiz ….”
What’s wrong with this? We simply don’t care what you did as a child, and we don’t believe you either. You’d be surprised how many applications from Einstein-wanna-be’s we get. If you really think this is relevant, put the important facts on a separate sheet of paper, and include it in your application. It’s best if your essay can stick with stuff you did in college and later.

 

Related Blogs on Application Documents

Related

 

Ratan Tata Part 3 – the Visionary: a Legacy of Sustained Growth

This is the third and final part of a three-part series on Ratan Tata. This part focuses on the dynamism, the independence and the integrity of the man who raised the Tata group to a position of international prominence.

Based on an article by Girish Kuber in the Sunday edition of Loksatta dated 23 Dec 2012

Translated by Runa Mookerjee

Series Editor DOAonline

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Ratan Tata was a mold breaker and a trend setter. An architect and structural engineer by training (he holds a B.S. in architecture and a Master’s in structural engineering, both from Cornell) Ratan Tata’s inclination for path-breaking thinking was evident even in his automotive ventures – the Tata Indica and the Nano. As an architecture student, Ratan Tata’s favorite subject was ‘Design;’ it was one that remained close to his heart throughout his career. Doodling new designs was a favorite pastime of his, and both the Indica and Nano were born out of his sketches. But this is just one small part of the story.

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Ratan Tata Part 2: Building Brand TATA!

Tata LogosThis is the second of a three-part series on Ratan Tata, fifth Chief Managing Director (CMD) of the Tata Group. This part focuses on the changes he brought in his tenure of over 20 years as CMD from 1991-2012, bringing the robust, independent companies that made up the 144-year old Tata Group, under a strong unified brand.

Based on an article by Girish Kuber in the Sunday edition of Loksatta dated 23 Dec 2012

Translated by Runa Mookerjee

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Tata Group’s product range spans commodities from table salt to automobiles. About 7% of the volume of shares traded daily on the volatile Indian market consists of those listed by the Tata Group’s diversified holdings. The group contributes 3% of India’s corporate tax and 5% of its excise duty. That’s twice the amount paid by any other Indian industrial house. Some won’t think much of these figures. Others will point out that there are business houses that are even bigger. But few of them command the strong brand recognition that the Tata Group does. So, how did the Tata Group become such an instantly (and even internationally) recognizable brand?

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How I Realized I Had to Do a PhD

 

For some people the realization that they are really meant to do a PhD comes only after having got some research-related work experience. In fact Dr. Harchol-Balter recommends it before jumping into a doctoral program. Here’s how her career path led her to the realization that she should be doing a PhD:

“After I finished my B.A. in CS and Math, I went to work at the Advanced Machine Intelligence Lab at GTE in Massachusetts. At first I was very excited by my paycheck and the great feeling of being independent. I also really enjoyed my area of research at the time: pattern recognition and classification. I was working with frame-of-reference transformations involving eigenvectors of autocorrelation matrices. It was exciting! However I quickly realized that I wanted to know more. I wanted to know why some algorithms produced good results and others didn’t. I wanted to come up with my own algorithms. I worried that I didn’t have enough of a mathematics background to answer my own questions. In summary, I wanted to delve deeper. Everyone around me thought I was odd for wanting these things. I left after 2 years and went to graduate school. That first month of graduate school I looked around and realized that everyone there was just as weird and obsessed as I was, and I knew I had made the right decision.”

Read Dr. Harchol-Balter’s own article on Applying to Ph.D. Programs in Computer Science from which this has been excerpted.

Read a review of Dr. Harchol-Balter’s article here.

Read excerpts from her article on recommendation letters and statements of purpose,

Ratan Tata: Part 1 –The Gentleman Industrialist

This is the first of a three-part series on Ratan Tata, who on 28th Ratan TataDecember 2012, stepped down from his position as fifth Chief Managing Director (CMD) of the 144-year old Tata Group. This article focuses on the surprising humility of Ratan Tata, one of India’s most eminent business personalities, a man who in his tenure of over 20 years as CMD (from 1991-2012) led the Tata Group to international prominence.

Based on a translation of an article by Girish Kuber in the Sunday edition of Loksatta dated 23 Dec 2012

 

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The employees at Bombay House, Tata Group’s corporate headquarters at Mumbai, will tell you that when Ratan Tata, head of India’s largest industrial conglomerate, enters the building to begin the day’s work… nothing extraordinary occurs!

There is no flurry of activity, no hushed tones. There is nothing to indicate that “the boss is on the way.” The only excitement is among a band of happy dogs who crowd around Ratan Tata’s car as soon as it enters the gate. This is not surprising because, when he steps down from the car, Ratan Tata habitually pets a few of the dogs, and indulges them a bit. The Tata’s have a long history of being dog lovers, so he gives no thought to ‘what will people say’ about this nor, will you ever find him making statements about “These Indian dogs…” etc.. And then, just like an ordinary employee, he joins the queue to enter the lift. There is no separate ‘reserved’ entrance for Ratan Tata.

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