Saturday, October 22, 2016

I am not from a reputed Indian engineering university. Does that reduce my chances of getting into Ivy League Universities for a Master's?

To answer this, you need to understand *why* the university matters to people in admission committees.

Lets say you apply to grad school, and your profs write letters saying you are the top student in the university. Note that this is only a *relative* ranking - you might be the best at your university, but how does that compare against other universities? Similarly, does your university inflate grades? Does everyone get a perfect gpa?

It is hard for the admissions committee to know all this for an unknown university. Once they seen a few graduates from a university, they have answers to all these questions, and can evaluate future candidates from the same university.

Once you understand this, the solution becomes obvious. Do things that show your quality on a scale they already know about. Doing well in ICPC, or google code jam, or contributing to the linux kernel are all things the admission committee understands and can evaluate you on.


Read other answers by Vijay Chidambaram on Quora: Read more answers on Quora.

from Quora http://ift.tt/2eFKMxj

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