IISERs are expanding and so are IITs

Starting this academic year, two new IISERs will start functioning out of Bhopal and Trivandram. In addition, there have been talks about new IITs starting in Hyderabad (Medak to be exact) and Patna - a definite boost to the aspiring students. The real question, in my opinion, is the million dollar question of how the new IITs and even the old IITs will deal with the faculty shortage. I might comment on that sometime later. For now, good luck to the IISERs and IITs that are coming up.

Guide to blog

- Grad School in US - part 1
- Why English is very important?
- When to Study Engineering?
- IISER vs. Engineering
- Already doing Engineering and got into JEE?
- IISER - my views
- IIST questions - part 1, part 2
- Introduction

If you want any more questions answered - leave comments or email me.

Hope my efforts are helping people.

Grad school in US - part 1

If you plan on doing graduate school in the US, planning early can go a long way in improving your application. The fact is although admissions to programs are getting easier, getting scholarships seems to be the problem for most of the people. What is harder is getting scholarship for Masters students in good engineering schools like MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, CMU, GTech, UIUC, and UT-Austin. The most important thing to understand about universities in the US is the different between public and private schools.

Public Schools: Public schools are funded by the state government and are about half time cheaper than private schools. Each state has at least one decent state school because tuition for US students going to a school within their home state is 1/3 cheaper than going to an out-of-state public school. Thus, most of the students prefer to remain in-state and get almost a free education. The really good ones, probably end up getting scholarships from top private universities and go there. But mostly, at least one state school in each state is considered decent. Examples are UT-Austin and Texas-A&M in Texas, Georgia Tech in Georgia, Univ. of Michigan - Ann Arbor in Michigan, Purdue in Indiana, University of California - Berkeley, University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign, and many more. Most of these schools admit students into the Masters program and those wishing to stay on continue onto a PhD. Most of the funding for prospective PhD students is given via research assistantships (RA) and teaching assistantships (TA). In public schools, TAs are more popular because they have to manage a lot of students as compared to private schools. RA ships are sometimes hard to get by because mostly professors would want students to have taken a class with them before giving out an RA. In any case, the chances of actually getting funding in state schools is higher than that of private schools because TA or grader positions are a surplus.

Private Schools: Private schools are generally smaller in size. Most of the top schools in the US are private e.g. MIT, Harvard, Cornell, NYU, Princeton, Stanford, and CalTech. Admission to these schools can be touch and what is even tougher is securing scholarships for PhD and MS programs. Scholarships for MS programs are scarce, in fact some programs at schools are designed in such a way so that there is virtually no possibility of financial aid. The funda behind such thinking is that students entering these programs usually wind up getting jobs with a starting salary of at least $80K with which they can easily pay off a loan within a year. Some people take the plunge and risk it all to come and some, even though they have admission, choose other cheaper alternatives or don't come at all. PhD students at private universities almost always get scholarships because well they are working for the university. The quality of a university is actually reflected by the quality of PhD students passing, hence the universities try their best to recruit the best out of the lot of thousands of applications they get. Also, most of the programs in private universities are direct PhD programs where you start working on your PhD the day you arrive at campus and get a masters on the way to your final degree.

That is the main thing to understand about universities in the US. In the next segment, I will present my views on how to improve chances of admission into US Universities.

The most important subject is

....ENGLISH. Yes, that is true. Most of you probably would have ignored the subject when preparing for exams like JEE and AIEEE, but it turns out English is the most important of all subjects. I realized this three years after entering college and continually wished I had paid more attention during my school days. The big questions is why?

Well, one of the main components of any job is presenting yourself or talking to people. If you have good spoken English, then that can go a long way in putting a good impression on your boss or anyone senior. Your seniors would trust in giving presentations and talking to clients. Plus, one of the main components of any profession is writing. In fact, most of the engineers on work claim that they do 40% engineering and 60% writing. The problem is that not everyone in a company is familiar with technical details of a project. So, it is necessary to be able to present complicated technical details with utmost simplicity. If you can do that, then again your impression amongst your superiors will be high and that will in turn help you in the future. Even if you know subject well, what matters is whether other think you do or not.

The best way to improve your English, especially written, is to read continuously. In today's age that is not a problem because of various impressive blogs and online newspaper. Even if you are interested in all the political news or local city news try to find something you can eagerly read about. Another good way is to read books. Technical books do not help because they are all written in the way and have no real literary content.

When to Study Engineering?

Engineering is not every student's cup of tea. Although easier from studying pure sciences, it is still very difficult. What is extremely important for studying any form of engineering is a good background in mathematics. Maths drives all branches of engineering. In Electrical it comes up in solving circuits or manipulating images (matrices!). In Computer Science, it comes up algorithm design and in robotics. In Chemical Engineering, Maths is used to solve complex differential equations and also to predicts things going on in a chemical plant. In Civil Engineering, Math is used in studying traffic movement, managing traffic lights optimally, and modeling underground movements of roads. One popular branch of mathematics used commonly is probability. Probability is about estimating things and in life nothing can be certain. Hence, engineering decision are often based on probability. For example if a robot is moving a trying to follow a particular line then it will calculate the probability of a line being in a certain place and accordingly go in the direction in which the probability is maximized. This is just one simple example of where probability plays a key role in engineering. My point here is that, if you are good at Maths, you are bound to well in Engineering.

But if you really enjoy Math, then you may not like Engineering! See, in Engineering we do more applied Mathematics and for people, who want to see proofs of things, they should actually study pure Mathematics. Topics covered there are not about solving integrals and taking derivatives, but how to understand integrals and derivatives from a more sophisticated point of view. To some, this view point is more interesting that redundant problems of calculating integrals just for the fun of it.

What role does Physics and Chemistry play in Engineering? Mechanics play a big role in Mechanical Engineering and Electricity and Magnetism plays some role in Electrical Engineering. Physics is also crucial in Chemical Engineering where you study a lot of thermodynamics (can be classified as chemistry as well). In Civil Engineering, you study more Geology (motion of earthquakes and other things) than Physics and Chemistry. Thus, everything again is applied. If someone really enjoys the concepts of Physics, then he/she should actually study Physics and go into research fields in the future.

In the same way, if someone enjoys Chemistry, he/she should study Chemistry. Actually, Chemistry, amongst PCM, has the best job prospects in Industry because it's application in drug research. So, studying Chemistry, Organic Chemistry in particular, can be very rewarding financially.

Already doing Engineering and got into JEE?

"i am doing mechanical engineering from NIT allahabad. (completed 1st year just now). I have also been placed in the merit list of IIT-JEE. i am very much interested in the space programmes. I wanted to do MS in astronautics. I have heard that doing MS requires recommendations. how do they consider students for funding? will i be able to do MS after doing B.Tech from IIST? and doing avionics or aerospace, can i pursue MS in a more broader field?please help me out in taking the decision for which institute to go for? - kaushak"

First of all, you already at decently reputed engineering school but I guess you are inclined towards aerospace, so you are consider joining IIST. Since you have got a rank in JEE, if you get aerospace at any one of the IITs, I would suggest you go for that because IITs have a better name and in fact US universities give more weightage to applicants from IITs.

Your second option is to join IIST because of which you might loose one year. One year is not that big of a deal in the long run, but still it matters. I would suggest you stay put at NIT for now. If you want to do an MS in aero, then try doing some research in the same area by contacting professors at IITs. That will take care of the good recommendations part. Also, if you apply for MS in Aerospace, US Universities will want to see you have some research experience in the same area. A better option will be to try getting an internship with ISRO itself. That will give you more hands on training in space related fields. You just have to try hard and continually remain focussed.

If you join IIST, then your job options will be mostly at ISRO or maybe in the aviation industry. You are not required to join ISRO, if you did not take any financial support from them. If you do, then you will have five year bond to work with them.

Now having done a Btech from IIST, what are the higher education options? You can most definitely apply in graduate programs in the department of engineering mechanics, mechanical, aerospace, and electrical engineering. If you get interested in the pure sciences aspect, you may also join graduate programs in Astronomy.

I am not sure about the PhD options at IIST. My guess is that it won't start until 2009. What people can do is that if you are working for ISRO, you can take leave for 3-4 years to do PhD at IIT and ISRO will pay you and cover your tuition expenses. The only catch is that you have to come back to ISRO once the PhD is complete. This is the case for almost all government jobs in India i.e. you can always take leave for higher studies and get funded under the conditions of joining back again.

Career opportunities better than ISRO? I am not sure. Maybe NASA, but you would need to be US Citizen to work there.

IISER - my views

For those who don't know about IISER - Indian Institute of Science Education and Research. It is an initiative of the government of India to set up world class research and teaching institutions focusing purely on sciences. Till now, mostly people did a BSc from a college or university and then applied for a MSc at the likes of IITs and IISC for better exposure. IISER allows potential future scientist to stay at one institution for five years and thereby expose the students to various fields of sciences and letting them make their own decision regarding which subject to finally choose.

I have looked at the the syllabus and course content and in my opinion it is indeed impressive. In the first two years, students study Physics, Chemistry, Math, and Biology and then, in their third year, students choose what subject to major in. This allows students to be exposed to all subjects of sciences and test what they like. A potential drawback is, if a student absolutely detests a subject, he/she is forced to take it for at least two years. But the advantage, in future, that it will allow students to pursue inter-disciplinary research.

If one decides to join IISER, it should be purely because he/she enjoys sciences and wants to join academia/research in the future. That is the purpose of the program as seen from the government. For this reason, it gives scholarship to all students because the government is trying hard to make it easy (financially) for students to pursue sciences.

One main issue, currently, will be that of the quality of professors currently at IISER. At Pune and Kokatta, there are only about 10-15 full-time professors and all them have PhD. The quality of people is probably not at par with that of IITs, but all of them seemed to have decent experience in research labs or other universities. I believe, in the coming years, IISER should be able to attract good people because both Pune and Kolkatta are big cities and people will be willing to move there, if given the opportunity.

If people have further questions and want to know my view, then comment on this post or just email me.