Student Visa: How to Show ‘Ties to Home Country”?

One of the most crucial things as is often projected is showing sufficient ties to your home country. The ties to your country may be either financial or emotional or both. Of course, financial ties can be shown easily but the emotional ties are very difficult to show. Visa officers want to make sure that you are going to come back to your home country after you have finished your education in US. As a matter of policy all the non-immigrant visa applicants are assumed to be a prospective immigrant and hence are treated accordingly. The question however, is how to show the sufficient ties to home country?

Normally if you have a large family in your country it’s a sort of emotional tie to your country. They expect you to come back to live with your family. The family business and the property in your country are an evidence of financial ties to your country which makes the probability of returning back to the country higher. For this purpose, many visa applicants produce the ‘title’ of their properties to the visa officers which shows that their parents or family owns the property of such and such amount of value in domestic currency and then also show the value in the dollars by using the ongoing exchange rate. I am not however sure if this is absolutely required. However this should help in getting visa approved. But I don’t think you need to worry much about this if you have other proper documents. After all there are many poor students who come to USA for higher education funded by the university and they don’t have much to show as property or family business. Most importantly it’s your approach to the questions being asked that matter most in visa getting approved.

A visa officer may ask questions like given below in order to judge ties to your country

“What are your plans after you finish your degree?”

You can always answer that you may work in USA for a couple of years and then come back to your country and use your work experience there. Or you may simply answer that once you have your degree you will come back to your country and use the learning in your country for whatsoever reason you deem fit. It’s not a good idea to tell them that you won’t come back to your country and rather you will work in USA only and live there forever. If you answer like this your visa is almost denied.

The interviewer is also concerned about the financial situation of your family. If a visa officer believes that you are the bread earner of your family and that your family depends on your income, your visa might get rejected. So answer carefully.

As a matter of fact, more than the papers presented to the visa officer the approach towards the question related to ties to home country matter. One should be aware of the context and most probably he/she will be approved a student visa. You don’t need to know the specific questions that are going to be asked but you need to know the sort of answers that can be asked and if you know the context you can figure out the probable questions and would be able to find out an appropriate answer. If you read the visa questions related posts on this blog, you know the context and you can certainly devise your own answers depending on your unique situation and you are likely to get your visa approved.

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GMAT: Information and Preparation

Dear Readers, one of the followers of this blog, Carcass is writing the following post for GMAT test takers looking for admission into Management PhD programs and MBA programs. Since many students from the related fields are using the blog for useful information, I find such attempts to include information regarding GMAT and other related exams an extension of the blog which would be helpful to a larger set of audience. Since most part of the application is almost same for every discipline the applicant of other streams can use them without any loss of generality and I would like to thank Carcass for this post and would welcome other readers to post some quality information related to their respective fields.

Hi to everyone, I'm Carcass and I'm proud to write this debrief on GMAT for this blog, a real “gold mine” for the applicants to PhD and its complicated process. Thanks for your work Econ Grad.

So, when an applicant decides to apply for a PhD in business administration or management or for an MBA in a business school (top or not) the GMAT is probably the most important factor to consider.

However, I want to emphasize that each part of the application process is important and has its specific role (letters of recommendation, SOP, GPA, and so on) BUT in my opinion the GMAT and its score covers at least a good 40-50%. The reason why? Because an applicant can do a PhD even at 50 years for instance or an MBA after several years of work and hence there could be differences in the level of study at different times and may not be comparable. The GMAT is the best yardstick to test different skills in “real time” by a Business School (logic, grammar skills, how to approach to a problem), in fact: your GPA can be low because you worked during the university or your letters can be inflated and so on. GMAT tells at what point you are.

I wrote this article to describe what the GMAT is, but at the same time trying to give you a different point of view based on my experience.

GMAT is a CAT test (Computer Adaptive Test) which means that if you answer more questions correctly then you have to answer tough questions. The maximum score is 800 that you can achieve. Don't be afraid anyway, a high score can be achieved but consider this: if you want to apply in a top BS you need a high score; please refer to this for 2011. Getting a score of 700+ is indeed a good score for top programs.

For all the information you need go to the official GMAT website. You can also follow this link for more useful information and get a free guide titled "The GMAT Uncovered".
So, now let's take a look closer to the GMAT.

First step for the test is to write the AWA (Analytical Writing Assessment) where you have to write about two arguments: analysis of an issue AND an argument; you have 30 minutes for each of them.

The best tips that I can give you about, are: at least 750-800 words, an inherent coherence of these essays, and the most important thing: even though this part of the exam (the first to face) DOES NOT count for the total score, a low score (max is 6.0) may create problems. For admission in a Business School, a low score involves that essay or SOP must be the best possible, in particular for non-native speakers, it should be at least 5.0. Maybe the best template for this, you can find at this link (the structure is not so different from the format that someone has to write for TOEFL, only a bit longer).

Second step is the Quantitative section, during which you will be asked to answer 37 questions in 75 minutes, and it is presented in two different formats: Problem Solving and Data sufficiency.
The first requires you to set up and complete any calculations to find the exact results (numerical or algebraic); the second requires you to read a problem and thereafter consider TWO statements, by which you don't have to necessarily find an exact number or value BUT if the two statements, alone or combined or neither, are SUFFICIENT to solve the stem.

The best tips are: a really good math fundamentals, an holistic approach, tons of practice; ultimately, it is a kind of math that all of us studied at high school or in the first year of college, nothing to do with for instance tensor calculus or other stuffs, but number properties, geometry, fractions and so on. Here, the real difficult is to combine different skills at the same time and have a sort of “strategy” as to how to attack the problem.

The third step is comparatively more difficult, especially for non-native speakers (even for native, however): the Verbal Section format where you have to answer 41 questions in 75 minutes. There are three different formats: Sentence Correction, Critical reasoning and Reading Comprehension. The first tests your grammatical skills (GMAT tests only a finite range of rules, for instance: modifier, pronouns and so on). The critical reasoning section tests your reasoning after reading a short statement or paragraph, read a stimulus and select one of five different choices that best fits with the statement. In the reading comprehension, you have to read a short or a long passage and then answer to questions about the main purpose of the passage, what you infer about on a particular portion of the passage and so on.

What can we say about the GMAT: it is a really complex test, that tests the combination of different kind of skills at the same time, this is the real difficulty of this type of a CAT test under time pressure (a factor to be considered carefully); of course to do all this, you have to study hard and must have a STRATEGY, finding your weak and strength points to beat it; find yours.

Final thoughts: I would like to say what I read some time ago when I started to study for this test: The GMAT doesn't test what you KNOW, but what you THINK, and HOW you think. Finally, some useful links where you can find advices, free test and most important thing, a community that can help you anytime.

http://gmatclub.com/

http://www.beatthegmat.com/

http://gmatclub.com/forum/best-gmat-books-77703.html

Lectures free by one of the best teacher on the GMAT: Ron Purewal. Thursday with Ron

http://www.manhattangmat.com/thursdays-with-ron.cfm

Please don't hesitate to raise any doubts and any suggestions are welcome. Please do follow the blog if you find it useful. Good Luck :)

Explaining low GRE score in Statement of Purpose (SOP)

I have been seeing this search item for quite some time now “how to explain low gre score in sop”. Finally I decided to write a post about it. I did some research over internet to find something which should be useful rather than just randomly writing something. I came at the conclusion that only situation the low GRE score can be explained is if the candidate has been asked to do so by the department or if there is some place provided in online application for any such reasons. Only a few universities usually provide any such columns though, where the candidate can explain GRE score or poor GPA or something similar.

Another situation arises when the admission committee asks you to explain the reason behind the low GRE score. This indicates that the admission committee found your application competitive except the GRE score part. In such a case you may be asked to explain the low GRE score. If you have a genuine and convincing reason for the low GRE score you can try to explain it to them. Some students become nervous when they are writing GRE for the first time, others may not have prepared for the same well in advance or someone might have spent too much time on a single question which might have proved costly. As a metter of fact, lots of student write GRE without adequate preparation and later they realize they could have scored much more if they had invested some more time into it. But unfortunately this becomes too late and fearing the loss of a year they might decide to go to some low rank school with the very same score.

Though above listed reasons are genuine, nonetheless more often than not, these are not well taken by the admission committee. The lack of preparation is essentially a fault of the student and nervousness is also not well received as an excuse for the aspirants who are going to do PhD. But if the admission committee has specifically asked you to explain this tell them the truth.

Further, which section score is bad that also matters which depends upon the program you are applying to. If your score is less than 3.0 in analytical writing then probably you don’t have much scope for explaining this as you don’t really need to prepare much for the writing section. This tests your ability to write in English, some simple grammar and spelling mistakes are not going to be well received for a PhD candidate especially those who are going to have their PhD in humanities or history or similar disciplines. For economics most important is quant section. The questions that appear in GRE quant section are indeed easy ones. That’s high school mathematics. But that needs some practice and if you didn’t practice and scored badly, none other than you is to be blamed. The verbal is not that much important for economics PhD aspirants but for good universities, a score of about 500 is still expected.

Remember the statement of purpose is place to showcase your strengths. So to the extent possible use it to showcase your strengths and don’t provide any excuses for bad performance unless it’s ultimately needed and has very genuine reason behind this with no shortcoming of yours. Hope this helps.

You can click here to have an idea about how to write a good SOP and click here to judge yourself how your SOP is after you have finshed writing it.

Please follow the blog and raise doubts and provide feedbacks.

Student Visa Interview Questions and Answers

In a student visa interview the interviewer is primarily concerned about following issues:

                     1. The student has sufficient funds to finance his studies while in USA

                     2. The student is competitive enough to complete the course he has been accepted for

                     3. The student has minimum level of speaking English capability in order to survive academically as well as in daily life

                     4. The applicant has sufficient ties to his country or not that is, if he’s likely to be back to his country or not

In an attempt to find the situation of the students on above listed points the interviewer is going to form his questions. The visa interviewer does not have much time and normally the interview does not last more than 2-3 minutes. Hence it’s advised to be better prepared for the interview that is, keep your documents organized in a folder, and be concise and organized in your answers to the questions. Being better organized and prepared will increase your chances of getting visa.

As far as economics PhD applicants are concerned I would assume that not significant proportion of students would accept admission offers without assistantship. Those who are going without assistantship are required to submit a large amount of money at their disposal and they should provide authentic bank letter, passbook and other assets for financial availability.

I am surprised why a visa officer would try to determine if the student is competitive enough to complete the program he has been selected for. After all this is something which has to be determined by the admission committee and it’s not a mistake to assume that they can take better decision about the ability of the student to complete the program than the visa officers. Normally this is not a big issue. But this could create problems if you have any backlogs. In such cases you must be prepared to provide a proper reason if you are asked why you have any backlogs.

Normally the third issue is not a problem for those who have TOEFL or IELTS or some English test score. For that the score should be good normally better than what is being asked by the departments. But usually no one gets a visa denied on this basis unless you have real bad score especially in speaking section.

The fourth and final question needs good amount of space hence this will be discussed in next post. If you have any doubts regarding admission or visa process feel free to ask. I would welcome someone who can contribute by writing some guest posts regarding the specific visa process of the country you belong to. In general you are welcome to contribute to the whole admission process.