Firsts thing is start making up your mind as early as possible that are you ready to go to graduate school or not. There could be a couple of reasons like not getting good projects at work due to lack of research experience, you have an idea to pursue thesis on or any reason.
Below are the phases of journey you will experience when applying for MS:
- Make up mind for pursuing MS
- Give exams like GRE and TOEFL ( or IELTS)
- Get all the transcripts of education institutions attended after 12th grade or high school
- Approach professors for their letter of recommendation. Try to include you learning experience in letter there.
- Visit top 100 universities website and look for ongoing research there. Also make a note of dates when there application would come online.
- Select at least 8 colleges and not more than 15 at any cost.
- Make a good resume and make sure to focus more of academics there unless you are applying for some IVY college.
- Start making a Statement of purpose separate for each university.
- Apply to each college. Most would redirect application to applyyourself.com domain, its normal.
- Some colleges require you to send sealed envelop of transcript so make sure you have them ready. Explore the various options like DHL, fedex or postal services etc.
- Now comes the waiting time to check your application status daily.
- After getting an Admit you need to follow the instruction provided by college and it mostly involves registering on the site and paying seat allotment fees.
- i20 part, some university charge for issuing i20 some don't. But they will definitly charge for shipping it via express courier service(something like $50-55).
- Once you have the physical copy of i20 pay the sevis fees and pay the F1 visa interview fees and schedule and appointment.
- VISA done, great now start preparing for the Travel. Meet all the relatives and friends, and start packing stuff.
- Never hesitate to ask question when applying to college. In US, people actually love to answer to questions.
