A few days ago, a very good friend of mine called me up and asked me very seriously, "Ali, are you an Illuminati?". I was completely dumbfounded by this question, I asked him, "Why are you asking this?" and he replied in a matter-of-fact way, "Because you are a Rhodes scholar!". I thought he was pulling my leg, but on further inquiry he revealed that he had recently read that Cecil Rhodes was an Illuminati and that all Rhodes scholars are inducted to be made Illuminati members. He had me in stitches, and I pointed out that since Mr. Fulbright was also a Rhodes scholar, did he think that all Fulbrighters were Illuminati, too? He thought for a moment and then said, "Of course! they must be Illuminati too". Just to check up on his conspiracy theories I googled up "rhodes illuminati" and sure enough a lot of links popped up purporting the same ideas, a really fun read was "Oxford University: The Illuminati Breeding Ground". Sure enough, me being an Illuminati became the joke of the week among my friends, the best response that I heard to the joke was from another friend, who simply said, "I don't care if you are a free mason or Illuminati, just send me the membership form, let's partner up!"
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Friday, August 3, 2012
Why do you want to go for further studies?
Alice: I was just wondering if you could help me find my way.
Cheshire Cat: Well that depends on where you want to get to.
Alice: Oh, it really doesn't matter, as long as...
Cheshire Cat: Then it really doesn't matter which way you go.
Cheshire Cat: Well that depends on where you want to get to.
Alice: Oh, it really doesn't matter, as long as...
Cheshire Cat: Then it really doesn't matter which way you go.
Professionals who are bored with their jobs and don't think that there is much career progression left for them in their current line of work, want to go for higher studies to hone their skills for a promotion/career switch. For this type of student it is essential to be clear about what sort of career switch they have in mind and to target only the best in that field, rather than fumbling in the dark in quest of just an admission to any foreign university, which would not add much value to their career progression. Once you know what career switch you have in mind, you should start with trying to study up on any pre-reqs that your chosen course requires, and ensure that you find this work mentally stimulating, it is no fun switching from one boring job to another.
People who just want to end up in a foreign land to get a nationality. If you fall in this category, you should first make a very thorough evaluation and see if you can really not make a successful living in Pakistan and would be really better off in a foreign land. Fulfilling dollar dreams comes at a price, know this and make sure that you are willing to pay it. If you really want to study in a foreign university so you are better qualified to work in that country then it is very important that you pick the right country. You should see which countries have good health care, children schooling, the buying power of the people, the unemployment rates, hate crime rates etc. After choosing your ideal country understand that country's immigration policies, pick out a few good universities from that country, understand their admission requisites. Try to stay away from agents, you are intelligent enough to figure out much of it on your own.
Students who want to make up for the bad grades they got in a Pakistani university, and want to add the stamp of a foreign university to their CV, to get a better job in Pakistan. There are two ways to go about it, first you may aim low and go to some low ranking foreign university, the other path is to get an MS from a local university, get good grades there, and then aim high and target good level foreign universities. I encourage you to invest some serious time in your personal growth and go for the second option.
Listless youth who don't really know what to do with life and just want to do another degree for the sake of it. I would encourage you to carry out some social work rather than embarking on a higher degree. Social work will give you some direction in your own personal endeavours and hopefully help you figure out what you really want to do with your life.
Students with good grades who actually want to study more for the sake of it. I encourage these students to prime their portfolio well, have a good GRE/GMAT/TOEFL score under their belt, some quality research work or good internships as well. Target 2 dream schools, 3 middle schools and 2 safe schools. An overwhelming and daunting task, I know, but it will pay off well. And the importance of contacting the faculty at your target schools cannot be overemphasised, contact the professors in your fields of interest and try to secure student ships and research grants, which are most often at the professors' discretion. And do apply for Fulbright and Rhodes, you are worth it.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Should you apply for this scholarship?
A lot of students, whose GPAs range from 2.0 to 3.5 (on a 4.0 scale), often ask me if they would be eligible for any scholarships at all, let alone the most popular ones like Fulbright and Rhodes, because they are afraid that they have very low GPAs. In order to fully answer this question, there are some factors that must be taken into consideration and I will try to outline them in this post.
A scholarship application is the sum of all its parts, and the GPA is but one constituent of the equation. What makes a successful application is the applicant's devotion to the pursuit of excellence.
First and foremost, a bad GPA, whatever you think that may be, is not the be all and end all of this world. GPAs across universities are inconsistent and therefore not an absolute way of gauging the students from one university vs another. Even in NUST itself, the GPAs from various constituent colleges cannot be directly compared with one another. So, a 2.5 from PNEC and a 2.5 from EME are not the same things (the 2.5 from PNEC is better, although the 2.5 from EME will get the better job). Therefore when you project this phenomenon on the scale of an international scholarship, GPA in itself losses its haloed importance as a metric of academic achievement. Therefore standardized tests, like GRE/GMAT, help smooth out the playing field. So, even if you have a crappy GPA, you should put all the effort that you didn't put in college studies, into your GRE/GMAT prep. For Fulbright, the GRE is compulsory (even if you are applying for MBA), but for Rhodes there is no outlined requirement for standardized tests, but it won't hurt your case to have a good GRE score. The Rhodes judges may make an assessment of your "scholastic attainment" based on multiple parameters like your GPA, published research papers, distinctions in academic things like your final year project, contributions to renowned journals, original research, engineering projects and excellent internships.
You must have a life outside your job and your classroom, this cannot be overstated. Explore your interests, hone your talents, cultivate your passions. Become a part time photographer, capture all the beauty around you, better yet capture all the hope that exists in places where beauty does not exist. Pick a paint brush and let your imagination fly on a canvas. Write a line of poetry, a paragraph, a novel. Go to that swimming pool and learn a new stroke of swimming. Find a sport you are good at and then excel at it. Whatever you do, you must always be in the pursuit of excellence. And each of these activities will bring more friends into your life, which in itself will lead to a broadening of your world view.
The scholarship committees of both Fulbright and Rhodes are looking for people who display the spark and charisma to be leaders in their fields of interest, who can become agents of positive change in the world and who can rise above the selfish desire for raw success in order to make contributions for the benefit of humanity at large; these individuals exist among you and me. Especially in a country like Pakistan, where the amount of widespread problems is soaring exponentially, the capability of bringing positive change is orders of magnitude greater than most other nations. Therefore, an active interest in the betterment of your fellow nationals, and a portfolio demonstrating this interest is essential. You may run a student body that promotes social improvement, you may educate children from families with modest means, you may run campaigns against corruption, create awareness about environment and mitigating pollution, voice your opinion about social inequality, spread a message of peace against the rampant religious discrimination, run a campaign to stymie the exploitation of the poor, propose solutions for the lack of a proper health care system, set up a small business to lessen the ever rising underemployment, all this and more, but you do need to take your head out of the classroom once in a while and look at the world around you and see how you can contribute to it. You should have a clear idea that you have a role to play and if you don't play it, then we are all lost. You may ask, "How do I make time for all of this, I have tests and assignments and social commitments?", well, you make time for it, the same way you make time for watching hours of TV, and for acting like drawing room politicians and for playing the new computer game and for facebook. No one is going to give you a scholarship because you wasted 4 years on facebook. And if you are successful in carrying out a genuine endeavour of positive social change, then your bad grades will become a smaller part of the equation.
A scholarship application is the sum of all its parts, and the GPA is but one constituent of the equation. What makes a successful application is the applicant's devotion to the pursuit of excellence.
First and foremost, a bad GPA, whatever you think that may be, is not the be all and end all of this world. GPAs across universities are inconsistent and therefore not an absolute way of gauging the students from one university vs another. Even in NUST itself, the GPAs from various constituent colleges cannot be directly compared with one another. So, a 2.5 from PNEC and a 2.5 from EME are not the same things (the 2.5 from PNEC is better, although the 2.5 from EME will get the better job). Therefore when you project this phenomenon on the scale of an international scholarship, GPA in itself losses its haloed importance as a metric of academic achievement. Therefore standardized tests, like GRE/GMAT, help smooth out the playing field. So, even if you have a crappy GPA, you should put all the effort that you didn't put in college studies, into your GRE/GMAT prep. For Fulbright, the GRE is compulsory (even if you are applying for MBA), but for Rhodes there is no outlined requirement for standardized tests, but it won't hurt your case to have a good GRE score. The Rhodes judges may make an assessment of your "scholastic attainment" based on multiple parameters like your GPA, published research papers, distinctions in academic things like your final year project, contributions to renowned journals, original research, engineering projects and excellent internships.
You must have a life outside your job and your classroom, this cannot be overstated. Explore your interests, hone your talents, cultivate your passions. Become a part time photographer, capture all the beauty around you, better yet capture all the hope that exists in places where beauty does not exist. Pick a paint brush and let your imagination fly on a canvas. Write a line of poetry, a paragraph, a novel. Go to that swimming pool and learn a new stroke of swimming. Find a sport you are good at and then excel at it. Whatever you do, you must always be in the pursuit of excellence. And each of these activities will bring more friends into your life, which in itself will lead to a broadening of your world view.
The scholarship committees of both Fulbright and Rhodes are looking for people who display the spark and charisma to be leaders in their fields of interest, who can become agents of positive change in the world and who can rise above the selfish desire for raw success in order to make contributions for the benefit of humanity at large; these individuals exist among you and me. Especially in a country like Pakistan, where the amount of widespread problems is soaring exponentially, the capability of bringing positive change is orders of magnitude greater than most other nations. Therefore, an active interest in the betterment of your fellow nationals, and a portfolio demonstrating this interest is essential. You may run a student body that promotes social improvement, you may educate children from families with modest means, you may run campaigns against corruption, create awareness about environment and mitigating pollution, voice your opinion about social inequality, spread a message of peace against the rampant religious discrimination, run a campaign to stymie the exploitation of the poor, propose solutions for the lack of a proper health care system, set up a small business to lessen the ever rising underemployment, all this and more, but you do need to take your head out of the classroom once in a while and look at the world around you and see how you can contribute to it. You should have a clear idea that you have a role to play and if you don't play it, then we are all lost. You may ask, "How do I make time for all of this, I have tests and assignments and social commitments?", well, you make time for it, the same way you make time for watching hours of TV, and for acting like drawing room politicians and for playing the new computer game and for facebook. No one is going to give you a scholarship because you wasted 4 years on facebook. And if you are successful in carrying out a genuine endeavour of positive social change, then your bad grades will become a smaller part of the equation.
The ugly CV problem
A lot of my fellows ask me to review their CVs and give suggestions for improvement, in this post I will try to put those things in one place. Most of the CVs that I come across have one thing in common: they are very ugly. There are many things that are essential for the making of an ugly CV, I want to cover the most glaring ones and how to circumvent them.
The first and foremost rule of ugly CV making is including a photo of yourself. Unless you are applying for a job as a model or news anchor or other unmentionable positions where looks equals cash, please stay away from the sin of including a photo of yourself. The exception to this rule is if the employer explicitly asks for your photograph, in which case you should include a professional looking photograph which has minimal digital touch-ups.
A CV is not a place to showcase all the funky fonts that you have collected over the years, and using something like Comic Sans in your CV is a surefire way of killing any chance you have of being taken seriously. Keep the fonts in your CV consistent and try to stick to the staples like Times New Roman, Verdana, Helvetica etc. Of course you are free to break every rule in this post if you are making a graphic designer CV.
Three things run the show of a good CV: entertainment, ... oh, I mean formatting, formatting & formatting. I cannot emphasize this point enough, a well formatted CV is a treat to the eyes, it draws your gaze to all the right sections, naturally points out all your strengths, and shouts "Hire me" without being gaudy. To find the formatting that fits your taste and coveys a sense of cultivated professionalism, you should go google shopping, look at the vast amount of material available and you will soon find something that you like.
Try at least once to make your CV in something other than Word. Try Photoshop or Indesign. By using these programs you will be able to control the overall look of your CV with much more finesse. But if you are a Word cheeta, then by all means go ahead and perform miracles there.
Do not under any circumstances lie on your CV. The world is a small place and the corporate world is an even smaller one, sooner or later someone will know that you are faking it.
No one believes in your run of the mill, a dozen a dime, objective statement, so save yourself the hassle and either try to come up with something original or avoid putting it on your CV. Something like, "to work as an electronics engineer at Rhode & Schwarz", is simple and sufficient for all practical purposes.
Do you really think that the golden star that you got in class 1, should be written in your academic achievements? Or that essay competition you won in playgroup, is a good addition to your extra-curricular activities section? Only include recent, meaningful and quantifiable achievements in your CV. Just being a member of a generic college society doesn't have any real significance, because I can bet that society had tons of other members too, so you might just as well write, "Lifetime membership of the Homo Sapiens species".
In the list of your academic qualifications, state your most recent educational qualification first, that is the point of most interest. If you have a good GPA, write it, if you have a bad GPA, you should still write it. Do you think that if you don't write your bad GPA, the employer will somehow never ask you about it?
Take a good print out of your CV and learn about adjusting print margins. A lot of average looking CVs turn into ugly looking CVs because the person was too lazy to get a good print out. Adjust the printer settings properly and only submit the best print out.
If I ask 10 people to get creative with their CVs, the first thing that most of them would do is to make the headings all colourful! A wonderful way of making the CV hideous, not to mention that the colours look like an uneven mix of greys when taken out from a conventional black and white printer. So please stay well away from making your CV a beauty parlour disaster. You may use colour on your CV, but like everything else it should be done sparsely.
"Surfing internet" as a hobby is disgusting and only brings dirty images to the mind. If you are surfing the internet for some particular thing then that thing should be your hobby, not "Surfing internet". Same goes for "Reading books", be specific about the genre that you like to read and your CV will become instantly more interesting e.g you can write "Reading biographies", "Learning about art history".
Make your project/job/experience descriptions succinct and try to include numbers/percentages to give a measure of the success or effectiveness.
Just put your references there on the CV, don't give me the idiotically self-important statement "would be given on request".
If possible, print your CV on high quality paper, better than your usual printer paper. Heavier paper, almost card type, lends a slight plus to the CV.
Last but not the least, keep your CV current at all times, or at least update it at a regular frequency. And, don't procrastinate in making a good CV, you will need it much more often than you ever dream of.
The first and foremost rule of ugly CV making is including a photo of yourself. Unless you are applying for a job as a model or news anchor or other unmentionable positions where looks equals cash, please stay away from the sin of including a photo of yourself. The exception to this rule is if the employer explicitly asks for your photograph, in which case you should include a professional looking photograph which has minimal digital touch-ups.
A CV is not a place to showcase all the funky fonts that you have collected over the years, and using something like Comic Sans in your CV is a surefire way of killing any chance you have of being taken seriously. Keep the fonts in your CV consistent and try to stick to the staples like Times New Roman, Verdana, Helvetica etc. Of course you are free to break every rule in this post if you are making a graphic designer CV.
Three things run the show of a good CV: entertainment, ... oh, I mean formatting, formatting & formatting. I cannot emphasize this point enough, a well formatted CV is a treat to the eyes, it draws your gaze to all the right sections, naturally points out all your strengths, and shouts "Hire me" without being gaudy. To find the formatting that fits your taste and coveys a sense of cultivated professionalism, you should go google shopping, look at the vast amount of material available and you will soon find something that you like.
Try at least once to make your CV in something other than Word. Try Photoshop or Indesign. By using these programs you will be able to control the overall look of your CV with much more finesse. But if you are a Word cheeta, then by all means go ahead and perform miracles there.
Do not under any circumstances lie on your CV. The world is a small place and the corporate world is an even smaller one, sooner or later someone will know that you are faking it.
No one believes in your run of the mill, a dozen a dime, objective statement, so save yourself the hassle and either try to come up with something original or avoid putting it on your CV. Something like, "to work as an electronics engineer at Rhode & Schwarz", is simple and sufficient for all practical purposes.
Do you really think that the golden star that you got in class 1, should be written in your academic achievements? Or that essay competition you won in playgroup, is a good addition to your extra-curricular activities section? Only include recent, meaningful and quantifiable achievements in your CV. Just being a member of a generic college society doesn't have any real significance, because I can bet that society had tons of other members too, so you might just as well write, "Lifetime membership of the Homo Sapiens species".
In the list of your academic qualifications, state your most recent educational qualification first, that is the point of most interest. If you have a good GPA, write it, if you have a bad GPA, you should still write it. Do you think that if you don't write your bad GPA, the employer will somehow never ask you about it?
Take a good print out of your CV and learn about adjusting print margins. A lot of average looking CVs turn into ugly looking CVs because the person was too lazy to get a good print out. Adjust the printer settings properly and only submit the best print out.
If I ask 10 people to get creative with their CVs, the first thing that most of them would do is to make the headings all colourful! A wonderful way of making the CV hideous, not to mention that the colours look like an uneven mix of greys when taken out from a conventional black and white printer. So please stay well away from making your CV a beauty parlour disaster. You may use colour on your CV, but like everything else it should be done sparsely.
"Surfing internet" as a hobby is disgusting and only brings dirty images to the mind. If you are surfing the internet for some particular thing then that thing should be your hobby, not "Surfing internet". Same goes for "Reading books", be specific about the genre that you like to read and your CV will become instantly more interesting e.g you can write "Reading biographies", "Learning about art history".
Make your project/job/experience descriptions succinct and try to include numbers/percentages to give a measure of the success or effectiveness.
Just put your references there on the CV, don't give me the idiotically self-important statement "would be given on request".
If possible, print your CV on high quality paper, better than your usual printer paper. Heavier paper, almost card type, lends a slight plus to the CV.
Last but not the least, keep your CV current at all times, or at least update it at a regular frequency. And, don't procrastinate in making a good CV, you will need it much more often than you ever dream of.
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