Q. Could you give me tips on writing a good statement of purpose (SOP)?
You can find tons of resources on the web about writing SOPs and even find a lot of sample SOPs. However, try not to read another person's SOP (or sample SOPs you might find on the web) and derive from that. At least don't look at them before you have written your very first draft by yourself. Looking at someone else's SOP at the very beginning might bias you to write your own SOP in a way, which was probably suited to the other person's profile, but might not work so well in your case.
You should do multiple iterations over the SOP and sometimes it might be necessary to give some idle time between iterations. You can ask peers, seniors and/or professors to review it and give you suggestions on improving your SOP.
I won't talk a lot about SOPs because of the abundance of information already available on the internet on this topic. But do read section 3.4 of DAGAP for further discussion on what a SOP should and should not be.
Some useful links:
http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~mabdelm/statement-of-purpose-tips.html
http://www.cs.umd.edu/Grad/sop.html
http://blog.yournextleap.com/this-is-how-you-write-a-kickass-sop/
Q. Is the GRE Analytical Writing (AWA) section important?
Yes. Based on my experience as an application reviewer, the importance given to AWA was less than that given to the quantitative section, but definitely more than that given to verbal.
Low AWA scores (<3.5, even 3.5 is borderline) can be a cause for concern.
Q. How much does the name of the undergraduate college matter?
All top schools do give some weightage to how good the undergraduate college is. When evaluating Indian applications, all top schools have definitely heard of the IITs, but have seldom heard of anything else (even the next-best colleges like NITs, BITS Pilani, Anna Unniversity, etc.). In fact, some times IIITs (Indian/International Institute of Information Technology) get confused with IITs and the IIIT applicants might thus have it lucky thanks to their easily mistakable name. But awareness is on the rise and a lot of the US schools now do recognize IIITs (as being distinct from IITs), BITS Pilani and a few other colleges in addition to the IITs. The importance of the "IIT" brand varies. In some top schools, it may be an absolute necessity to the extent that non-IIT applications are pretty much not evaluated at all. In others, it just adds a bit more of weight and trust to the application. Thus, cases which are on the borderline (say due to borderline GPA or GRE or other factors) and might have been rejected for a non-IITian, might just get accepted because of the "IIT" tag.
Stanford is one of the schools which does give importance to the IIT brand name, but not so much as to overlook other aspects of the application. It thus has an Indian student population such that the number of non-IITians pretty much equals the number of IITians. In summary, if you are at an IIT, stop worrying! If you are not, don't kill yourself about it - there might be a very small number of universities (and this list is becoming smaller every year) that might reject you on account of not being an IITian, but most schools will definitely do a fair evaluation of your application even otherwise. Provided your overall profile stands out, you should still be able be able to into most of the top graduate schools.
Q. Should I apply for an MS or a PhD?
This is a very common doubt that a lot of aspirants have. In some cases, the student himself/herself does not have a clue about what he/she wants, in which case they are mostly interested in how this decision (of applying for an MS or a PhD) affects their acceptance chances and funding opportunities. In other cases, the student is quite sure that he/she wants to do a PhD, but is not sure whether directly applying for a PhD right after BTech/BE is the right choice, or if he/she should apply for an MS first and later apply for PhD.
As far as chances of admission at a top school is concerned, a PhD admission is considerably more tougher to secure than an MS admission. The PhD application pool is simply lot more competitive and the admissions committee too has much higher standards of admissions for a PhD admit. If you do not have a very high research orientation and are looking forward to just get an opportunity to study at a top school and/or have the name of that school get attached to your resume, then applying for MS is a much safer bet. Thankfully, a lot of the applications these days have an option that says "consider me for MS if I am rejected from the PhD program". You should definitely select this option and for universities that don't give this option, you would be better off only applying to their MS program.
Of course, things are different if you want research/academia to be your career and are sure about doing a PhD. In that case, it makes more sense to apply for a PhD directly. Such applicants should also keep in mind the things said above about the difficulty of gettign a PhD admit at a top school. However, when PhD is your goal, then the rank of the university doesn't matter as much as the particular professor/research lab you would be working with. Even in universities that might not feature in the top 10 or 20 in most rankings, there might be specific research groups or professors who are highly reputed in their field and do quality research work. As long as you get an opportunity to work with and be advised by such a professor, you should be fine. However if you really really want to do a PhD from a very top school, then you'd be better off doing an MS first and then applying again (your chances should improve once you have done an MS from a reputed university).
With regards to funding, PhD admissions almost certainly coming with funding in most of the top schools. but MS admissions don't. PhD admits get some sort of scholarship or fellowship with their admit which is good for couple of years (or at least one year), and even after that expires, it's easy for them to get research and teaching assistantships. MS students on the other hand have to solely rely on getting RAships and TAships to fund their studies. The ease of getting assistantships differs from university to university. It might be a good idea to contact a couple of graduate students already studying there (it should be fairly easy to get email addresses of students from the university website) about the funding situation there.
You can find tons of resources on the web about writing SOPs and even find a lot of sample SOPs. However, try not to read another person's SOP (or sample SOPs you might find on the web) and derive from that. At least don't look at them before you have written your very first draft by yourself. Looking at someone else's SOP at the very beginning might bias you to write your own SOP in a way, which was probably suited to the other person's profile, but might not work so well in your case.
You should do multiple iterations over the SOP and sometimes it might be necessary to give some idle time between iterations. You can ask peers, seniors and/or professors to review it and give you suggestions on improving your SOP.
I won't talk a lot about SOPs because of the abundance of information already available on the internet on this topic. But do read section 3.4 of DAGAP for further discussion on what a SOP should and should not be.
Some useful links:
http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~mabdelm/statement-of-purpose-tips.html
http://www.cs.umd.edu/Grad/sop.html
http://blog.yournextleap.com/this-is-how-you-write-a-kickass-sop/
Q. Is the GRE Analytical Writing (AWA) section important?
Yes. Based on my experience as an application reviewer, the importance given to AWA was less than that given to the quantitative section, but definitely more than that given to verbal.
Low AWA scores (<3.5, even 3.5 is borderline) can be a cause for concern.
Q. How much does the name of the undergraduate college matter?
All top schools do give some weightage to how good the undergraduate college is. When evaluating Indian applications, all top schools have definitely heard of the IITs, but have seldom heard of anything else (even the next-best colleges like NITs, BITS Pilani, Anna Unniversity, etc.). In fact, some times IIITs (Indian/International Institute of Information Technology) get confused with IITs and the IIIT applicants might thus have it lucky thanks to their easily mistakable name. But awareness is on the rise and a lot of the US schools now do recognize IIITs (as being distinct from IITs), BITS Pilani and a few other colleges in addition to the IITs. The importance of the "IIT" brand varies. In some top schools, it may be an absolute necessity to the extent that non-IIT applications are pretty much not evaluated at all. In others, it just adds a bit more of weight and trust to the application. Thus, cases which are on the borderline (say due to borderline GPA or GRE or other factors) and might have been rejected for a non-IITian, might just get accepted because of the "IIT" tag.
Stanford is one of the schools which does give importance to the IIT brand name, but not so much as to overlook other aspects of the application. It thus has an Indian student population such that the number of non-IITians pretty much equals the number of IITians. In summary, if you are at an IIT, stop worrying! If you are not, don't kill yourself about it - there might be a very small number of universities (and this list is becoming smaller every year) that might reject you on account of not being an IITian, but most schools will definitely do a fair evaluation of your application even otherwise. Provided your overall profile stands out, you should still be able be able to into most of the top graduate schools.
Q. Should I apply for an MS or a PhD?
This is a very common doubt that a lot of aspirants have. In some cases, the student himself/herself does not have a clue about what he/she wants, in which case they are mostly interested in how this decision (of applying for an MS or a PhD) affects their acceptance chances and funding opportunities. In other cases, the student is quite sure that he/she wants to do a PhD, but is not sure whether directly applying for a PhD right after BTech/BE is the right choice, or if he/she should apply for an MS first and later apply for PhD.
As far as chances of admission at a top school is concerned, a PhD admission is considerably more tougher to secure than an MS admission. The PhD application pool is simply lot more competitive and the admissions committee too has much higher standards of admissions for a PhD admit. If you do not have a very high research orientation and are looking forward to just get an opportunity to study at a top school and/or have the name of that school get attached to your resume, then applying for MS is a much safer bet. Thankfully, a lot of the applications these days have an option that says "consider me for MS if I am rejected from the PhD program". You should definitely select this option and for universities that don't give this option, you would be better off only applying to their MS program.
Of course, things are different if you want research/academia to be your career and are sure about doing a PhD. In that case, it makes more sense to apply for a PhD directly. Such applicants should also keep in mind the things said above about the difficulty of gettign a PhD admit at a top school. However, when PhD is your goal, then the rank of the university doesn't matter as much as the particular professor/research lab you would be working with. Even in universities that might not feature in the top 10 or 20 in most rankings, there might be specific research groups or professors who are highly reputed in their field and do quality research work. As long as you get an opportunity to work with and be advised by such a professor, you should be fine. However if you really really want to do a PhD from a very top school, then you'd be better off doing an MS first and then applying again (your chances should improve once you have done an MS from a reputed university).
With regards to funding, PhD admissions almost certainly coming with funding in most of the top schools. but MS admissions don't. PhD admits get some sort of scholarship or fellowship with their admit which is good for couple of years (or at least one year), and even after that expires, it's easy for them to get research and teaching assistantships. MS students on the other hand have to solely rely on getting RAships and TAships to fund their studies. The ease of getting assistantships differs from university to university. It might be a good idea to contact a couple of graduate students already studying there (it should be fairly easy to get email addresses of students from the university website) about the funding situation there.
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