MIT, Stanford or Caltech: On a Scholarship?
By The BITS2MSPHD Team
The graduate school application process in BITS has never really been coordinated with each new batch of students at BITS having to re-learn the same things that their seniors did years ago. This year, Abhishek Kamath (‘05 EEE, currently at Stanford University) – after going through the harrowing procedure of applying to grad school – founded a group called Greenmile to help future batches with their applications. This group later became the BITS2MS/PhD initiative, modeled after the similar BITS2BSchool initiative, which has been very successful in helping BITSians get admits to the best business schools in the world.
The main objective of the BITS2MS/PhD initiative is to ensure that more and more BITSians are offered admissions to the world’s top graduate schools each year. The BITS2MS/PhD team includes alumni who have attended the top graduate schools. This global network of alumni who have gone through the grind of the apping process are in the best position to offer help and guidance.
According to Prof Richard Newton, the Dean of the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley, the number of Indian applicants to top school in US has been coming down due to better opportunities in India. In Dean Newton’s words: “…more and more BITSians should apply to UC Berkeley”
In the short term, the BITS2MS/PhD team plans on helping students with their applications, providing advice, answering questions, etc. and improving the value of the BITS brand in the eyes of MS/PhD admissions committees. Ultimately, the best grad schools should actively seek out BITSians as graduate students; an applicant from BITS should immediately stand out from among the hundreds of other international candidates applying to the same program.
The BITS2MSPHD team has already made progress on several fronts. Apart from an informative website and an active group,  alumni have been building the BITS brand at their graduate schools. Amol Bakshi ('97 CS, PhD USC) has been working with the administration at USC to highlight top BITSians as possible candidates for the MS/PhD Program at USC. Recently, Dr.Raghurama (Dean, Admissions and Placements, BITS Pilani) visited USC and alumni in the Valley and was apprised of the BITS2MSPHD effort. He has offered the use of his office to coordinate activities of the group.
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