Dear friends,
I have made a task list to get admission in PhD program:
Make a list of universities in which a PhD program in ur field is available.
1.Go to the site of canadauniversity.net (I don't like this site much as it confuses me, I normally takes the university list from Wikipedia and then go through the web of university, later I check the reputation of university as well, e.g. PhD from Trent may not land me good job in my filed, university+reputation). You can easily find ranking on web by subject and over all as well. Normal is
1-3) Toronto, UBC - McGill (these are the best so you will find UBC ranked 1, Uft 2 and McGill 3 or reverse)
4) Waterloo, 5) Montreal or Alberta, 6) Queens 7) McMaster, 8) Calgary 9) UWO 10) SFU 11) Ottawa or
Within North America:
1. Mcgill 2. U of T 3. UBC 4. Waterloo´ 5. Queens
By Europeans:
1. Mcgill 2. U of T 3. UBC 4. Waterloo/Western Ontario 5. Queens´
By Asian and Pacific
1. U of T 2. UBC 3. Mcgill 4. Waterloo 5. Western Ontario
2.Open sites of univs one by one.
3.See their graduate programs.
4.Find If they are offering a PhD for ur inerest.
5.If yes check the admission requirements.
6.If u think u fall in these criteria then (Criteria is always min and universities normally don't take students with min requirements)
7.Visit the faculty members' WebPages. (Faculty interest is diversified so, when if you find someone who is close to your interest send them email with small proposal one page is enough as they don't have time to go through long papers. Choose 2-3 profs from each uni as you will need 2-3 to supervise you 2 is min.)
8.See their interests and particularly try to find the people who r more active in the department or this is very good if they r offering research positions. (Good university mean If you divide uniz is Tier 1-5, universities which will fall in Tier 1-3 will always offer you RA/TA post, I normally look this from Wikipedia, which gives the detail about how much govt, funding university got on highlights at the R.H.S of the page. Uniz with 200M> in tier 3)
9.If there is a faculty member of ur interest then read care fully about what is he doing. (Some effect as in each province, if you are in one university, you can take courses in other universities due to agreement (not sure about all but Ontario and BC offer this), when you take the course in other university in same province, if you are in good terms with prof in exchange uni, you can ask him to be join your PhD committee and then if your department allowed, normally departments do if the prof have good reputation as it can increase chances of employment for their PhD candidate. So, if you are in low rank university try to do this, will help. If I passed my comps am going to Toronto for couple of courses and will try my best to bring that prof on my committee.)
10.Write a nice email and send to that person (try to impress him very small but impressive email will work). Subject of the email should be “PhD candidate” etc. (It's bit tricky, as there is a Graduate committee who decide about admission if your potential supervisor is happy and ranks you excellent but committee say no, then you lost it. So, be more specific in application show your research stamina and interest. As PhD is a 5-6 years commitment and uni don't want you to leave in 2-3 years.If you are near by min admission requirements mean 0-5%+ then do some research work.)
11.If he refuses select another person
12.If he agrees then
13.Prepare ur application according to the faculty member.
Similalrly apply to other universities from the list. ( I had around 89% Canadian marks in my MSc , 84% in BSc converted from UK, 2 years part time Research assistant work, then a years full time work in capacity of Economist. I applied to 13 universities. I was rejected from 9 and some low ranked universities rejected me but I came to waterloo due to two reasons one funding is higher then other uniz+good reputation in industry (not very good in academic in economics)+work placement for 4-8 months with university help and majority of MA and PhD students with PR or Citizenship get the placement and then continue to work their. It's a new program only two PhD graduates this year both got the job in government both on PR, with approx 75K-90K. Both are working at same place where they done their placement term. This give me bit of security so I choose waterloo. One liner for the paragraph apply to min 6-10 universities it's costly but PhD admissions are too selective.
I will request Zulkfal and other senior members to plz give ur comments.[/color]
regards
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