It was a grueling past year as I had been tested mentally and challenged to my wits end. A year ago in Sept I took up a challenge of pursuing my higher studies.With 2+ years experience under my belt it was about time I gave it a shot. If I had to go for it I had to do it then and take the plunge. There started the ordeal. First up Exams preparations. With good communication skills I backed myself for TOEFL which tests your general English proficiency. GRE was much harder in this respect with 800 marks allotted for each verbal and quantitative sections. With a good aptitude and basic mathematics principle, I believed I would do decently well on the Quants. However being extremely bad in Vocabs would give way to a bad GRE score, ruining my chances of admissions. As expected I didn't do too well on the Verbal. I scored a mere 410 (out of 800) on it. However a decent 730 (out of 800) on the Quants evened things out to a certain extent. With 1100+ on the GRE I backed myself. Being confident and backing my English skills, I scored a century (102 to be precise) out of 120 on it. This gave me a fair enough chance o cover up the fumble of a bad GRE verbal score. This evened things out to a certain extent and started applying to different universities.
If the preparation for the exams weren't enough, I also had to prepare for the applications to universities. Had to collect the university transcripts, get people to write reco's for me, and of course the dreaded Statement of Purpose (SOP). With the application deadline fast approaching for the Fall 208 semester ( Dec - Feb ), I had to be on my toes not to miss the dates of my chosen universities. I started applying to universities in Dec - Jan - Feb. After online applications, it was time for the couriers to be dispatched. Soon by mid Feb I was done with couriering my last dossier to the university. Mar and April were eventful months with universities giving their decisions. It was a series of ups and downs as I balanced between the joy of being admitted and losing out on the other. Of the 5 universities which I had applied to, I managed to get admitted in 3. Indiana University, my first choice was amongst them. After completing the last formalities of showing my financial documents, I was issued the much awaited I - 20 form. After multiple back-to-back weekend trips (6 of them to be precise) to valsad (Guj), my hometown to collect the fixed and liquid assests documents, running around collectors office to catching hold of a CA to get his certificate, I was finally prepared to take The Date.
After filling out the online Visa forms, which seemed like eternity at one point digging out information since childhood, I managed to get a free slot for 9th Jul 2008 at 12:00pm. Efforts of the last 10 months were on the line not to mention my career was at stake. Finally with my receipt no: being announced, I approached the Visa Officer's window. What started then was a questions in quick succession, a rapid fire round, Why did you choose this university? Why did you choose this course? What are your scores? What are you doing now? What is your company into? What are you working as? Who is sponsoring you? What is your brother doing? I was passing him the documents but he wasn't interested in looking at any. He packed my I-20 and other forms in between the passport, I had my heart in my mouth. I thought this was it!! I didn't make it!! He then took my passport out waved the passport to me and said "You will get this by courier". I was extremely delighted. I thanked the officer and exited out.
Later that evening I collected my passport from the embassy with my F1 Student Visa stamped on it.
Indiana University, Bloomington
Masters in Security Informatics, ....My destination for the coming 2 years.....
"There is never an end, only a new begining"
