Bye bye LOCAM

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LOCAM is now ASPIRE UK...

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Help in Selecting a University...

Are you planning to Study Abroad?

Are you confused because of too many Universities to choose from?

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How to write a Statement of Purpose / Personal Statement OR Letter of Recommendation?

I have been going through the dilemma of how to help students overcome their inability of writing a Statement of Purpose - SOP or Personal Statement on their own without copying or taking lines from an already written statement. I have seen a strange inability of students of the sub-continent especially Indian students (Not all though!!) to write a statement using their abilities and presumably less developed art of writing. I have seen students requesting SOPs and Letters of Recommendation - LORs all over the internet communities especially created for the purpose on Orkut, Facebook and so many other social-networking websites. If you are one among them? All I can say is, BEWARE!!!

Requesting someone else's written Statement of Purpose is not going to help you in anyway. To get a Letter of Recommendation you should get in touch with your college professor or your employer who knows you pretty well and can assess you for leadership traits, tactical aptitude, communication skills or whatever they and you feel is essential for the admission tutors to know about you. Copying what somebody else has written can adversely affect your application and may sometimes even lead rejection of your application. So be cautious!

Writing a Statement of Purpose or a Personal Statement may seem a daunting and hard task initially but remember copying never works. You can start writing a personal statement by first summing up all what your have achieved academically, by participating in extra curricular activities, what your hobbies and interests are? and then trying to make a connecting between all what you have achieved and what you want to achieve? A Statement of Purpose is your only chance to tell the universities and colleges you have chosen why you are applying and why they should want you as a student. A good personal statement is important as it could persuade an admission tutor to offer you a place. Hiding facts and dishonesty must be avoided at all costs.

You may not be too good at English to write an impressive Personal Statement but you should try your best to transfer your thoughts from mind to the paper and then ask your tutor, friend or anybody who is good at English to go through your statement and correct it for any grammatical mistakes and make it sound unambiguous (Ambiguity kills the essence of thought!). You will then appreciate your hard work and and will definitely feel proud of your accomplishment which you otherwise won't have been able to if you had copied someone else's work.

Learn to stand on your own only then you can help others to stand. 
BE THE CHANGE...
Best of Luck

How to select a University in UK for MBA and other allied courses???

The LOCAM - Good University Guide Part-I

Choosing a good university is a pretty tough task but if you know yourself well (Your strengths and interess, I mean), it's as easy as 1 2 3...

People generally consider AMBA Accredition, but isn't the only good thing; AMBA regulates the policies of universities pertaining to admission, course content, assessment methods so on and so forth.. but if you want to assess a university in UK in terms of teaching quality, student satisfaction and research excellence, there is a lot to consider then.

If you have some work-experience, you can get into some very good universities (All AMBA Universities require at least two years managerial work experience and some require GMAT scores also). Practically, considering finance, job prospects, admissions requirements and all that, you need to consider a lot...

To select a good university, you have many sources of information. But, initially I would recommend you to check the UK Government's Research Assessment Exercise - RAE. The primary purpose of the RAE is to produce quality profiles for each submission of research activity made by institutions. Based on the assessment of University's research works submitted to the RAE panel, Universities are ranked in each subject category. RAE in my opinion is the most authentic assessment of universities in the UK as it's a government done job and they won't want to mislead first their own students and then international students, off-course. Go to RAE official website, (http://www.rae.ac.uk/) put in the name of your proposed University and it will show the RAE assessment report. If you want to check the subject rankings go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/page/subject/rae2008 and select the subject.

Another good source of checking the ranking of UK universities are the league tables published by UK based newspapers such as The Times and The Guardian etc.

I prefer consulting the Times League Table (Good University Guide) located at http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/tol_gug/gooduniversityguide.php. The table shows the general rankings, but if you want to check the subject rankings, type in your subject in the "Choose Subject" field and click Search.

Another good thing to consider is The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) - QAA checks how UK universities maintain their own academic standards and quality. They review and report on how Universities in UK meet their responsibilities, identify good practice and make recommendations for improvement. QAA also publishes guidelines to help UK universities and colleges develop effective systems to ensure students have the best learning experience. Access QAA website at http://www.qaa.ac.uk/.

I would like to advice you, don't go into what the people say in general. Do what is authenticated by people who are known for excellence in their fields. That way, you would never regret whatever you do in life.

Hope that helps.

Best of luck.

P.S: Do post your Comments...