USA Education System
A student who has completed 12 years of education will be eligible to apply for a Bachelors ( Undergraduate) program and a student who has completed 16 years of education is eligible to apply for a Masters program.
Its unlike in India where 3 years traditional degree is not sufficient to apply for Masters program in US. Student from India with 3 years degree should have complete an additional year of degree program to become eligible for admission.
There are four semesters mentioned below are available in the US Universities,
Starts in the month of August / September
2.Spring semester:
Starts in the month of January / February
3.Summer Semester:
Starts in the month of April
4. Winter Semester:
Starts in the month of November
It is strongly recommended to opt for Fall semester as their first priority in applying to Universities followed by Spring semester. The choice of Universities is wide and the chances of financial aid are also high during Fall semester.
If one wishes to improve his chances of securing admission and financial assistance, it is advisable to students to send their application packets 6 months prior to the Application deadline of the respective Universities.
General terminology used in US unlike in India:
Rolling Admissions:
Some of the Universities follow the system of Rolling admissions, where they do not have any application deadlines and accept applications throughout the year. They provide admissions based on the availability of seats for that respective semester. Once the intake is full, they defer the application packet of the students to the next semester.
Graduation/Graduate Programs
In India,
we refer to B.Tech., B.E., MBBS, B.A., B.Sc., B.Com, B.Pharm., etc. as graduate programs, and M.Tech, M.Sc., M.A., etc as post graduation programs.
In the US,
programs like B.Tech., B.E., MBBS, B.A., B.Sc., B.Com, B.Pharm. are referred to as undergraduate programs.
Programs like M.S., M.A., MBA and Ph.D. are referred to as graduate programs by the US universities.
So, remember that you have completed (or studying) your undergraduate program and you are applying for admission into graduate programs in the US universities.
Courses
For us in India, B.Tech is a course; B.Com. is a course. In the US, the term course is used to refer to (what we call as) subjects. For example, if you are Computer Science Engineer, you would have done a course called Digital Signal Processing (Note that this is one of the subjects that you would have done).
So, in your Statement of Purpose and other documents where you want to mention the subjects that you have done, use the word "courses."
Major
The branch of study is referred to as major. For example, if you are a mechanical engineer, you will say that you majored in Mechanical Engineering.
Grade 10 and 12
When you are talking about your 10th Standard (SSC, etc.) or 12th Standard (HSC, etc.) in your essays, it is better that you use terms like Grade 10 and Grade 12 respectively, rather than use words like SSC and HSC. The universities will immediately understand words like Grade 10 and 12 as that is the terminology they are familiar with.
Your Academic Scores
The US universities use GPA (Grade Point Average) as a measure for expressing academic performance. However while quoting your marks, if your university gives only the marks, use only the percentage of the marks. If your university gives a scale of conversion from percentage of marks to GPA, use such a scale and convert your marks to GPA – otherwise, do not use your own conversion scale or methodology to express your marks in GPA.
Now a days, most of the US universities prefering evaluation of your degree certificates by us US credential evaluators like WWW.WES.ORG which nearly costs 204$.In this they evaluate your complete marks list according to 4 scale which is basically followed in US edu system.
About Credit hour system
- Credit given for attending one lecture hour of class each week for 15 weeks or equivalent.
- Most college classes are three credit hours, meaning their total meeting time for a week is three hours.
Still if you need details regarding any other information please comment below.