Yesterday we talked about doing research on U.S. universities and the programs they had to offer.  Today let’s talk about another bit of research you should do:  career development research.

So, let’s say you’re in the KAEF interview and we ask you what programs suit your academic and professional interests.  You answer with a list of ten different programs, giving specifics of how each would benefit you.  Then we follow up with another question:  “How will you use the knowledge you acquire in the U.S. upon your return to Kosova?”

Let’s say you draw a blank (you won’t of course, because you’re a great candidate – but let’s pretend you do anyway).  How does that make you look is a candidate?

You want to research universities to answer how you’re going to acquire knowledge in the U.S.  You want to research you career to answer why you want to acquire that knowledge.

Just like research on universities, this will help you decide whether or not to apply to KAEF.  For example, if you’re interested in field X as a career, but field X is one in which you don’t need a Master’s, then why waste your time?  If, on the other hand, you’re a field Y person, and the only way to advance is to get a higher degree, then a graduate program is a smart choice.

You’ll want to ask yourself the following questions:

• What is your long-term plan?  (Also known as the “where do you see yourself in ten years?” question)
• How will the fellowship help you attain those goals (if you can’t come up with a concrete answer, you probably don’t even want to apply – it’d be a waste of your time)?
• Who are the leaders in the field currently?
• To what extent has education played a role in their success?
• What are the barriers to advancement in your chosen field?
• How does education help overcome those barriers?

One thing that can help you decide whether or not to apply to KAEF – and can also help you create a strong application – is some basic research into what U.S. universities have to offer.

One of the things any selection committee for any graduate fellowship will look for is “Seriousness of Purpose.”  Sometimes they call it something else, but regardless of the name, the idea is the same:  successful candidates should demonstrate that they are serious about the program and the impact it could have on their career.

How do you demonstrate that you’re a “serious” candidate?  Well, one way is to demonstrate that you have done your homework regarding the program and on educational institutions in the United States.

I’ve been in interviews where I’ve asked the following question:

“Could you give us some examples of programs that you’ve identified in the U.S. to suit your professional academic interests?”

And I’ve received the following answers:

“Oh, I don’t know, any university is fine.”

“I haven’t had time to look into universities.”

“I’m not really sure what I want to study.”

How do you think that makes an applicant look?  They may be great in a lot of other ways, but it makes it hard to evaluate them positively when even they can’t say why exactly they want to go on the program!!!

So, do some research.  Type “graduate school in _______” into google and fill in the blank with the field you’re interested in.  For example, inserting “business” into the blank, google returns Stanford, Columbia, Loyola, and the University of Chicago in its first five results.  That’s a good start.

Find out what it’s like to study at particular universities.  Look into their academic programs.  Read their promotional materials.  Look at their faculty and see if you can access some of their publications.  Do this for at least five or six programs.  This will give you a lot of information about different programs.  If you’re into rankings, go to the U.S. News and World Report site to get a list of schools to research, keeping in mind the limitations with any ranking system.

At this stage, any research is good research. Later on in the application process you can refine your search and begin to focus in on particular institutions.

So remember – research on U.S. programs will:

1. Help you decide if you want to apply to KAEF
2. Improve your application should you apply.

In yesterday’s post I talked about what universities want to see in candidates and how that related to the KAEF selection process.  In general, then, the selection process is so dependent on the input of U.S. universities’ admission staff that it’s very difficult to give applicants any concrete answers about the strength of their application.

However, I can try to give you an idea of what are probable minimum requirements for the fellowship.  Let me remind you that these are guidelines.  There have been cases where an applicant did not meet one of these requirements, but their application was in every other way so fantastic that it was able to overcome its one glaring weakness.  In general, though, the following is a good approximation of “requirements” of the KAEF selection process:

• First, and most obviously, you must be eligible for the program.  Check eligibility requirements here.  There’s no getting around this, no matter how strong your application.  (True story: we had several very strong applications last year from a former Soviet republic that shall go unnamed.  Great applications, great candidates . . . but they just weren’t eligible).  If you have any questions about your eligibility, let us know.
• Second, you probably need at least one year of work experience.  This doesn’t necessarily have to be post-graduation work experience – internships or other professional activities you engaged in during your university education will help, too.   There have been KAEF fellows without significant work experience, but they’re rare.
• Third – if you reach the semi-final round, you will need to get good test scores.  Every year we get the question, “How good?”  Hard question to answer, and I need to say again (and again and again) that these are GUIDELINES, but let me take a shot:  For the TOEFL, if you score under 530, it will be nearly-impossible to place you at a U.S. university.  The selection committee likes to see 550 or above.   For the GMAT, anything under 500 again puts you in the “difficult to place” category.  We’ve placed students who have scored worse, but again, the selection committee strongly prefers candidates with the higher GMAT scores.  In terms of the GRE, it’s so field specific that I don’t want to name a specific number . . . but I will anyway:  600 quantitative is what the selection committee likes to see.  There have been a number of fellows who have become finalists with lower GRE scores, but again, if you have a low score you are putting a huge burden on the rest of your application to compensate.
• Fourth, in terms of your academic work, the selection committee likes to see candidates with a GPA of 3.0 or above  (about an 8 on a 10 point scale).  We’ve had fellows with lower, but in those cases they have had extensive, extensive work experience.  Generally speaking, the importance of your grades decreases as your work experience grows, and vice versa.
• Fifth, essays – obviously, I can’t give you a “cutoff” for essays.  Let me just say that there has never been a fellow selected who has not had a good essay.  What makes a good essay, you ask?  Come back later in the spring, that’s a whole other series.

So, what to do if you don’t meet the minimum requirements?  It depends.  If it’s something you can’t change (such as the citizenship and residency eligibility requirements), well, I’m sorry, but KAEF is just not the opportunity for you.  If it’s something you can’t change, but can overcome, such as bad grades or little work experience, then you need to identify it as a weakness and address that weakness in your application.  If it’s something you can change, such as test scores or essays, then the answer is simple:  work hard to do so.

• Introduction
• The short answer
• Understanding the commitment involved
• Will your application be competitive?
• What host universities want
• Are there minimum requirements to be considered?
• Research can improve your chances
• Evaluating your career development
• Having a backup plan
• What if you don’t get it?

Yesterday I wrote, among other things, that the KAEF selection committee is comprised of admissions experts from U.S. universities.  We administer selection this way for two reasons:

• transparency – to keep everything fair and incapable of outside influence
• placement – once we select a student, we have to actually place them at a U.S. university.  By having admissions staff on our committee, we ensure that the candidates we select meet with the approval of the U.S. university community.

In deciding whether or not to apply to KAEF, it might help to think a little about what exactly it is that universities want from their foreign students.   The good news is this information is easily available on the internet.  Most graduate programs include some information about what they are looking for in graduate students.  For example, the following is from Northwestern’s “Who Should Apply” page:

As an applicant for graduate study, your scholastic record should show evidence of distinction, breadth and appropriate preparation for advanced study in your selected field.  Typically, GRE scores of admitted students are above 600 on both the Verbal and Quantitative sections.  Analytical Writing scores are generally 5 or above on the 6-point scale.  In most cases, admitted students have earned well above a 3.0 undergraduate GPA.

Try going to several U.S. universities and checking the section dedicated to graduate school admissions.  You’ll probably come up with a very good list of the qualities graduate schools are looking for, and that in turn will give you a good idea of whether or not you’ll be a competitive candidate for KAEF or other fellowships.

Table of Contents for “Should I Apply to KAEF?”

• Introduction
• The short answer
• Understanding the commitment involved
• Will your application be competitive?
• What host universities want
• Are there minimum requirements to be considered?
• Research can improve your chances
• Evaluating your career development
• Having a backup plan
• What if you don’t get it?

Each year, the KAEF Graduate Fellowship program receives over 100 applicants for eight fellowships.  Hundreds more applicants begin the online application process but drop out before the final deadline.

What this means is that the competition for the fellowship is fierce.  As a talented, motivated professional, you don’t want to waste time applying to a program for which you have no chance.  How do you know whether or not your application is “good enough” to warrant all the effort?

There are two basic answers to this question:

• KAEF selection is conducted by a panel of impartial university admissions experts, and not by KAEF staff.  We set up selection this way in order to avoid any conflicts of interest and maintain the impartiality of the process.  Ultimately,  the committee determines the quality of each KAEF application.  Seeing as how the committee is comprised of staff from university admissions departments, you can expect your application to be judged with criteria similar to those used by many U.S. institutions of higher education.  Those include, but are not limited to:  your work experience, your mastery of English, your other test scores, your interview performance (should you get to the “round”), your essays, your past academic performance, and your recommendations.  As you evaluate your own application, try to evaluate these parts of your application as objectively as possible.
• To a large extent, your application will be as good as you want it to be.  Those that spend a lot of time and effort writing essays, securing good recommendations, preparing for tests, and giving deep thought to their career goals and objectives will tend to have strong applications.  Those, on the other hand, who try to complete the entire process in a three-day period before the deadline will tend to have very poor applications.  As in many things in life, you tend to get back what you put in.

In short, there’s no way to know for sure whether or not your application “has a chance” other than applying.  But you can improve your chances by taking your time and putting in the effort to make your application the best it can be.

Table of Contents for “Should I Apply to KAEF?”

• Introduction
• The short answer
• Understanding the commitment involved
• Will your application be competitive?
• What host universities want
• Are there minimum requirements to be considered?
• Research can improve your chances
• Evaluating your career development
• Having a backup plan
• What if you don’t get it?

Last post I suggested that the worst thing that could happen if you applied to KAEF was that your application would be rejected.

That’s not the whole truth.  There is another terrifying possibility:  you could be accepted.

What’s terrifying about that? you ask.  That’s what I want to happen.

That’s a natural reaction.  After all, who wouldn’t want a full-ride fellowship to a U.S. master’s program?

You need to realize that there are strings attached, however.  The KAEF program requires all of its alumni will return to Kosovo and contribute to its economic development.  In addition, KAEF requires alumni to stay in contact with the program staff and provide updates about their professional activities.

So if you’re ideal program is one that funds you at a university, and then wishes you well, KAEF probably isn’t for you.  If you plan to move to another country, KAEF definitely isn’t for you.

So before you apply to KAEF, spend some time thinking about whether you want to make a long-term commitment to Kosovo.  Otherwise, being accepted to KAEF would load you down with some obligations that you probably wouldn’t be comfortable with.

The same goes for other fellowship opportunities.  Generally speaking, those funding fellowships have a particular goal in mind, and they’ll want to restrict the funds in a way that fulfills the goal.  Make sure you understand what you’re committing to before you apply.

Table of Contents for “Should I Apply to KAEF?”

• Introduction
• The short answer
• Understanding the commitment involved
• Will your application be competitive?
• What host universities want
• Are there minimum requirements to be considered?
• Research can improve your chances
• Evaluating your career development
• Having a backup plan
• What if you don’t get it?

The short answer of whether you should apply to KAEF – or any other scholarship / fellowship program – is this:

YES!

This is for a very simple reason:  what do you have to lose?  Honestly, if you apply for one of these programs, the worst thing that can happen is that your application is not accepted.   And even if that does happen, you at least will have gained valuable experience in terms of filling out an application, getting recommendations, writing essays, and gathering the necessary documents.  This will make it significantly easier for you to apply to the program (or another similar program) in the future.

So, for those of you without the patience to stick with us through the rest of this series, the short answer is YES, you should apply to KAEF.

Table of Contents for “Should I Apply to KAEF?”

• Introduction
• The short answer
• Understanding the commitment involved
• Will your application be competitive?
• What host universities want
• Are there minimum requirements to be considered?
• Research can improve your chances
• Evaluating your career development
• Having a backup plan
• What if you don’t get it?

As we wind down the current KAEF recruitment and selection cycle, we’re quickly approaching the date on which the 2009 application for KAEF will be opened.  This year, we hope to have the application up and running by mid-April, and certainly by May 1st.

Last year, over 700 people started a KAEF application.  A little over 100 completed theirs.  This tells us a few things:

1. A number of people liked the idea of applying to KAEF, but once they saw what the process required, they didn’t follow through
2. A number of applicants probably started an application before they fully understood the program; once they learned more about the program, they decided it wasn’t for them.

We’re always trying to simplify and streamline the application process in order to address #1.  In order to address #2, I thought I’d devote the next ten blog posts to a simple question:

Should you apply to KAEF?

Over the next two weeks I’ll try to help you address this question.   We’ll look at the benefits (and drawbacks) of a program like KAEF, as well as the criteria it uses in selection, how you can evaluate your own chances of being accepted., and what the program will be like.

One more note before we begin:  although the material I provide will focus primarily on the KAEF program, I think a lot of the information will relate to other scholarship programs as well.

As always, please feel free to use the Comments section of the blog to submit any questions you have.

Table of Contents for “Should I Apply to KAEF?”

• Introduction
• The short answer
• Understanding the commitment involved
• Will your application be competitive?
• What host universities want
• Are there minimum requirements to be considered?
• Research can improve your chances
• Evaluating your career development
• Having a backup plan
• What if you don’t get it?

Dastid Pallaska (KAEF 07, Yale Law School 08) took a different path than most KAEF graduates. Whereas many fellows on the KAEF program arrange for post-degree Practical Training with U.S. companies and organizations, Dastid decided to look a little closer to home.  In spite of offers for positions with New York, Washington DC, and Chicago law firms as well as with the Northern District of Illinois District Court, he took a position of Counsel with Wolf Theiss, a Vienna based international law firm, where he coordinates cross-border litigation for the firm’s 10 offices in SEE/CEE and handles white collar crime cases as well as arbitration.

The Practical Training program allows KAEF fellows to stay in the U.S. for up to a year after their graduation to get work experience in their chosen field. Typically it’s done in the United States, but Dastid wanted to work in a legal setting that would give him experience useful to his future plans in Kosovo.  Vienna was, in this context, a much better fit.

Dastid is also involved in building and strengthening the firm’s litigation practice group in its SEE/CEE offices. Moreover, he is engaged in business development by facilitating the firm’s expansion into the Kosovar market. According to Dastid, this position enables him to build bridges between foreign investors seeking to enter the Kosovo market and local businesses that need the investment and the know-how. While describing the economic potential of Kosovo, Dastid says that Kosovo can serve as a hub for an emerging joint market that includes Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro and Macedonia. In this respect he notes that “interest is growing as companies learn more about Kosovo and as we slowly combat the myths surrounding the country – the myths of instability and ineffective institutions.”

Prior to joining Wolf Theiss Dastid built his own law firm in Kosovo, Pallaska&Associates, which has since been on the forefront of the emerging field of intellectual property law.  “Before, international companies registered their trademarks in Belgrade. Following the declaration of Kosovo’s independence, most, if not all, of the ten to fifteen thousand trademarks have been transferred to Kosovo”. According to Dastid, due to the lack of intellectual property rights protections in Kosovo until 2008, the degree of trademark infringement is very high, which is why he now expects international companies to begin enforcing their intellectual property rights. In this regard Dastid (Pallaska&Associates) initiated the first, and the only, trademark infringement litigation case in the history of Kosovo’s justice system.

Besides intellectual property law, Dastid’s firm is also specialized in commercial law as well as regulatory law with a specific focus on telecommunications and energy.

Dastid’s ultimate goal is to return to the public sector and help usher Kosovo into the stream of Western democracies by strengthening its justice institutions.

Having heard from both of the consultants in our thought experiment, we can now step back and evaluate the points that they raised.  Here are some conclusions that, it seems to me, we are warranted to make:

1. Technical training is obviously necessary.  You need workers with a basic level of training in order to ensure the quality of your product and the efficiency with which it is produced.
2. Is technical training enough?  Though is it necessary, is it sufficient?  My initial impulse is to say no.  Regardless of the quality of your widget, you still need to research new widgets, sell existing widgets, evaluate opportunities and risks, etc.  These tasks require a different sort of expertise.
3. A company that focused exclusively on technical training would risk becoming obsolete as new products and approaches were developed by competitors.
4. We should not be too bothered by our inability to measure “management” performance accurately.  This inability is due to the complexity of these tasks that constitute “management,” and more specifically to the number of externalities that effect the management process (such as the actions of competitors).
5. The proportion of resources devoted to technical and management training will differ based upon the company / organization in question, but rarely should it be 100%/0% in either direction.

Now, how does this thought experiment apply to a country as a whole?  It should be obvious that the distinction between technical and management training applies – albeit loosely – to the division between primary/secondary education and higher education.  In truth, of course, primary and secondary education involves training for “management,” and higher education involves “technical training” – but by in large we can think of primary / secondary education as providing the basic skills needed to “produce” within an economy, and higher education as providing the analytical tools to answer questions about what to produce and how to produce it.

If the analogy holds, then it follows that a country that relies solely on improving primary and secondary education may not profit from doing so:  though they will have the human capital to be successful, they will lack the managers and institutions to make good decisions about how to employ that capital in a rapidly changing global environment.

So – we’ve seen, through our thought experiment, that a mixture of technical and management skills are needed by a business – and, via a loose analogy, by a nation.   It still remains to be seen whether graduate-level education is the best way to provide those management skills.  We’ll take up that topic tomorrow.

Other posts in this series:

• Introduction
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Part Five
• Part Six
• Part Seven
• Part Eight