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While pondering upon the possibilities and different result-combinations that my MS applications could have, I always wanted to have a ‘comforting’ line-of-thought (L-O-T), something which would save me from a world of worry and countless permutations that I always would draw using the sample space - {admit, reject, aid, no-aid, scholarship, TA, RA, Fellowship, On-Campus jobs, Cafeteria-jobs, N/w Administrator, Librarian, Cooking at home, eating-out, Buying a Car in 1st sem, Buying a Bicycle in first sem, Buying a bike in first-sem, Having roomies, having too-many roomies,…}. It struck me one day that all of this troublesome lineage could be traced back to a common cause - $$$. I then evangelized an L-O-T, which has since been comforting me to quite an extent. I recently made it public by sharing it with my fellows @ Edulix forums (http://edulix.com/forum) and I’m pasting the exact contents here as well.

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Well, I’ve been seeing a lot of views exchanged (in Edulix and apart) on the subject of $-depreciation, Grad-edu in US being worth it considering present circumstances, ROI issue, top companies assigning new employees back to the division in their native countries and the consequences as such.

I’m actually a fan of Light-weight Clear Vision^TM which can guide in these circumstances and help with keeping things in perspective.
Lemme explain this a bit here..

My strong focus and urge to do grad-study, beliefs in my abilities, dream to make a diff etc. not withstanding, even I’m at times intimidated or at least bothered by all the news regd dollar-dep., US eco, and scores of related items.. Adopting LCV helps me get my focus back.

Clear Vision in LCV means to have a clear-focus, have a dream; coz without that theres no point embarking on nethin.. And I shall safely assume that most of us have a ‘CV’ in why we want to do grad study.. It really helps if one decouples it from ‘money-making’ and getting rich..

I would actually pt out an example here. There’s a guy by the name C.Mohan (IBM fellow and chief scientist) You can check his profile here.. http://www.almaden.ibm.com/u/mohan/. I’ve attended couple of technical talks whr he was the main speaker or CG and actually, one can learn the art of decoupling (’getting-rich’ from ‘love of research’) from him. He keeps on re-iterating that when he finished his PhD from Austin in ‘81, silicon valley charm was on its peak.. He could’ve easily joined / launched a start-up.. stock-options.. got rich.. But, he din’t.. Remained in research and is now an IBM fellow, world renowned guy.. and ya, is rich neways..

Read this as well.. http://www.kalpanamohan.org/personal.shtml ..

C. Mohan, is a database guru who believes that money corrupts and that absolute stock options corrupt absolutely. So they live on in the valley of dreams, one, a weaver of words, the other, a spinner of papers. .. This is the extreme case of ‘clear vision’ in LCV.

And ‘lightweight’ is the back-door for those of us who won’t end up like C.Mohan. I mean its not like everyone gets into Austin, writes a thesis, joins Almaden etc. So, LCV says ‘be-lightweight’.. don’t burden yourself with too much debt. Now, with due respect to all concerned people / parties, I’m not going to get into discussions on ROI on an MS from Stanford or job prospects after passing out from costly && top schools, but all I’ve to say is, ‘in view of present situation / economic aspects, et al.’, keeping yourself ‘light-weight’ helps just in case the CV part backfires. So, going for an MS to a univ for which you dun have to take a ‘lot of loan’ would give you options like.. pass-out, do a job in US or come back to India and do a job, do a job for sometime and then start off with your thesis (funded-PhD), or do something totally diff coz you suddenly feel that your life isn’t meant for what you’ve been doin and you want to be, say a guitarist or a rockstar or want to become a dedicated Iscon member leaving all worldly attrcations ;-), for instance..

Again, defining ‘lot of loan’ is very subjective and so is drawing a lower-cut on the kind of school you want to go to, but I still feel every person who’s as mature as being an aspiring graduate shld know whr to draw the line. Being lightweight just gives us those extra options and freedom which is needed after all to realize the CV part.. and short-term, at least effectively decouples us in turn from economy and depreciation woes which I seriously think shouldn’t be a priority for us right now.

Well, I find this line of thought very helpful, so thought of sharing. I’m not trying to generalize / target on anything living or dead :-). This is a piece of information evangelizing an idea and is free to own (the TM not withstanding)

ATB and Cheers !

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Comparison graduate, gre, LCV, vision