What's up with Hatim?

This year I had applied to admission to various programs in Sweden and have been waiting anxiously for their result. Today I was delighted to find out that I had been admitted to Chalmers University of Technology for MS in Software Engineering. This year the admission process of MS in Sweden had beeen centerlized by the swedish authorities by the use of webbased application system which distributted scanned copies of admission results to all the universities. I applied to 8 different programs, following is a list of those programs.

This year's admission process was a tense and competetive one. It started in Dec of 2007 with the announcement of programs and online registration for web based application at studera.nu. I chose the programs based on my interests, chances of getting a scholarship and reputation of the University (I also made sure that I ended up in Stockholm or Gothenberg). I had applied online in time, but my documents almost missed the deadline (they reached on Feb 15th). I sent my documents a bit late (on Feb 10th) via FedEx and i was promised by the FedEx guy that it will be on its destination in 72 hours. My documents reached Stockholm rather quickly but they were supposed to go to a very unknown town in middle of nowhere (Stromsund where VHS ,the company which manages studera process, is situated). Needless to say that I spent some tense days in Feburary thinking that I had missed the deadline and blown my chances of admission this year. And if my docs had not made it in time that might have been the case.

Then it was a long wait till Mid of march till it was confirmed that all my documents had been recieved and had been sent to the Universities for review. When the time line of April 17th approached Studera suddenly decided to delay the process till 29th April. They again delayed the process till May 8th. Every one I know was extremely frusturated with this delay. I found some comfort in a facebook discussion forum (which was previously a blog entry for a romanian guy. On small scandal on this forum was that  some how an Excel sheet of the admission record for Chalmers got leaked on the internet. It really didnt contain much but it was a leak, it was removed quickly from the board. I came to know that people from all over the world had applied to universities and it feels like that this international representation would be strong in the programs them selves as well, which is a good thing.

I was suspecting that my result would be out by May 8th Sweden time but I was deligted to check my studera status as accpted today. I am suppose to start with classes on Sep 1st this year. Hopefully securing a visa will not be a problem as I have already started work on that issue. This is second good news for me this year after my selection in summer of code for the OpenNMS project. I am not very hopeful for SI scholarship for which I am eligible due to my current program, but you never know till its finalized. Also I wont be applying to any more Grad Schools this year as I had initially planned.

I have to register for IELTS in order to apply for admission in a Masters Programme in Europe. I am targetting Sweden, Finland, Norway and Germany. I may also look into Netherlands and Switzeland but so far Sweden is my top choice. Belgium is also another choice but I haven't really explored it so far. I submitted the required fee (around 146$) to the Standard Chartered Bank F-7 Markaz (Jinnah Super) branch. I got the form but screwed it up while filling. Tomorrow I am hoping to fill up a new form and submit it to the British Council for a December 1st test date. I am still not sure how It will work out for submitting the test results to Sweden (I suspect that IELTS reults are not sent to Institute, like TOEFL, but they are confirmed by the Institutes them selves)

 Update : I have gotten the date of 15th Dec 2007 for my IELTS test. I could have gotten Dec 1st, but I hand submitted my documents a bit late.