Yelläks /ˈyæl•eks/

On the 12^th of February I will go to Bangalore to do my Master Thesis at the IISc (Indian Institute of Science). The application was just because of a friend, who suggested me to try. After gathering some information about the institute I applied and finally got admission. I did not know that it is one of the top institutes of India and after figuring that out, I had some doubt, if I will be intelligent enough for them. But without trying it out, I might never know.

This was my preparation plan and maybe it will give you an outline of what to do, if you want to go abroad.

1. November 2006:
   Convince your university: I am one of the first, who is actually going abroad to do a Master Thesis in a different country. It took a lot of persuasiveness so that the professors let me go. It is a complete new field to my university and they had a lot of doubts. They linked their permission to several conditions:
   • The supervising person of the guest institute must at least be a professor with some academic background. This was actually not, what I wanted. Due to my plans to stay and work in India for several years, I wanted to use the project for the Master Thesis to test, if I can handle the Indian working conditions.
   • The supervisor has to write a report about how I performed. The final grade will partly base on his judgement.
   • several other minor conditions

   So be prepared that you have to fulfill conditions as well.

2. Then an institute or a company had to be found, which accepts me. I do not have so many preferences regarding the topic of the thesis as long as it keeps me busy and is interesting. So I tried the IITM, Anna University in Chennai and AMI and HCL.
3. After I found the IISc I started to discuss the suggested topic with the professor from my university in Germany and I got the permission to go ahead.
4. December 2006:
   The really painful part was applying for a scholarship. I never did that before and I needed to fill out more papers than for the visa application. Due to the short notice (I started to plan this stay in November) there were not many scholarships left with deadlines long time back. I had to write several detailed reports about my plannings, proceedings and also the project. It took around one month to gather all needed information. The deadline was on the 2^nd of January and I sent the papers on the 30^th of December. Unfortunately the post service had some problems and instead of sending the papers to the institution, it sent them home to the place where I live. Somehow the addresses have been mixed up. The deadline was already over, but I called the scholarship institution and it was no problem to send the application again. So I packed everything in a new envelope and went to the post office again.
5. January 2007:
   After all that I applied for the Indian visa. The validity has to be at least 6 months starting from February. But the first valid day of the visa was the day on which it was issued (which was the 8^th). So I had to go to the Indian embassy in Frankfurt and finally I got a visa for one year.
6. The final step is to book a flight. Check for a flight, which does not need so much time. The travelling time between India and Germany is usually 1 day. But there are cheap “special offers”, which took 3 or more days.

That is it basically. It is not very hard, but a lot of thinks have to be organised. Some institutions will advise you to start your plannings a year before. But if you do not want to apply for a scholarship, it takes even less preparation time. In my plannings there was not involved an Office of International Affairs and everything has been done by myself. Even if you have some throwbacks, do not hesitate and try again.