Hello, A lot of juniors have contacted me for knowing things about how to apply for internships, about DAAD

scholarship and about living abroad during internship. I also remember myself running around for same kinds of doubts. So, I decided to write this file covering most of the common doubts and some points of benefits to the best of my memory. These are the things which I thought were right, but individual opinions may vary. Still there could be many things your seniors may be able to tell you in a better way. In case you have more doubts, you can mail me at agarwal.vatsal@gmail.com

Vatsal Agarwal B.Tech. Biotechnology (Batch of 2009)

Summer Internship in LMU Munich (through DAAD) 14 May 2008 to 30 July 2008

APPLYI G FOR I TER SHIP 1. One should start applying from September since later on many good colleges have
already taken interns and also scholarships such as DAAD have their deadline around November.

2. Get a cover letter and resume from some of your seniors and using them as template,
prepare your cover letter and resume.

a. Keep your cover letter concise.(10-15 lines) b. Write about international standings of IITs and difficulty of entrance exam. c. Mention your field of interest and projects or experience you have in that field
including what you have learnt in classes and practicals.

d. Write briefly about internship i.e. its compulsory part of your curriculum, it is
of 2-3 months and you would like to work in their lab under their guidance.

e. In resume, highlight the CGPA, projects done and technical skills. Rest keep it
short and try to fit in 1.5-2 pages.

3. Get the list of top-100 or 200 universities in the world. (You can get it from your
seniors or from internet.)

4. Choose a country to start from. (Its best you start with Germany since funding could
be arranged through DAAD whose deadline is in November. After that France is good option as they have many vacancies and also have some scholarship program whose deadline is in March.)

5. From your list of colleges, find colleges of chosen country and apply in order of their
international rank.

6. For each college, google their website and find the faculty of your stream or area of
interest. I suggest choose associate or assistant professors because these people are relatively new and can give you better projects and more attention.

7. Apply to maximum 2 professors of same department in same college simultaneously.

You can mail other professors of same department after a couple of days.

8. Do not mail on Saturdays and Sundays. People wont even open your mails. Mail at
the time when it is around 8am at the place you are sending the mail. This way you can ensure that your mail will the first thing professor will see.

9. Send one mail to one professor only. Dont put any names in Cc or Bcc. It is better to
send 10 personalized mails in a day (as mentioned below) than sending 200 mails. (This was told to me by a professor in Germany.) In each mail:

a. Rather than writing Dear Sir, write the name of the professor. b. Change your area of interest according to interests of professor. c. Mention one of his recent publication and tell that you have read it and liked it
and wanted to work on something similar (write this near the place where you mentioned your area of interest). Dont worry about publication right now, you can read it in case someone replies you positively.

d. Dont mention any thing about money or funding in first mail, ask them for it
only once they reply positively.

10. Repeat the process for each country and for each college.

AFTER GETTI G DAAD SCHOLARSHIP 1. Get your flight tickets. Tickets get very expensive from March so buy them at the
earliest. Although Etihad airways, Turkish airways etc are the cheapest, Lufthansa is best in my opinion. Those cheap flights offer no facilities and crowd inside is not good. Also, they take around 13 hours to reach with 3-4 hours stoppage whereas Lufthansa is direct flight and takes around 7 hours. If you think you can visit the place like Dubai where you flight stops, you will have to get visa for that place that itself is around Rs. 4,000. Also, make an enquiry about luggage loss chances in that flight. Do take into consideration your further journey by train etc.

2. Arrange accommodation. Ask your professor to arrange an accommodation for you.

If he is ready to pay for it, nothing better but otherwise try to get a room in 200-250 euro per month. Studentenwerk is a German organisation that provides hostel facilities to students of universities. Ask your professor to try there as well.

a. Room should be inside universities or at walking distance otherwise you will

be spending a lot on travelling from room to lab and back.

b. There should be kitchen facility in the hostel. You will need it. 3. Get Schengen Visa. Schengen visa allows you to go not only to Germany but also to
many nearby countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_area). Generally DAAD asks you to submit the documents for Visa and they carry out the formalities and give you the visa. Even if DAAD doesnt ask for documents you can yourself get your visa made. Details and documents required are given at http://www.vfsgermany.co.in/index1.aspx. You require a work permit (ZAV) for internship visa which is given by DAAD a bit later as it takes some time in getting ZAV made.

4. Finances. DAAD will provide you the money only once you reach Germany. You
will have to open a bank account in Germany and send the information of your account to the address/fax-number given by DAAD. Opening a bank account from India is of no use. Open a bank account after reaching Germany. It is very easy. DAAD suggests Dresner bank but one can open their account in any national bank such as Deutsche bank etc. Just go to the nearest bank and ask them the procedure. In Deutsche bank, they filled the form and did all formalities for me and opened a student account which was absolutely free. They even give ATM-cum-debit card and credit card free of cost. First instalment of 650 euro from DAAD will then arrive in your account in about 7 days. So you must carry sufficient amount from India to stay there for 10-15 days on your own. Generally 200-300 euro will be enough but in case you need to give security deposit or first month rent to your accommodation, take that into account. In any case 800-900 euro should be more than enough. To get the currency converted, you can contact any bank or private vendor. But

remember to check the rates of conversion. Generally, banks here give the worst possible rates. So, consult your parents if they know places to get good rates.

5. Phone. You may buy a cell phone for 30 euro that includes both hand-set and sim
with 5 euro balance. But call rates are very high upto 1 euro/min for India and 20 cents/min for even local calls. Instead buy a Skype account for 10 euro balance (costs around 11.5 euros) and head-set with microphone for computer. Call rates for Skype are around 7 cents/min for India and 2 cents/min for calls within Europe. Some people say calling cards are cheap but I personally felt they were much more expensive than Skype account.

6. Food and vessels. If you can eat pork or fish, food is no problem at all. Even people
who can eat egg and meat can work fine. For others, there are very few things you can normally get but if you could cook some vegetables and rice, it will be helpful. Take some food along with you for first 1-2 days such as Maggi, namkeen, laddu etc (Dont keep any food stuff, spices etc in hand bag while boarding flight, everything will be removed when it is checked. Keep these things in baggage that will be kept in the luggage chamber). You can find mess or cafeteria in the university or nearby. It is called Menza. You can get complete lunch over there in 2-3 euro. But most things are not of our taste, so see if you can do with salads, fruits etc available in menza. Otherwise you should prepare lunch in morning and carry it to lab. Egg and fish are counted in vegetarian food in Europe, so it is better to crosscheck every time. Food they eat is tasteless. So better take 100-200g each of pepper, chilli etc with you. They are really expensive there. Salt and sugar will be cheaply available there. Most cities have Indian stores. You can ask any Indian you meet there. You will get familiar things there but might be little expensive. Few vegetarian things, one could get there are:

a. Best of all is bread. There are tens of varieties of bread in Germany. b. Milk and cornflakes. Easily available everywhere. c. Several fruits and vegetables are available easily. d. Frozen pack of mixed vegetable prepared in cheese or butter. e. Pasta. Learn to make pasta. It is best as a change and very easy to make. f. Veg. Pizza. You can find veg. Pizza in a few stores. You may even find Pizza
Hut at some places where you can get Margareta Pizza.

g. Fruit juices. Nice varieties of juices available. h. Potato fries. They can be good as supplement. Obviously, you cannot fill your
stomach with them.

You can browse several general stores to find some more new vegetarian food stuff. For cooking in Europe, flat heating plates are used instead of flames as in India. So, take vessels with flat bottoms for cooking. Other than spoons and plate, a frying pan was enough for me. You may take small cooker with flat bottom if you think it will be very useful but keep in mind that you will have limited space while packing your luggage.

7. Language. At your work place, language will be mostly English. Most of youth
especially students know decent English but older people such as staff at hostels, general stores and other people generally know little or no English. Even accent is a problem. So you may not be able to converse even with people knowing English. Best way is to learn few words in their language and speak only keywords when needed. For rest of purposes like understanding notices, you can rely on Google translator (http://www.google.co.in/language_tools?hl=en). For example, you want to enquire or inform your hostel warden about something. Write it in English in Google translator, translate it in their language and write it on slip as it is (remember each . and , matters) and give it to him.

8. Travelling places. This is the best opportunity to visit places in Europe. Europe is a
beautiful place and i guess you wont get better time in future to explore places freely. Places one must go are Rome, Paris, Berlin and Switzerland.

a. You must keep your passport with you all the time whether you are in your
city or visiting other places. You can be checked arbitrarily anytime anywhere. Your passport is compulsorily checked when you travel by train or cross borders.

b. Travel in Europe in the most expensive thing. Hence, for anyone who wants to
see Europe, Eurail pass is cheapest and best option. Eurail pass allows you to sit in any train in Europe from any place to any place under the condition that the train must be travelling within the countries for which you have the Eurail pass. But you will need to make reservations for trains if it is compulsory. One journey reservation is mostly 4 euro. You can check the details of Eurail pass at http://www.eurail.com/. To understand its worth lets say you travel from Munich to Paris and back, you will be spending minimum 270 euro whereas with 350 euro of Eurail global pass you can make visit to minimum 5 places. Another important point is that you should buy Eurail pass before leaving India. Eurail pass costs nearly 50 euro extra in Europe.

c. Plan your journey well. Explore details about place on the internet like travel
cards, bus/train day-passes, tourist spots, highlights, eating places, cheap accommodation etc. (wikitravel.org is good option to know specific details). Prepare an exact schedule of travel before leaving your hostel. You can find

the train numbers and timings on the website http://www.bahn.de/. Trains in Europe do not get late, so you can plan precisely.

d. People in Europe mostly are unable to direct you to your destination. If you
ask someone for some place, he will most likely say that he doesnt know. So always keep a printout of map of place you are visiting with clear street names or else you will be lost. (This is really serious.)

e. Another big problem is that there are no water points in Europe(except at

some places in Italy). You wont get water at railway station, bus stops or tourist spots. They dont even serve water in restaurants! You can always buy mineral water in case of emergency but it costs 2-3 euro normally! So always keep a bottle of water whenever you start your journey and fill up the bottle at any lucky point.

9. International Student Identity Card (ISIC) and International Youth Travel

Card(IYTC).(http://www.isicweb.net/identity.htm) Get these two cards made(http://65.182.191.204/isicweb/contact.asp). They cost Rs. 250 each. ISIC will get you discount at many museums, tourist places, city visiting cards etc. IYTC will make you eligible to stay in any youth hostel in Europe. Although availability in youth hostel is not sure until you book and also you will have to pay for it (generally about 8-12 euro per night with mostly free breakfast). Accommodation while visiting places is a big trouble otherwise.

10.Socket Convertor. Electric socket in Europe is different than Indian sockets. So buy
a convertor to make your laptop and camera chargers work. You can find them in Delhi palika bazaar etc. They will be hard to find and expensive in Europe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets#Type_C

11.Expenses. Here are approximate figures to give idea of expenditure if you spend
carefully. If spent arbitrarily, expenses may even double.

a. Flight: 550-600 euro b. Accomodation: 200-250 euro/month c. Eurail Pass: 300-350 euro d. Travelling and visiting places: 200-300 euro (for 10-12 visiting days) e. Food: 4-5 euro/day
i. Bread(400g): 0.72 euro

ii. Milk(1L): 0.63 euro iii. Corn flakes(1kg): 3 euro

iv. Pizza: 1.5-7.5 euro v. Pasta: 1.5 euro vi. Juices: 0.80-0.90 euro vii. Frozen Potato Fries: 0.80-0.90 euro viii. Onions(1kg): 2 euro
Prices vary highly from city to city and even from store to store. Even same thing might be having quite different prices at stores side by side. So its best that you visit several nearby stores and select the cheapest store to buy stuff.