Use VoIP to save money during the admission process [Tutorial]

I recall that when I was applying for my PhD program, I literally spent hundreds of dollars on telephone calls alone. If you are one of my kinds (control freak), you would want to call up every possible person to ensure that everything is under control. Depending on which program you are applying (MS, MBA or PhD), you may have to call up different people for different reasons.

Although emails are a great means of communication, you do not want the delay in the email response (especially during the busy admissions period) to affect your chances of getting in your dream school. You may have to make costly international calls for various reasons, some of them are listed below:

• Speaking to your friends in the school to get to know more about the school and the little things that may help you in your application process.
• Speaking to the faculty to talk about research interests, admission queries, funding issues, etc.
• Speak to the department to ensure that your application is in order.
• Speak to the testing agencies, e.g. ETS, GMAC, etc. for additional score reports.
• Speaking to your logistic provider to track your application packet.

Depending on the number of schools you apply, this may be a huge expense and money is always a scarce resource :-)

This post will tell you about the basic things you can do to save on the telecom costs during your application process (I would be glad to assist any student seeking my advice during the application process, but that is not the topic of this post). If you are already aware of VoIP then this might be a repetition, but for lots of people VoIP is still a geeky thing so it is still worth the repetition.

1. I had detailed out 6 methods to access VoIP, but for the time being I am assuming that you do not have any VoIP hardware like most and hence you would typically use software applications like instant messangers or softphones or your regular phones. If you have any VoIP equipment, you already know how to save some money.
   
2. You should select the access method depending on whom you are calling. If the call is being made to a faculty or the testing agency, you do not want any interruption or delays due to bandwidth issues. So you would be better off making call through VoIP providers, which allow you to make calls using regular phones. Some good providers that allow such service are Jajah, Webcalldirect, Jaxtr, etc. These providers allow you to make low cost international calls using your regular phones, without worrying too much about the bandwidth.
3. If the call is less critical, e.g. your friend or your courier company, then you can use a software based access method like instant messengers or softphones. Details on how to use these methods are available here.
   
4. International calls do not always have to be expensive. In fact, very often you will be able to call many international numbers for free. Lot of organizations are adopting VoIP, which means you can reach them for free if you know their VoIP (SIP) address (remember, VoIP to VoIP is typically free).
5. This service is called ENUM (TElephone NUmber Mapping), which maps the regular PSTN number to the corresponding VoIP address. Fortunately, you do not have to do this manually everytime. Voxalot does this for you for free. You can read the hyperlinked post to find out more about how to do that. But for example, you had to call ETS for additional score reports on +18884737267. If you are using Voxalot, it will translate this number to the corresponding VoIP address, which is sip:18884737267@tf.voipmich.com, which can be reached for free.
   
6. It is usually a god idea to check the ENUM directory before making calls, unless you are routing your calls through a service which does it for you.
7. Lastly, while this offer lasts you could actually make unlimited free calls to any country using the steps detailed here.

I hope that you are able to save some money through these tips and put your money to a much better use. All the very best with your application process and feel free to drop a line if you need any assistance during the process. I have gone through the process myself and I know it can be overwhelming at times.

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