UT Austin

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-	(Longhorns! Add info here! Does anyone know how many Pakistanis are studying at UT, or any other interesting stats?)	+	<br><br>
-	UT computer science graduate program was ranked 7 by US News in 2005/6 but is rumored to have slipped to 9 or 10. Add other rankings here.	+	This wiki has moved to <font style="font-size:150%">'''http://www.foreignliving.info'''</font>. Please update your bookmarks.
-	==Finding TAships/RAships==	+	You can locate the current page under the same categories on the new site. In case of problems, email help[[image:at_black.png]]foreignliving.info.
-	There is a lot of funding in UT Austin especially in the CS and ECE department. If you are a NOT a PhD student than the chances are thin that you will end up getting funding in the first semester. By the end of two semesters, most of the graduate students are able to get some kind of funding. Some students who do not have enough financial resources take the risk of collecting money for the first semester somehow and come here. Then they search for funding and in 99% of the cases do find it.
-	Not that for a graduate student getting a 20 hour TA-ship or RA-ship means that after paying fees you end up having 1000~1500 dollars for living that are more than enough. In fact you can save 400~600 dollars per month with this much money.	+	<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>
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-	After two or three semesters, with an acceptable GPA, it is very easy to get an internship and then a Co-op. Then your financial worries are over because with a co-op you can usually pay fees and have enough money for living.	+
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-	Here are some useful tips.	+
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-	1.) Go to the faculty page of relevant department (example for ECE http://www.ece.utexas.edu/faculty/directory/). Find the professors there that match with your fields of interests even remotely.	+
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-	2.) Go to the respective websites of these professors and read thoroughly about their projects and current/active research.	+
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-	3.) Take the research papers, mark them and take your resume (after polishing it a little) and go personally to the professors and talk about their research and show your willingness to help in the research.	+
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-	4.) Keep bugging the professors. Most of them will get offended, but mostly several professors have many prospective students seeking a single job opening. So your desperation and dedication in getting a job is a big influence. Professors sometimes chose people who look most desperate for funding and are most motivated to get it.	+
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-	5.) Aside from TA-ship and RA-ship there are other jobs as well most of which do get you "in state" (can someone explain this). These kinds of jobs include monitoring Labs, taking care of lab/classroom equipment etc. For the ECE department, these kinds of jobs are usually dispensed by "Fred Kirby". So its vital that you bug him too when trying to get financial aid.	+
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-	6.) There is funding available in other departments too. The trick is to be there at the right time at the right place. To maximize your chances, make frequent tours to the other departments and hunt for jobs.	+
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-	7.) Another trick is to get good grades (preferably 4.0) in the first semester and at the same time being at really good terms with the professors with whom you are taking the courses. Also you need to show really strong interests in research. If the courses that you take have a project, try to do exactly what the professors suggest. So at the end of the semester you can go and ask the professors for financial aid. This way you usually do get a grader-ship. If the professor does not have have a job he can still ask other professors to consider you. Note that recommendations are a very strong factor. The more you befriend a professor (with your good work and willingness to follow) the stronger is his recommendation and hence there is a better chance of getting a job.	+
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-	===Links===	+
-	* International Newsletter: Tuition Benefit (Effect Spring 2007): http://www.utexas.edu/international/cs/nwltr/finaid_taxes_news.htm	+
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-	==Getting Internships==	+
-	(mention career center links)	+
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-	==FAQ from Sudipta Chatterjee's Blog ([http://sudiptachatterjee.blogspot.com/2006/11/faq-about-applying-to-ut-austin.html weblink])==	+
-	I keep receiving queries from people (especially CS/ ECE) and there are common queries regarding UT Austin. I am not an expert here, but I'll try to put together answers to the most frequent questions. This I'll also copy-paste in my blog and in the testimonial for the Unisearch feature, so that even if this thread gets drowned, someone can locate it.	+
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-	0. Should I apply?	+
-	Yes, this is a ground rule question-answer that you must read before the rest of the stuff. It is generally difficult to say if you'll be admitted, and in all cases this is an Ambitious bet for anyone. However, just a 1480 on the GRE or 300 on the TOEFL will not do: you need to show something extra, something stellar that makes you stand out among the pool of applicants to reasonably expect a call from this place. The above numbers are just indicators, and not absolute values. See the AGRE question below for some more decision making help about your applciation.	+
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-	1. Funding	+
-	It is quite good, but if you are an MS applicant, chances are thin that you'll land anything right in the first semester. In my batch, about 8-10 out of the 25 people who joined the CS department from India this fall have managed to get some sort of funding as RA or TA or something, mostly in other departments. After about two semesters, almost everyone gets funded (although you need to keep hunting for it) and the CS department of course pays the highest to its RAs as compared to the others.	+
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-	2. Jobs	+
-	You name the company, and they are ready to hire you! Microsoft, Google, Accenture, Ernst and Young, Amazon, Verizon, Dell, AMD .... and the list goes on and on and on. Of course you need to maintain GPA, prepare for interviews and all, also maybe get a few publications... but you can usually do that. If you have been admitted to UT, you are smart and therefore you'll manage. Ohh... lest I forget to mention: they take care of the H1B part of it as well ;)	+
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-	3. Internships	+
-	Nobody remains without an internship during the summer if they have thrown their resume around. Yes places like google are in high demand because of the $ and the quality of work: but you can pretty much land an internship even in Bloomberg and make enough money over 3 months to cover your tuition and expenses for the coming semestes.	+
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-	4. Expenses	+
-	Texas is not so expensive, and if you manage to hook up with people the rent for a 2 bedroom 2 bathroom place (commonly called a 2-2) comes to about $900 per month that you share. Besides that, your expenses for food and other stuff can be about $100-200 per head per month depending on how much you are willing to accept the american food habits.	+
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-	5. Life outside studies	+
-	Austin isn't a place like Los Angeles or New York, but you can have a good time here easily. Those who've looked at the Halloween pictures will know what I am talking about. But I have a little confession to make: that is just one day of the year, doesn't happen daily :) Anyway, Austinites refer to the city as the Music Capital of the World, and you can pretty much catch live music anytime during the night hours downtown. The weather here is quite nice, especially people from Mumbai will find it quite close to home-like conditions.	+
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-	6. The AGRE	+
-	The Holy Grail of all questions: do I need to take the AGRE if I am applying to the CS department? It will definitely better your chances and I'll recommend that you do that. But if you have a stellar profile (read 2-3 international publications, kickass recos and ongoing ideas about future research) you don't need to take the AGRE. Otherwise, yes, you do!	+
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-	7. On Campus Jobs	+
-	Although these definitely do not have as much of an RoI as an RA/TA, if you are one of those people who think that "half a loaf of bread is better than no bread", then there are plenty of jobs for you. Restaurants, small fry shops etc are always looking for students and they pay about 8-10$ per hour. It may get strenuous, though, especially since unlike an RA ship you will have to put in the full 20 hours per week working continiously at one place if you need to get the dough.	+
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-	8. Hot research areas	+
-	This is kind of tricky, and I can only partly answer as far as the CS department goes. I dunno about EcE research much. The networking group is awesome here, with world-reknowned authorities of wireless etc working. The core systems and compilers people are also quite active, especially with the recent Boyes-Moore Theorem prover for the AMD CPU making headlines all over. UT also leads the pack in Distributed Computing. In AI, robotics is pretty hot, and the allied fields such as neural networks and machine learning etc also have very active groups. NLP research is building up and UT will be on that map as well within a few years hopefully.	+
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-	9. Mechanical Engineering department	+
-	I just talked to a grad student in Mech and this is what he has to say about the UT Austin mechanical department, which is ranked about 11-12 he told me. Basically, if you are in Mech, the chances that you'll land an RA or TA-ship in any other department are very thin: you'll need to hunt within your department itself. Therefore, in most cases the chances of getting aid in the first sem itself are very thin, and the Fall 2006 batch was an exception in that everyone who came to Mech got some form of TA ship within the department itself. Otherwise, people typically get funded after about a year. Jobs are generally tough to come by if you haven't had any internships, and that roughly translates into the fact that if you land an internship somewhere, you have great chances of getting placed in that company finally. Having said that, my friend also mentioned that only in the rarest of rare cases are people unable to find internships.	+
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-	Any more general questions you can ask: I'll include in the list if I know answers.	+
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-	==Salary and Tax related paperwork==	+
-	(this section needs more info)	+
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-	A US-Pakistani tax agreement waives taxes on the first $5000 or earnings. The appropriate from can be obtained from the Payroll Office (in the main tower building) and must be attached to the [[Form 8232]] at the time of submitting tax documents. For non-resident aliens, many of the tax-forms need to be fined each year, so it is advisable to make a copy once you have filled out the forms in order to facilitate filling them the next year.	+
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-	If it takes time for your social security card to arrive, you can ask the university to assign you a temporary social security number in the meantime. (where to go and who to ask? how does it work?)	+
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-	==Bevo Bucks==	+
-	"Bevo bucks" refers to a method of payment by which students can add funds to their UT id card and use them to make payments at [http://www.utexas.edu/student/bevobucks/index.php?site=5&scode=0&id=719&menu=156 participating merchants]. Some shops and cafeterias, such as the Jester Dining Hall, even offer discount of up to 20% if you pay with bevo bucks. Funds can be added online using [http://utdirect.utexas.edu utdirect].	+
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-	* List of participating merchants: http://www.utexas.edu/student/bevobucks/index.php?site=5&scode=0&id=719&menu=156	+
-	* Join bevo bucks: https://utdirect.utexas.edu/bevobucks/menu.WBX (requires a valid UT eid).	+
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-	==Student Resources==	+
-	* UT Health Center (add details)	+
-	* Laptop check out service (from PCL and FAC libraries)	+
-	* UT Legal Department, helps students with legal disputes such as car insurance, landlord/tenant disputes.	+
-	* [http://www.utexas.edu/maps/main/buildings/index.html Campus Buildings and Maps]	+
-	* [http://z.cs.utexas.edu/wiki/gracs.wiki UT Computer Science Wiki]	+
-	* [http://www.lib.utexas.edu UT library] - huge collection of online resources	+

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Current revision as of 22:39, 16 May 2007

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You can locate the current page under the same categories on the new site. In case of problems, email helpforeignliving.info.