Introduction to CS at NCSU from the aspect of 14Fall Indian Students

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14Fall印度学生写的NCSU CS介绍,提到了一些收到录取的同学所关心的话题(就业、实习、费用等),分享给大家。

Life @ NC State

It is the time of anxiety for a lot of MS aspirants as admits have have started rolling out from various universities. The time when you want to make the best choice considering every aspect. This post tries to help all those who have been asking the question: “Hey, I got an admit from NC State for Computer Science. Can you tell me a little about it?”.
First of all, congratulations! It is indeed quite an achievement to get an admit from a good university after this long process of GRE, TOEFL, SOPs, Recommendations, Applications to here. Now let me come straight to the point.
What’s great?

Rank: Within Top 50
I guess this you already know! ☺
Good curriculum, some great courses
In computer science, when you are admitted to the graduate program, you will have options to choose from MS with thesis, MCS (MS without thesis), MS-CN (MS in Computer Networks) and MCS in Data Science track. All you need to know is, there is a lot of flexibility and variety of specialties to choose from. You can select your specialization and take courses accordingly or just do general CS courses.
Good internship and job opportunities
The department is very focused on industry relations. Big companies like Google, MS, FB, Amazon, Apple come to campus interviews and/or career fair and/or hack-a-thons. The career fair NC State has is one of the best and ample opportunities come your way from almost 100+ CS companies throughout the year.
As this is the internship hunting period for Fall’14 students like me, more than 50% CS grads have already gotten internships for this summer. Last year almost 90% people got internships and almost everyone got jobs, as I have inquired.
Much affordable relatively.
I guess the USP of being at NC State is the value for money it provides. The fees are a little less than 14K per semester. Living expenses are somewhere around 650 USD for Indian students assuming apartment and grocery sharing. This comes out to be around 10.5–11 lakhs INR per semester. And great thing is, the 3 month summer internship pay is mostly enough for paying for the fees of a semester.
Masters is achievable in 3 semesters
If you are going for Masters without thesis (So, any of MCS or MS-CN), you need to complete 10 subjects which can be completed in 3 semesters. Almost 80% of indian masters student go this way. Needless to say, it also saves money.
Location
As I have told you already, Raleigh is a very calm and affordable suburb to live in. Additionally, the best advantage is the growing IT industry in vicinity. RTP (Research Triangle Park) is already becoming well known for a great hub for open source software and it also hosts some big multi-billion dollar companies like SAS, CISCO, Netapp, Red Hat, Citrix, IBM, etc. Because of the affordability of this place, many A-lister companies are opening their offices in RTP. These also convert to great opportunities for us.
Infrastructure
Last but not the least, the university has world class facilities. But there’s something which I don’t think any other universities have.. a library by the lake! I wouldn’t say much. Just check out these videos :evernote.com andevernote.com. How cool is that!
What’s not so great..

Not enough diversity
Out of around 270 CS graduate students who got admitted here in Fall 2014, 180+ were Indians. So unless you really prioritize it, you won’t get to collaborate with people from other nations .
Not enough start-ups
Unlike California, there are not many start-ups in this area and hence their presence on campus is considerably less. You need to connect with startups on your own mostly.
To sum it up
I am happy I am here. ☺
And I hope you will feel the same after joining the Wolfpack! All the best guys! I will advise you to connect with ‘Maitri’;—;the Indian Graduate Student Association here at NC State. They will also arrange for info-sessions and help related to accomodation along with the required counseling. Connect with them on FB here:evernote.com
Let me know if you need any more info and I will try my best to get it for you.
Thanks for reading.
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