Posted: April 24, 2017, 9:45am
I’m so pumped that some of you new incoming students have been reaching out to me with queries that even I had when I got admitted to USC. To make things a little easier, I went through the tons of emails and messages that I sent to my seniors a few months back asking all these questions and I compiled a list of things that you probably want to know. A few things might be repetitive but then again a lot of them have many doubts when it comes to it. So without further delay …
- Subjects offered: A lot of them have doubts about the subjects that are offered in their respective departments or schools. Don’t worry because USC understands how confusing it can. You can find all the subjects offered at USC here at this link: http://classes.usc.edu.
- Finding roommates: I met my roommates through common friends. We also had a chance of meeting in one of the information sessions conducted by USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Apart from that, we also made a group of all the Viterbi admits on Facebook and WhatsApp and we planned a get-together. In my opinion, this is a great way of finding your roommates.
- On-campus activities: I’ve always advocated for being involved on campus a lot. I would recommend going through LinkedIn profiles of seniors or Alumni to see what kind of organizations they were involved with. You can check out the social media pages of these organizations to get an insight into the kind of on-campus life you would experience when associated with them. Here is a list of the Student organizations that USC has on the website: https://campusactivities.usc.edu/files/2015/05/RSOs-2016-17.pdf.
- VISA related queries: The websites that I often referred to for VISA Application related queries was: http://www.immihelp.com/visas/studentvisa/. This site has an in detail explanation of the entire procedure. If you still have any doubts, I would recommend reaching out to someone who has gone through this procedure before. But also be mindful that each case is unique and there might not be a definite answer to your query.
- Housing options: You should start house hunting while you’re VISA process is going on. The best resources to get started with would be Facebook and the websites of the housing management. Join the Facebook pages of the USC Admits of previous fall and spring admits. They are great resources because a lot of them will put up posts of vacancies on these pages before moving out. You can look for following keywords/pages on Facebook: free and for sale USC, USC Housing/Sublease etc
- Tuition and other expenses: The information about Tuition and other details can be found here: https://gapp.usc.edu/graduate-programs/graduate-funding/masters/tuition. You can even find a sample document of estimated costs for different programs depending on the number of minimum credits required.
- Immunization and other requirements: All the information about the immunization and other requirements will be provided to you (or it already is in which case this point might not so helpful) via email. Keep a lookout for any updates on the requirements (for your batch).
- This is not a question that new admits would have but because I’m slightly OCD and I want to have 10 points on this posts, I’ll add this one too. If I were you, I would definitely add a couple of formal wears to my packing list because here at USC we do have a lot of formal events.
- I would recommend that you buy a new phone once you come here because often times there are some compatibility issues even though your phone manufacturer says that it is compatibles with the frequencies being used here.
Published on July 25th, 2017
Last updated on January 19th, 2021