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What Students Say
Likes
- Great campus life
- Professors and syllabus focuses on hand on exercises
- Some professors are really helpful and just the best teachers.
Dislikes
- Administrative support is zero. All are unprofessional and not helpful at all. Being 1st semester student I had taken an extra course therefore emailed my course guidance professor and he advised to drop a course after the drop due date had passed. Later I received a bill of $6000 and after reaching out almost everyday for 3 months the admins would not help me at all and was just putting blame on each other, ignored my emails and tried to avoid me as much as possible so that I would have to pay the fee eventually. There is no support from university in such cases as they only want to fill their pockets and try to cheat students.
- Unclear course guidance : this problem was consistent throughout the course. Would suggest to not reach out to admin and try to talk to students as much as possible for these type of issues.
- A lot of workload which is so stressful. This is not much of an issue as you have 3 to 4 subjects and obviously every subject will have quizes and assignments. Make sure to take one hard and rest easy subjects in a semester. I did a mistake and took core difficult subjects all at once.
Course Curriculum
- It was a mix of both theory and practical. Honestly, it depends on the subject too but yeah, it was mostly practical.
- Positive is that there was a lot of practical knowledge given to us; negative was that there was little to no time to work on assignments/projects.
Admission Experience
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I had applied to:
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Webster University: I got accepted but didn’t like the course syllabus as much compared to the University of Illinois Springfield’s.
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DePaul: The application was shortlisted. They wanted a mail from my work manager but I did not send it as I had already been accepted in Springfield and also the syllabus of Springfield was much better.
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Springfield: got accepted and thus joined this university as their course curriculum was the best amongst the others.
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I chose the University of Illinois Springfield, as the courses and subjects I was interested in were all available in their syllabus of data analytics. Also, I saw in detail the profiles of some of the professors who teach core subjects and they were really impressive.
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I applied for fall. Purely because spring (January) is extremely cold and I was not prepared for that much cold.
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Many students think this way so there are fewer students joining in spring. If someone has poor grades, they can think of coming in spring as there are fewer applicants.
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The admission process didn’t take long. I reached out to an agency that did most of the work for me
Class Schedule
- Classes depend on the course; if I took 3 classes per semester, it will depend on the university when those classes would be scheduled. I personally had classes on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Timing was 10, 12 and 2:30pm
- Students can be anywhere between 3 to 30 depending on how many people registered for that class. In one class I had 5 students and in another class there were 11 students. I have also attended a class with 25 students. So it depends.
- Many Indians are there, mostly from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. There were only 5-10 students, including me, who were North Indians
Faculty
- Definitely the course content and teaching approach are sufficient to prepare you for securing a job in your field. For example, Elham is one of the professors of ML who is extremely intelligent and teaches very well as per the job market. But very few students take her class, as she is a bit strict and students can’t cheat in her class. Nevertheless, she was my favourite and I learnt the most with her.
Campus Life
- Library, music, labs, campus police, medical, playgrounds
- There are many communities so they celebrate all festivals together; there are many cultural events
- There are sports amongst students like volleyball, football, and all of that. I am not interested so I don’t know much
- There are many parks and sports equipment facilities
- There are music faculties too if you are interested in learning something to play.
Part Time Jobs
- Students have campus jobs and also during summer they can apply to companies via campus
- Students can check with professors, as all of them are PhDs and usually want help with research and all
Placement
- Batchmates have friends in companies where they get referred to secure a job or they reach out to consultants for it. Eventually they get a job through.
- I am sure I will too get a job like this by referral because that’s what happens in the USA. Job portals are there but you will have to apply in 1000 companies to get 5 calls
Accommodation
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I stay with my fiancé
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I would suggest talking to seniors and getting into one of the WhatsApp groups, which will help you a lot in accommodation.
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Most Indian students stay not more than 20 min away from campus. Some Indian students I have seen staying in campus housing as well. To each their own.
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Most of my friends struggle with the deposit here as they almost never gets it back from the landlord so this leasing can be one of the challenges
Exams
- I had taken the IELTS and scored 8; I believe the cutoff was 7 and above. Then I wrote a statement of purpose and gathered letters of recommendation. We had to get 3 letters from previous professors and managers. I also submitted all my prior education marksheets and any certificates I had. These were the basic and initial few things I submitted
Fees
- $35000 total cost of everything; this includes tuition fees and insurance.
- Fee is charged semester-wise
- But I believe that the students pay rent starting from $200 to $500 based on preferences and amenities. They also pay some deposit of $500.There are many buses which go to college in hourly basis
Scholarship
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I don’t have any clue about this, as my visa was accepted last minute and I did not have the opportunity to look into scholarships.
I heard that few students got $2000 off of their tuition fee but that’s about it. - If you are exceptionally intelligent and ask for a scholarship or ask to match it with the other college that is offering you a higher scholarship, they might give you one.
