What Students Say
Likes
- Costs less than average, including living cost
- Very good research opportunities in the University
- Lot of Indian crowd in masters program Very good Indian association which is helpful during house search. Well segregated groups to buy / sell used items for lesser price from other students, groups to search houses, groups to book rides etc.
Dislikes
- Remote area
- Small campus and hence competitive on-campus jobs
- Not many technical clubs (that I know of) for masters students to collaborate
Course Curriculum
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The difficulty level of the course was medium and a mix of theoretical and project. More on the theory side but depends on the course chosen.
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Positive aspects - almost every course has a hands on project to do
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Negative aspect - some courses are repetitive and gets boring as we learn the same thing again, course options are also limited
Admission Experience
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University of Washington Seattle - received a rejection
University of Maryland Baltimore County - received an admit
New Jersey Institute of Technology - received an admit
Stevens institute of technology - received an admit along with 6000$ of scholarship.
Northeastern University (Boston) - admit
Illinois institute of Technology Chicago - received an admit -
I chose this university because it is a public university and has lot of research opportunities. Also this was the cheapest among all my admits
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Admission process was straight forward. Just an SOP and 2 LOR's were required along with basic documents like transcript etc. nothing major requirement, just the basic, no WES eval.
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There were no minimum score criteria, and my course did not require GRE, it was only based off of TOEFL and resume, sop, LOR
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Applied to the intake of Fall 2022 and that was because more scholarship opportunities would be available due to more number of intakes.
Admission process for UMBC took about four months. I applied to UMBC in the first week of August and I got the admit in the first week of december. After that the deadline to finalize was around march or may (not exactly sure). After confirming my admit I was good to go with the courses.
Class Schedule
- In a day 3 classes are scheduled, timings can be anything from morning 10am to night 7pm for about 2.5 hours of class
- Average no. of students are around 50,except 1 or 2, rest all are Indians in the course
Faculty
- The faculty to student ratio is 20, but it is dependent on subject. Some subjects have too many students and just 1 professor due to which students may not have personalized experience with the professors. But in other cases the faculty are more than available and eager to work with students and help in resolving all their queries.
- Each professor have their own teaching methodology. Mostly teaching is done through PPTs and hands on projects as our assignments.
Some faculties do help the student in getting assistantship if the student is hard working and puts a lot of effort in completing assignments, being regular to class and being active in the class by asking / answering questions. - I admire Faizal Quader the most, he is so friendly and his way of teaching is very practical. He helps students in their project and also supports publishing a paper if there is something potential in it.
Campus Life
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My college has one campus
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Gym is available, Pantry, table tennis, swimming pool indoor and outdoor, Tennis lawn, badminton court, Pool table, foosball, starbucks, chick fill a, dunkin donuts, big library with many rooms to study in. Health center for vaccines and blood tests
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Major events - Home coming (contains fun carnivals, 5k runs etc), Holi party and Diwali party organized by indian student organization
Part Time Jobs
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About 20% of the people secure assistantships
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Pay range for it is between 20$ - 30$ per hour
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Other on campus jobs - dining, event center, transit (bus), library, desk assistant - 15$ per hour
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Maximum hours per week for F1 student 20$
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Securing part time job is challenging and requires relentless efforts and also luck
Competition is high but openings are less. -
Most indians prefer working at assistantships, dest assistant, and event center typically earning for the part time jobs is minimum of 15$ an hour. Securing part time job is challenging and requires relentless efforts and also luck Competition is high but openings are less.
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Most of the jobs are secured only after going in person to meet the manager. If the manager agrees to hire or has an opening he will immediately take the application right there and you will be hired then and there. For assistantships, regular emailing of professors and keeping close contact with them will help in securing the job
Placement
- Full time job completely depends on us. All job applications are online so it is not much dependent on the university of the location if we are willing to relocate.
- Most of them earn at least 70k$ a year
- Career fair at UMBC is really helpful in getting internship and job opportunities. I got mine through career fair and some of my friends got internships in the same way.
- Baltimore based government companies hire students but they don't sponsor H1B visa or so
Accommodation
- I opted for off campus housing as we have control over the expenses for wifi and electricity. We can share a room with another roommate that reduces rent per head.
- Monthly rent - 300$ included dishwasher, laundry, stove, oven (not microwave oven)
- Challenges - lot of students like to stay close to the university so finding an accommodation near the university is extremely competitive.
My accommodation was 10 min walk away from the university called Westland gardens. That's where most of the UMBC indians students stay.
Exams
- The exams required are TOEFL (for IS branch specifically)
- Documents necessary to complete my admission are LOR, SOP, CV, transcript
- After getting the admit they asked for visa and financial document
- Interview was not part of the admission.
- The entire admission process was straight forward and didn't require any extra effort apart from the usual basic admission process.
Fees
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Each semester costed around 12k dollars
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4k per course (equivalent to 3 credits)
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Hence for 30 credits (10 courses) it costed 40k dollars total for entire masters degree
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Bill is generated before the start of each semester which need to be paid by our bank
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Monthly expense - maximum of 450$ per month,300$ rent for shared room, around 70$ a month for grocery, 50$ for wifi and gas bill
Scholarship
- There are no scholarships unfortunately in my course (information systems) in particular.
- We are on our own to search for assistantships in either a different department or in any undergraduate course.
- I received a research assistantship in another department which waived all my tuition fees and provided me with a bi weekly stipend on top of that. But the Information systems department mostly provides assistantships to PHD students, but sometimes we can also get if we have string ML or data science / data analytics background
