GMU experience

University of Melbourne

7.2(58 Reviews)

Reason for choosing my college

• The reason for me to select this college is because it has links with big companies, which can provide me with exposure to real-world problems. Also, it has many clubs, like the robotics club, which helps us learn through playing.

McGill University

7.3(23 Reviews)

Reason for Rejection

• The main thing that went wrong for me was the timing when I applied to the college. I applied at the end of the closing of applications, which led to non-acceptance of my applications because they filled seats.

• For your admission to GMU, you should have a good ILETS score with a good undergrad GPA. Apart from this, you should choose your concentration of your particular course before itself. And in SOP, you should give a brief about yourself and why you want to join the college.

• I chose this country because it has many startups in the course field, which helps me to get into a job role easily. GMU is placed at 50th ranking in my course and 978th ranking in the world.
• It offers a wide range of courses, from hardware to software and humanities to arts. It is located in Fairfax City, about 20 miles away from Washington, DC. As it is close to DC, it has good career opportunities. My experience is so far good and the campus life is awesome.

• Usually there are three classes per week but you can choose more than that but it will be difficult to manage the assignments if you ask me. For me, the class timing is from 4:30 PM to 7:10 PM and also from 7:20 PM to 10:10 PM.
• In my course, the average strength is 15 students but on the CS side, it is 30 students. In my course, about 45% are Indians. Apart from college hours, around 15 hours will go for assignments and self-learning.

• The faculty-to-student ratio is around 1:20, which is very less than in Indian colleges. The best faculty, in my opinion, is Chriss Gay, who is our advisor, as well as DSD subject professor, who is helpful in career planning.
• Faculties help in full-time job roles if we are close enough to them, as they refer students to some job roles. And coming to part-time, they do help to get on-campus jobs.

• There are three campuses for our college in three different locations. There are lot of facilities in college like sports grounds, a very big library with lots of informative books and also a medical team to take care of student health issues.
• In George Mason university there are many fests and events going on in weekly basis, for example welcome home patriots for new incoming students. Extracurricular activities like yoga, karate can be seen in campus.

• On average, they get a pay of 1200$ per month for restaurant jobs but in the case of TA/RA, it is around 2500$ per month. Getting an on-campus job is a bit difficult, as we have to apply for them as soon as it opens, as there is a lot of competition. After that, they take interviews to get the job role.

• TA/RA/DA roles are given to merit students based on their resumes and previous semester grades and the pay is around $2500 per month with one subject fee cancelled.
• Other on-campus jobs are mainly in restaurants like Sodexo and the hourly wage is around 12.5$. We can apply to internships and on-campus jobs through the Hanshake app. Maximum hours of work allowed is 20 hours per week.

• There are plenty of full-time job roles for my course in computer engineering with less competition as compared to software jobs here. About 60% of students get a job within 6 months of graduation.
• The average salary range is 120k$ for our course and 100k$ for the software side. The highest packages can go up to 160k$ and the lowest can be 60k$.

• The process of searching for accommodation can be done by getting added to a WhatsApp group where there will be postings of apartments available. The challenges faced are getting into the right group and selecting an apartment through virtual photos.
• There can be no recommendations useful if in off-campus accommodations. For on-campus, there is a separate website for that but the cost is a little bit high.