FAQ for URCS
Incoming and New Students
Before the starting of your
UR-life...
1. What are the important info channels?
This FAQ.
Incoming student committee: Madhur Ambastha
(ambastha@cs.rochester.edu), Virendra J. Marathe
(vmarathe@cs.rochester.edu), Xipeng Shen
(xshen@cs.rochester.edu)
Details link http://www.cs.rochester.edu/~xshen/service/newstudents/
Chinese student mailing list--CSSAUR: To subscribe or unsubscribe,
email majordomo@cc.rochester.edu, with body "subscribe cssaur"
or "unsubscribe cssaur".
Indian student mailing list: ur_indians@yahoogroups.com
2. How to find a place to live?
On campus:
* apply officially, see
http://www.reslife.rochester.edu/graduate/apply.php.
The early the
better.
* use mailing list, E.g. post messages on CSSAUR.
Off campus:
* http://ochousing.reslife.rochester.edu/
* http://rentrochester.com/
NOTE: some places around UofR are not safe.
Please feel free to ask us for the related information.
3. What should you learn if you have spare time?
Unix-based Operating Systems are a norm in US academia.
We mostly have Linux boxes at URCS. You may want to have some
basic knowledge about Linux/Unix and basic softwares (e.g. Emacs,
Latex.) if you've
never worked on Unix systems.
4. How can you reach UofR smoothly?
Incoming student committee provides pick-up service (free! :)).
Please
contact us early if you want a pick-up from the airport.
In the case that you want to take a cab, the price to campus should be
about $10.
5. What to bring?
Click here for the lists.
At the
beginning of your UR-life...
1. Why am I here?
Sorry, can't help you on this one.
Consult your
local Zen practitioner ;).
2. What is the campus map?
River campus map:
http://www.rochester.edu/news/river.html
Whole map:
http://www.rochester.edu/news/map.html
3. Where to eat on campus?
Dinning-room: in Frederick
Douglass Bldg. (building #40)
Cafeteria: there are two in Medical Center ground
floor. (see map http://www.rochester.edu/news/map.html)
one in Wilson Commons (building #39)
one in Frederick
Douglass Bldg. (building #40)
Vendor machines: ground floor in Hylan Bldg.
Building (building #19)
4. Where and how to do shopping?
If you are a shopping freak living in the vicinity of U of R,
Marketplace
Mall is the
place for you to visit regularly. This is the largest mall nearby where
you can find stores offering a variety of items of everyday use
starting from winter clothing (which will be the main concern for
foreign students) to electronic goods (like digital cameras, chargers,
mp3 players, etc.) to groceries (in Wegmans) to any kind of household
items (in Chase Pitkin, Walmart, etc.). Although this place is around
4-5 miles from the U of R campus, the good news is that there are buses
from the U of R campus to Marketplace Mall every Wednesday
and Saturday.
The bus schedule is available online here:
http://www.rochester.edu/parking/urspecial.htm.
For a grad
student, typically weekend is the only free time (if at all possible)
for such endeavors. U of R does provide with excellent commuting
facilities within the campus, and some commuting facilities are also
made available by the Rochester Genesse Regional Transport Service. In
fact, there are regular buses to downtown Rochester, the Marketplace
Mall, etc. passing through or by the U of R campus.
5. How to settle in my apartment?
As soon as you arrive at your apartment for the first time, it
normally
seems to be a very large place for a humble soul like you. That is
because your apartment is EMPTY (if it isn't one of the furnished
ones)! YOU have to furnish it! Typically, all the students that have
graduated and are moving out have what we call a "moving sale".
Furniture items, kitchen tools, etc. are sold at dead cheap rates. Some
movers dont even bother to sell off their stuff, they just dump it at
the nearby dumpster. You can always pick stuff up from there. Although
it might seem to be unacceptable to your esteem, hey it is good
furniture stuff that you need at your apartment! If you dont pick it
up, someone else will! And moreover, its for FREE!
6. How to go to school?
Well, we have an excellent university bus service which is
absolutely free for students! Bus number 70 connects all the grad
housing areas
- I use it to commute from my Whipple Park apartment to the department
and back.
And the bus does run even at unearthly hours, keeping in mind the
habits of the
average grad student. Bus 72 connects the River campus to the Eastman
Living
Center. The schedules of these two buses (which are free for UR
students) and
other bus schedules of the Rochester Regional Transportation service
can be
found at : http://www.rgrta.org/ .
7. Where to get movies?
If you are the one interested in motion picture entertainment U of R
has it for you! The Multimedia Center at Rush Rhees Library (building
#1) has a
superfluous stock of english movies of all kinds, even the fairly
recent releases. The stock of foreign movies is somewhat limited
though. The Multimedia Center also has a huge collection of art,
literature, etc. documentaries. For more information about the
Multimedia Center click here. Movies
10 is a second-line cinema with very cheap tickets. It's movies are
usually a couple of months old.
8. What sports are available? Where to play?
Are you a sports junky? U of R provides fantastic support for sports activities
to U of R students. The Robert B. Goergen Center is a huge sports
complex in the U of R campus that contains facilities for almost every
well known sport. Starting from a well-equipped gymnasium to running
tracks to swimming pools to the basketball
courts to a football stadium to badminton courts etc. These facilities
are free for all U of R students.
Inside our department, we have basketball, volleyball, badminton,
cricket and other clubs. Please feel free to ask us for related
information.
9. How to start banking?
HSBC (formerly Marine Midland) student account, on
campus ATM, low savings interest rate. Free on-line payment. Their
closest office is on Mt Hope, near Goler House. Chase
Manhattan no real student account (last we checked) so the
minimum amount necessary to avoid fees is rather high. They have an
office and an ATM on campus. They also have an office in the Med
Center. M&T They have ATMs and branches in many
Tops grocery stores, as well as a branch on Mt Hope near campus.
You should of course call up the banks and get details on what they
offer in terms of student accounts. The things to watch for are: do
they have a minimum deposit requirement in the accounts, what are the
interest rates, do they charge you for more than a certain number of
transfers between your accounts, how accessible are they on campus and
outside Rochester, whether they can quickly give you an ATM card or a
bank debit card etc. Note there are other banks (just look in the phone
book!) and there is also a credit union near us on West Henrietta Rd.
10. How to get used to the computers here?
See here
for advice, including information on computing environment in our
department.
11. Where are the printers and how to print?
See URCS lab document
for information on the labs and systems in the UR Computer Science
Department.
12. How to start your career as a CS Grad student?
See here
for advice.
13. Need a car?
After you have stayed in the United States for some
time, you will
realize that having a car at your disposal renders a considerable
amount of flexibility to your life here. If you are an out-going
person, you will feel the need of a car. But owning a car in the United
States is not a big deal. In fact, we grad students can also afford
cars! A grad student normally goes for the purchase of a used car. A
fairly good used car can be bought in less than a couple of thousand
bucks! And this much money is typically saved over the duration of just
one semester. Used car sale advertisements are normally put up at the
bulletin boards in the grad housing premises. Almost all the
professional car dealers also sell used cars.
14. Which College is for my spouse?
If you are married, and your spouse intends to study as well, she or
he
has several options here at Rochester. Your spouse may either join you
at U of R or enroll in another college nearby. Rochester Institute of
Technology is another big institute here where grad education is also
available. There are also other colleges like the Monroe Community
College, Nazareth College, etc. nearby.
15. Want to learn more about Rochester?
16. Special questions for Chinese Students.
Click here to see
how to use (e.g. display, input, print, programming) chinese
in department's computers. (Thanks to HuBo's great work!)
17. Special questions for Indian Students -> I really love the
XYZ tamarind sauce that I get in my local store in India. Would I get a
good substitute here? What all should I bring from India?
Well, there is a list
of items that would be useful
to bring here. The list has been pinched from Arun Kumar's homepage at
cs.jhu.edu . Many items here are an overkill, therefore take this list
with a pinch of salt.
Last
Changed by Madhur Ambastha, Virendra J. Marathe, Xipeng Shen
2004-04-10