Slimebeast said:
Cool! I vaguely member u wanted to go.
Your gf, did u meet her while she was alrdy living in the US or did she live in the UK?
What was it that you would work with if the Americans would have you? Something with economics, rite?
What do u mean by safe schools?
Where will u live? Like, what kind of neighborshood and what are the costs to rent and stuff?
What's the way of the Chinese and Indians in the system? Can u elaborate a li'l?
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She's actually from China, I met her in Hong Kong.
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Computer Science is my skillset, with a lot of domain knowledge in finance. Once I can, though, I'd like to move out of finance into some other domain (healthcare or energy, probably), as I think the good days in finance are coming to an end. Technology lets me be broad in the industries I work for, I'd rather not make the mistake of locking myself into one industry early on.
I love economics, I wouldn't want to work anything in it though. Very few economists seem to be productive, many seem to be more harmful to society than helpful. Just used as "smart" people, wheeled out to the masses to justify bad ideas.
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Safe school, is a school that I have a very high chance of getting into. The grades and experience they require is below what I have. I applied for 5 schools. 2 safe schools, 2 schools that I am in the right range ("target schools"), and one school where my grades are definitely below what they usually accept, but they might have me based on my essays/recommendations ("moonshot school"), if I'm lucky.
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I will live in Jersey City. It's a relatively expensive place in comparison to most cities around America, due to its close proximity to Manhattan (I can see Manhattan from my balcony), however, it is substantially cheaper than Manhattan itself.
Here's a cost-comparison between JC and London - http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+Kingdom&city1=London&country2=United+States&city2=Jersey+City%2C+NJ , you can use that site to put in a city closer to you to get a better picture.
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Basically, the way that the American visa system works, is that there's a lottery each year for the visas. However, it is not a "fair" lottery in that everybody has an even shot, it is an "unfair" lottery in that certain people have better chances. The people with the best chance for getting a visa in that lottery are people with "advanced degrees" (Masters, PhD) from a US insitution.
In addition to this, the US also has another program where if you receive an advanced degree from a US institution in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths), you have the right to work for a small number of years without having to get the work visa, this is called OPT (Optional Practice Training). While you are working for an employer on OPT, that employer can also put you in for the visa lottery I mentioned above.
Due to the length of OPT, you will have three lottery chances before you get sent home. Three shots in the lottery with a higher-rated chance of success puts people in at a ~90% shot of getting a real work visa.
What this works out as, is that this pathway to working in America gives you much higher odds than any other pathway (short of illegal immigration). Which means that, on the margin, this is the route that most people will take, particularly younger people. A lot of people want to migrate to America, particularly Indian and Chinese, for a variety of reasons. As a result of this, there is a huge demand from international students to come into America to study, much, much, much higher than supply. This gives the Universities scarcity power, in the price-setting.
Maybe only the top 1% of Indians and Chinese can afford to take this route. But that's 1% of 2 1 billion+ populations. It's still a huge number. It outbids local students, and is one of the factors leading to higher Uni prices.