Last friday was my last day with Goldman Sachs. I would like to think of it as declaring my innings after completing half a century of months, I use a cricketing analogy in spite of India's poor showing in the ongoing Test series against England.
I started preparing a list of things to do in my last two weeks in India and it is kind of intimidating. I would like to discuss a few things here in the hope that the other International students can take a few hints (or maybe add to my list).
1. I am assuming that most people are done with their visa, definitely a major part of the preparation. Nevertheless I have to prepare a file with certain documents which should literally be at your fingertips at the port of entry. My I-20 and passport/visa. Few more might be a stretch but here goes - financial docs establishing liquid funds for a year of school, mark sheets/transcripts.
2. Loan processing with Eli Lilly. Finish your application and set up an appointment with Andy Promisiri at the financial aid office. You need to finish certain formalities like becoming a member of the Eli Lilly credit union before the loan is sanctioned and disbursed. My understanding is that full time students will get their first quarter bill on Sep 1 and have to pay by Sep 20.
3. The accounting tutorial, http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/x32956.xml . From work environment to having holiday homework, its a transition I am finding difficult to make! From what I have seen the tutorial is prepared in an interesting style, I think we are first batch to be exposed this 'Pre-Skilling'.
4. In this market situation, there is one department at Anderson which we will rely a lot on. Parker CMC has already got us thinking on our resumes and career paths - http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/x23554.xml. I think some of the self assessments take over two hours.
5. House search. I know that unless we walk around in the neighbourhood ourselves we will not make a right choice but always good to be prepared with a list of places. Looking for a 2br/2ba to be shared by four of us. Variables like distance from school, bus stop, grocery stores, furnished, un-furnished, pets, rents, etc could easily make this exercise a complicated math problem.
6. Insurance for travel and for a few days before orientation. I think this may be a wise choice given that we will be carrying many important and costly items to our new abode. I have signed up for pre-orientation trips as well so some kind of insurance makes sense :).
7. International driving license. This should be handy though I am not completely aware of the CA rules.I have an Indian license and should get an International permit valid for at least a year after which I would have take the test (heard its difficult to pass in one go!).
8. Find out hassle free and cheap options to transfer money to the US. From India I am getting a picture of a few common methods to do this. Most banks do this directly or through their commercial branches. Get Forex, loaded cards (can be used like a debit card in US), Demand Drafts (in your own name or college's if you want to pay the fees using that) and direct money transfer to accounts in US.
9. Smooth culmination of services in your home countries like phone, internet, redundant bank accounts cause the last thing we want to be doing is calling back home and enquiring why money is still being debited for the calls we never made / services we did not use.
10. I have heard that most universities in US need a MMR (measles, mumps & rubella) vaccination certificate. In absence of documents in the required format we might need to do some running around there as well but I am not very clear on this requirement.
I think ten's a good number to start with. I welcome any suggestions and corrections on the points above.I may write another list of things to do as soon as you land in US (My google calender shows I am attending overlapping events already!) but as they say one thing at a time.
Of course Anderson's consistent mails and reminders are great, their interest in helping the students have a smooth transition is very apparent. Its up to us now to face up to the challenge.
Cheers,
Rahul Bala, MBA '13
