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- Report to the International Student Office (ISO) at MIT right away: iso/
- Complete the mandatory English test required by MIT (2015 date: Tuesday, September 1, 2015 at 9:00 am in Room 10-250): MIT makes all the international students take this listening + oral exams before your first semester starts. If you have spent any time in the States it is very easy. If not, you might want to ask one of the recent international students for their experience. I recall they tested some American slangs. If you fail this exam, you have to sign up for some ESL classes which I heard are not very interesting and you probably don't want to waste time on that if you can avoid it. link
- Complete a mandatory immigration orientation with ISO. The sessions are held daily till registration day.
- Get a bank account ASAP: Bank of America is probably the largest bank you can find in the area (Chase does not have any location near Boston unfortunately). You will probably not get a credit card until you have a SSN, so just get the plain checking and saving accounts so that you can pay rent and get paid by MIT. The other option is the MIT credit union, but I have never used it so I cannot comment.
- Get a cell phone plan (optional): cellphone plans through major carriers like ATT and Verizon has been really expensive lately (roughtly $50/month/person?) so I got a google number and use SIP calls on campus where there is Wifi (you can call and text for free as long as there is wifi), and uses a service provider called Ting for data when there is no wifi. Though this requires some work to set-up so depends on how much work you want to go through. If you go with one of the major cellphon service carrier, make sure to checkout MIT's discount program here
- Get a Social Security Number (SSN) if you are employed (I think that means you have a RA or TA?): double check with the international student office on how this works...
- Get on your country's student organization's emailing lists (optional): sometime it could be beneficial to be on your country's specific MIT email lists for getting help and info specific to your nationality. For Chinese students, I think you are automatically on chn-all@mit.edu, and might need to sign up for chn-open@mit.edu( though this one has lots of spam so you might want to unsubscribe after a while).
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