This is a quick checklist of things you should consider before arriving on campus:
- You should have gotten an MIT ID number in an email at some point during the summer.
- Setup MIT Kerberos username and password: this is going to be your email account and Athena (MIT's computer lab system) account. For instance, my Kerberos username is "lululi," which means that my email is lululi@mit.edu and that I use the username lululi to log into any Athena machine, either on a physical machine or remotely. You only get to choose your username once, and MIT does not allow aliasing names the last time I look up, so I'd recommend choose something sane.
- Get MIT Certificate Authority and Personal Certificate set up so you can access MIT-restricted pages without having to type in your Kerberos username and password everytime. The link is here and it should take less than 5 mins to setup: https://ist.mit.edu/certificates
- DUO authentication: starting June 15, 2016, MIT requires the use of a two-factor authentication system (unfortunately a proprietary protocol from a company called DUO) for accessing restricted webpages.
- Overview: what this means is that when you access a MIT-restricted webpage, the webpage not only requires the Certificate that you installed in the last step (or you can enter your Kerberos username and password), as well as a secondary method out of the following options (and you only have to do the secondary method every 30 days):
- a one-time code sent via a SMS text message to your mobile phone,
- a phone call to your mobile or land phone,
- using DUO's mobile app,
- a USB stick you can get from MIT IS&T called Yubikey).
- To set up, register your device at https://duo.mit.edu/
- More resources: knowledge base, IS&T page
- Setup MIT email forwarding (optional): https://ist.mit.edu/email/forward MIT uses Outlook Web which is something any sane human being would not want to deal with (plus it has a super small storage limit), so I'd recommend forward your mit emails into another mailbox (a popular choice is gmail). It should takes less than five minutes to setup.
- Make sure you have completed the Medical Report Form, and if not bring the right paperwork to MIT: the posted deadline for turning in the medical report form is typically end of July, but MIT Medical is flexible about the date, and I recall there being a long line of students turning in form and paperwork my year at the beginning of the semester. If you have not complete this form, make sure you have brought all the right paperwork with you (forms signed by your physician, for instance) and turn in when you get to campus, otherwise it would result in a registration hold on your account.
[International students] It is critical you have all the visa and official documents in order when arriving in the U.S.A.Make sure to bring your I20 and all F1 visa related documents when entering the U.S.A. For more information, please inquire with the MIT International Student Office (ISO) http://web.mit.edu/iso/.
- Ship your items to MIT (optional): at least two self-storage services offers ship & store service, which means that you can ship boxes to their location, and they will hold them for you for up to a month till you arrive on campus and pick them up. One I know of is:
- UPS: http://www.theupsstore.com/pack-ship/Pages/index.aspx
These services could cost a couple hundred dollars though depend on how much stuff you've got, so the cheaper alternative would be finding out whether you can directly ship to your dorm, or ask a current graduate student politely whether you can ship to their apartment.