GRAD Connect New Student Q&A: International

Are we recording this?

Uh, I said.

We are.

Huh?

I can't click on anything for some reason. Can you hit?

Can you hear Maine?

Yep.

Yeah, my my screen is locked locked.

It seems to be working now so.

Call

Maybe Landon will have to advance slides.

Oh, I'm sorry. I think I touched that button.

Um?

No, it's not letting me control me there.

Yeah I can you click on anything like if you click on participants can you see anything?

Now.

Same.

All right?

OK, we'll get started in about another minute.

The commander in Kelly. Can you hear me?

Yeah, I can hear you.

Excellent.

Why just a jump back up back in?

OK, uh, let's let's get started. Uh, welcome to the University of Alabama Graduate Schools. Live Q&A.

Uh, with thrilled? By the responses we've received and look forward to answering your questions tonight tonight for us. Probably this morning for you, the Graduate School is committed to providing the best possible support and services to all students, especially during the COVID-19 crisis. During these uncertain times, we work hard to remain flexible as the situation develops.

Today, members of the Graduate School team here to respond to your questions. We hope to address your concerns transparently and thoroughly. However, before we begin, I want to introduce you to the three panel members and moderate are tonight.

So firstly, we have Kelly Burns. Kelly is the graduate schools international admissions officer, Kelly Burns is joining us to address your questions and concerns. She has worked in international admissions for about 9 years and joined the University of Alabama in 2017. She very much enjoys working with international students and really helping them to achieve their goals.

We also have Amanda Multi with us this evening. Amander is an admission international admissions counselor.

Amanda has worked in this role for the past 2 1/2 years and is dedicated to making sure that as many of our international applicants join us as possible on our campus.

Moderating tonight, looking at the questions and passing those onto the panel members is. Landon Wade. Landon is the director of graduate admissions at the University of Alabama for the last decade, Landon's worked in undergraduate admissions, serving in a variety of roles, including director, an interim vice assistant, vice president, involvement management. We are very happy to have land and working with us in the Graduate School now. Landon is very passionate about helping students.

All phases of their journey to UA, from admissions to involvement.

And finally, let me introduce myself. My name is Andrew Goodliffe, I'm associate Dean of the Graduate School. In my role, I'm responsible for recruitment, admissions and scholarships, and fellowships. I've worked at the University of Alabama Graduate School since 2012. I'm also a professor originally starting at the University of Alabama in 2004.

Now 1. One of the things I bring to the table is I originally came to the US as an international student, so I'm very intimately aware of the issues encountered by audience now. Before we start a little housekeeping.

Like first going to go through a small number of slides and then those slides were going to attempt to address some of the questions you have submitted.

Uh, and then in the Q&A there will be a chance for you to submit some of your questions.

Please hold all the questions until prompted. After the panel fish.

Finishes presenting the slides will open the forum.

OK, so the.

First slide, we're going to go to is. I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the issues on our campus around the COVID-19 crisis.

So one of the things I do want to reassure all of our admitted students is that we're working to do everything we can to make life as normal as possible on our campus.

For any of our students now, of course, there's a lot of changes and a lot of questions coming from students such as yourself will be new to you, A and also our students on campus.

So a very common question is, will classes be taught on campus in the next academic year?

The short answer to that is for fall, were definitely anticipating planning right now for classes to be taught on campus. We did just learn today that summer classes will be taught online, but we're really hoping that everything is under control and we can bring students back to the campus in the fall. However, there's a lot of a lot of variables in that, but that's our plan.

Uh, another question we've had is will the start of the fall semester be delayed? Right now we're not actually planning to delay the start of the fall semester. We are planning on starting as originally planned started semesters about August 20th 22nd. Something like that. So that's really what we're planning for right now.

No.

We've had some students asking questions about summer involvement. Now, as I've mentioned, that one is going to be conducted remotely, so classes will be taught online at least during the first summer semester. Classes that are taught over the entire summer will be taught online as well, but at the University of Alabama we have a second summer semester which starts at the end of.

June and we are planning on that being taught on campus right now.

Love.

A lot of our students who are currently on campus are really sort of adapting to the current norm of taking their classes online.

Ha.

Being able to get access to labs when possible.

And.

Really, that transition for us has been largely fairly smooth. Uh, we're really, really proud of everyone who works at the University of Alabama for.

Really, making that, uh, as as well as it can as good a process as it can be for our students on campus.

Some of our biggest problems though, are access to labs we can't have as many people in our lab buildings as we would do normally, and so that is sort of on a permission by Commission basis.

The next thing I'm going to address is funding, so funding is a obviously a big concern.

And.

Some of the questions submitted by the participants focused on things such as.

You know how do you actually get funding? A number of the participants in this webinar don't actually have funding yet.

Now, especially if you're in engineering field and the same applies really to many other fields.

Uh, it's very very key to be reaching out to faculty members. In many cases, it's the faculty members who make the recommendations for assistantship funding. When I'm talking now about both teaching and research assistantships, teaching assistantships being where you help teach a class. Research assistantships being where you're helping a professor with a.

I'll with a research project.

So that's you know, if you don't have funding yet, I do encourage you to pursue those avenues. At the very least, be reaching out to the graduate program director of the program, and we can help you with those Contacts.

There are other funding sources on campus were very, very large campus. There's a lot of jobs on campus so also keeping out I out on our job board and we can share the web address of the job board as well.

Uh.

One specific question I had was what happens if I don't find a way to fund my education? do I have to forfeit my admission, uh?

There's a couple of answers to that if you can find your own funding, we can go through the I-20.

Process with you.

All right, Amanda, can you hear me? I think I dropped off the network there for a moment.

I can't hear you.

OK good thanks.

I think we all did.

Yeah, so anyway with uh, let's see where was was I with funding. So uh, if you can't get funding for this coming academic year, it is possible to defer your application for another year and use that year to find funding. Either funding through your own sources or funding through the University of Alabama.

Uh.

And so you know, big University, like the University of Alabama, there is a lot of assistantship funding. So out of our 5000 students, about 1/3 of them are on an assistantship. So chances are pretty good.

Uh, let's see I'm going to hand.

The podium to Kelly Burns now.

Hi everybody, I just want to thank you, uh again, for joining us tonight. I know things are a little bit up in the air right now so we're going to answer all of your questions as best as we can with the answers that we have today. So immigration issues that is a large question. Some students might be having trouble getting the I-20 getting the documents to receive the I-20. Some people may be trying to have their 20, but they don't have a visa appointment yet.

Ah, and then other people may have the I-20 and the Visa, and they're worried if they can even enter the country. So we're going to tell you everything that we know right now. Like Andy said, fall is still going on as planned, so if you are admitted for fall and you still want to come and fall right now, we should not look to defer your admission.

You can try all of your efforts to get here the best possible way that you can and we will keep you up to date of any changes. However that happens. Uhm as it goes, so depending on what country you are in, you might have a little bit of an easier time getting an appointment or not I know some Indian students there is no Mail coming into the country right now. Right now we are still producing I 20s business as usual. Amanda is contacting students on their admission.

Collecting the documents and then sending them over because when this is all over um, we want you to pick up right where you left off. If you have your 20 in your hand and then you can go to the embassy, the USA embassy nearest your location and make an appointment so there's a couple of other questions about.

Immigration right now that we've gotta numb from the registrants prior to this, somebody answer a couple of those right now. How long does it take to issue in a 20 again? We're very business as usual. As soon as we have your documents, it's two to three business days of that that we're issuing. I 20s.

Uh, do I have to defer and get a new I-20 and apply for a student visa again? Um? So if you have already applied for a student visa, you do not have to do that again. However, you may need to get a new I-20 if your if your admission ends up being deferred. For instance, if you are a student who is coming in the fall and you already have and I20 Anna Student Visa, if then you need to move to spring 2021, you would not have to redo any of that again.

Except for, you would have to get a new I-20 with the correct dates of entry into the country. So we would issue you a new I-20, but you would not have to go back to the USA Embassy to go through the approval process again, so that's a great question.

Another question is, I plan to start my PhD in summer. I have my 20, but will I be able to cross the border or this person is coming from Canada so we'll be doing that on foot. Right now we do not have any information that that is being stopped. I know that we are restricting some travel from Europe right now, but if you are not coming from there, there is no reason for us to believe that you should not be able to enter the country when you arrive.

Another question, can I start my semester online while outside of the US? If the campuses are not being taught in the fall. Great question and the answer to that is yes, if classes do go on an on line and you are in the program, you will be able to take those classes on line even if you apply toward admitted for an on campus program.

Does summer is now going to be on line if you are already in the US, you will be permitted, um, to start your summer courses on line. However, if you are an international student and you were admitted for summer and you are coming from outside of the country, we will need to get you some new immigration paperwork as you will not be able to start on campus in the summer, so you have probably heard from us already if you have it, you hear from us when they are at the end of this week.

About differing summer admission from students or out of the country currently.

Another question I have, um is, according to recent limitations on traveling to the USA, I'm afraid of the possibility of arriving on time. Kind of answered that already, but again, there's no reason to believe that at this time fall is not going to happen on campus. So I think that in your preparation during this time you should still continue to look for housing to register for orientation to register for your courses and things like that.

Ah, once we have more information, um, we will. As we say, cross that bridge when we get there.

We have a couple other questions on general questions Amanda, would you like to answer a few of those?

Sure hi everyone.

So if you are already admitted, since most this is admitted student, so you're already admitted. If you have um.

Received your I-20 already. I'm getting a lot of question on when do you need to confirm when you're coming to you. I we don't have a specific date that you have to confirm your admission, but I would advise you to please reach out to your Department, some Department, some want to sure up their cohort sizes so they kind of go through and look in. Kind of a date of when you need to do that so you can reach out to them. If you don't have that contact, please feel free to reach out to me. I can get you in contact with you. You need to get in contact with.

And then we've gotten a lot of questions about deferring admission. How do we defer admission? Your admission is good for one year, so you can defer your admission. Currently. Right now, fall 2021 is not open, so we can't give you that. But as soon as we do have that application open, that will be communicated to you. If differing is something that you want to do. If you're wanting to defer to from summer to fall or fall to spring of 2021, go ahead and reach out to me. I can.

Can

Excuse me, I can communicate with you on those that process and how to do that, um? Also, we've got any questions about a 20s being stuck in the Mail. We know in the curtain, current situation, some places aren't delivering Mail. Depending on the country. what I would advise you to do is reach out to me personally. If you're having issues with your eye 20s being stuck, I can get you in contact with working very closely with our international student services office and.

They're who's sending those out, so if you did your order through each of global, you should have a tracking number and that can be helpful. But I can also get you in touch with Mr Vittetoe in that office who is handling all that, and he may be able to give you a better update of where that document is, but for now you're Egypt. Egypt notification is going to be your best bet to kind of track there, but we can always help you track it down from our end as well.

Did you want to add anything else so that Kelly?

Anything after saying?

I no.

I think he did a good job. Um, uh, like Amanda mentioned about tracking, I highly encourage you to get a certified Mail so you have a tracking number with it. Especially now it is a little bit.

Think about $50 depending on if it's through DHL or FedEx, but it is one of the more important documents that you will have. Uhm, coming to you in the Mail. So uhm I recommend it.

So, uh, another couple of questions. I'm just some kind of general stuff about housing. We do have graduate student housing on campus.

However, most graduate students do live off of campus, um, whether it's because campus tends to be a little loud due to some of the undergraduates, or it is far less expensive to live off campus. Most of our graduate students do not live on campus. However, if you do want to live on campus, please let us know and we will give you all the information for the graduate student housing.

Yeah, Tuscaloosa is not very big. Uhm of town and it's all built around the school so you know when we say off campus housing, that doesn't mean that you're going to be driving for 20 to 30 minutes. There is a great deal of uh of housing right around campus. That is an easy couple minutes Walker bike ride and we have a great bus system as well. So if you have some questions about housing you don't know where you're going to live yet, please reach out to us. We can help you facilitate that.

Another great resource is our current students to a lot of international students have groups on Facebook, so there is an Indian student organization. There are organizations for students that speak Arabic, so not so much country specific. A lot of that is on on our international capstone website page, which we can send you as a follow up to this email as well. So if you connect to our social media, I'm including all of our student groups.

Talking to those students, finding out where they live, things like that, asking them, but that you know. Obviously we can answer as many questions for you as we can, but if you want to hear from, you know the heart of the campus of students. That's a great resource for you as well.

I don't want to also add we have a off campus housing office as well, we can.

Send you links to that as well.

It tends to be kind of undergrad oriented, but it's it's another resource.

Now, as you know from Kelly's uh comments from mine, we are assuming that you're coming to campus. We're assuming that we're moving forward with fall and so.

You know we will be going forward with orientation and, uh, enrollment when you get to campus the first few days you are going to be inundated with different orientation events. There will be orientations in your Department. Your college may have orientations. The Graduate School will have an orientation as is obviously the best and then also the international student office has an orientation which is going to actually going to be LinkedIn with the grad student orientation.

So you're going to have a lot of information thrown at you in those first few days. A lot of things you need to do if you haven't enrolled by the time you get to campus, that is something will encourage you to do as quickly as possible.

And then also doing things like getting your action card on campus, which is the student identification card and learning your way around campus on the bus. We're really looking forward to you being on campus. We're looking forward to being back on campus because we're having to work from home right now. We are really missing, are beautiful campus, so we really, really look forward to having you there. That is so important to us.

Alright, next.

Oh please, please go ahead.

Add anything, jump in real quick.

So so, um, in case you don't know this, if maybe you were admitted several months ago or you were admitted, uh, maybe anytime before the beginning of March, fall registration is open. So if you have not registered for fall yet, you can do that online. If you don't know how, please contact us. We can walk you through the registration process. So if your Department may want to meet with you before either via Skype or when you arrive on campus, it doesn't necessarily.

Matter if you register now or later depending on what your Department advise you too, but it's nice to see the classes, the schedule get an idea of the breakdown of that. So if you have any questions about.

Yeah, in rolling and how to do that, please let us know as well.

So now we can move on to questions and fearless moderator Landon might be releasing some to us.

That's a great question, uh? The question below is do I need my college diploma to enroll? My last University is closed so as most of you know we did not require official documents to be admitted. But once you arrive on campus we will want you to give us your official documents. Now we realize with the pandemic situation that that might be more difficult for students this year.

When it comes to fall and you cannot get your documents, we will address it at that time. If you have your documents with you, um, physically, you can bring them with you when you arrive on campus and bring them to our office and we will copy them. If you still need to get those documents, you will be allowed to enroll for your first semester. So if you are a false start, you will be allowed to enroll for the fall semester. If you already summer start, you will be allowed to enroll for that semester as well. You would just not.

Be allowed to register for subsequent semesters again we, if that still becomes a problem come October when Spring 2021 is open for registration, we can talk about that. Obviously, we want to be as flexible as possible, but as of right now, yes, you do need your college diploma, but you do not need to have it to enroll for your first semester.

So there's a question here about what happens when I register for classes and don't get a GTA or GRA and have to defer my admission for later session. So deferring your admission is very simple process. Just talk to Kelly or Amanda and they can help you through that process.

There is another question about a undergraduate transcription. Can I bring the transcription by myself in a sealed in an envelope? Yes, that was exactly what we would like. Transcript in a sealed envelope, uhm?

Yeah, there's another question about when you will be receiving your I-20 um. For those of you that are currently in the US, if you um need new I-20, we cannot issue that to you until you are done with your current studies at your current school. So if you are a current international student in the US, you have AC this record and only one school can hold your sevis record at that time. So once you're done with your courses for this semester, you will then transfer your service record to us.

You do that by simply visiting the international student office at your school and asking them to transfer to University of Alabama. Once we have that, we can make your eye 20. It is a very simple data transmission. Happens overnight. There's no kind of things that need to go through the Mail, so if you are in the country it is very, very easy for you to transfer your service record to us. You need to know that process. Please contact us.

And I would add to that that you can pick it up from the office when you get on campus as well.

Hey.

Um, they do allow you to come in to pick it up. If you don't want to have it shipped and the day that you're right, you just have to go and get it from them so.

All right, any?

You guys have to have it.

Yeah, you gotta have more questions here. This is a.

Because Yeah.

Any question, no question is too small or large.

Yeah, you have to two experts in Maine.

So Kelly and Amanda, what are some other things that, uh, international applicants have asked?

Recently, are there any other things that come to mind?

Most of the questions I've received I have. Um we've answered here kind of Uhm. You know, letting students know that their admission is good for a whole year.

Letting them know that.

We have all the answers we have today and that might change tomorrow. Um, letting students know that you know summer, you know, that was a new, UM, new information for US recently that summer one and the long summer session would be on line. Some questions regarding that.

Obviously students are asking questions, uh, about you know if anything is going to happen to their funding, which at this point you should not be worried about that. If they were offered funding, there's no reason to believe that there's any changes there.

Yeah, and you know if if you were offered funding to do your research for your PhD, it's very important that you're talking to your advisor because it is possible dependent on the nature of that research that you may be able to do that remotely even if we are doing online classes, which we're hoping we're not.

Uh, let's see there was a question about housing for couples on campus. Unfortunately, we do not have housing for couples on campus. In that situation really, your best option is off campus. And as Kelly mentioned, off campus for us doesn't mean a long way away.

Also see.

I live very close to campus myself. I'm 10 minute walk from the office, so there's lots of housing near the campus.

Uh, last day to register for classes.

That's a isn't that like end of August something like that?

It's usually about a week after classes begin.

Yeah, so you've got lots of time and then, uh, how can I? How can I do my 4 registration? That's something that Kelly on Amanda can guide you through if you email them but also.

If you go to our grad school web page.

Uh, under the current student tabs, you'll actually see a link called getting started.

And that link will tell you all the things that you need to need to do when your first admitted to the University of Alabama and one of those is actually guiding you through the registration process.

And if I can do this properly, I can probably find the link.

Thank you.

So hold on and I'll put it in the chat.

I've got, I've got it.

OK, good.

Yep, so Amanda just posted the link and that's.

FA Q FAQ. We call in the US that we are revising actively right now and we're trying to make it so that it includes everything you need to do when you first arrive. Every little thing, including things like immunizations.

All sorts of stuff. Learning how to say, Roll Tide.

Actually, it doesn't include that, but you do need to learn that I'm not very good at it.

Correct?

So we have a question about, uh, which classes if you took during your Masters, are transferable credits UM to your PhD? That is a great question and that question needs to be directed at your Department sewer Department into first approved the classes that they want to count for our own classes and then they will give you a form and you will turn that form into our office. So I would be the point person for that for transfer credits.

Um and also our registrar, uhm, who is not with us tonight. Her name is Beth Yarbrough. Uhm, should qualify for there's a couple of um factors in qualifying for it. Obviously you need Department approval, and Secondly, you need to have a good grade or better. So only classes that you got high Marks and would be available for transferable credits. Again, that was all going to be based on what your Department urine.

And some departments have requirements on whether they will accept a Max of nine or a Max of 12. So talk to your advisor. Is your program directors an they can let you know how to get started on that process.

Yeah, or a, uh, a lot of PhD programs will accept up to 24 hours of transfer credit.

That's great.

20 four yeah yeah, with generous uh.

Let's see, uh, one of the participants just asked.

Uh, let's see any areas on neighborhoods around Tuscaloosa that would be great for grad students to live areas to avoid.

Uh, I would say that generally Tuscaloosa very safe place, uh?

It all depends on what sort of environment you want to live in. So if you live in the area behind what we call the Strip, which is where a lot of the bars and restaurants are, that's going to be a very lively location with lots going on till late and late at night. And that's a lot of grad students. That's not really what they're looking for.

And so you know, a lot of grad students will try and stay away from that sort of area. Commander Kelly you got in the comments on that.

It's a kind of across 15th St. A little bit is a little bit better if you kind of want to get away from that party. Saying that happens around the strip area. You kind of look at the part at apartments that are a little bit further away from campus but are still within. What would you said it's a 10 or 15 minute walk.

Yeah.

Uhm, I know their box at every day. Uhm, it's not a far walk and it's a little bit quieter.

Yeah, and even if you go to some of the more distant apartment complexes, as Kelly mentioned earlier, there's bus services to most of those apartment complexes.

Being that Tuscaloosa is, you know, I'm kind of a quintessential college town. We don't have the kind of crime that you're going to find in some of the bigger towns. So while there are areas that may be a little bit more desirable, there aren't horrible crime ridden areas. You know, super close to campus. So if there are some apartments or areas that you're looking in an you want our opinion on it, please reach out to us. But there's no reason to assume that you know anything.

Come closer should be worried about.

Alright, I'm Andrea Kelly. This last question is probably a good one for you too.

So student hasn't yet received their I-20. What advice? Just wait.

It depends whether that question, as I haven't received it yet because I can't get the documents if I haven't received it 'cause it's in the Mail. If I haven't received it because you turn in your documents in the last two to three business days and we haven't turned it back to you yet.

There's a lot of questions there, so if you can't get the documents needed for your eye 20, there's not a good answer there. Um, unfortunately, we're just going to have to wait until you can get those documents, because we can absolutely not produce an I-20 without the I-20 form your financials in your passport. And if you're bringing a dependent the passport of that dependent as well. So that's the question about documents if you.

Have um, sent us your documents and you haven't received my 20 back rooms yet. Please touch back because unless that's been last two 3 business days you should have an. If you have an issue, you write 20 and it is in the Mail.

My question is, to start making a lot of phone calls. Uh, it's not unusual that a student has ordered My 20 regular Mail without tracking a man, then had to go back and order another 20 and get tracking because it has not come to them yet. Um, my best advice is is to be patient and to reach out if you are having a problems, we might not know about it, especially if they're related to the Mail. Uhm so.

Please let us know and we'll do the best we can to resolve that.

And I would add since some of you may not have turned in your eye 20 documents yet or may have given him to me in pieces if you have submitted maybe just a passport or maybe just a form whatever combination of pieces if you haven't got those all to me Please remember that you need to get those alternating and I'll try to look through and send you all reminders as well.

That's a good point, Amanda. Um, it's all three equal and I20 not not just one or two so.

So we're going to wrap up here, uh, Roll Tide.

All time.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining us. Uh, you know, this means a lot to us and we're really looking forward to meeting you on campus.

Thanks.

Thank you again for joining a. You're going to get a survey in the email in your email. Please do complete that. That will really help us out in answering a lot of these questions, but have a great evening day, whatever it is, wherever you are. Thank you for joining this bye bye.

Yeah, thanks.