Computer Science Students Association unc chapel hill Candidates’ Day 2003 home  about us  students  guides

Your input is desired for Candidates’ Day, prospective students accepted to the department visit UNC. Candidates’ Day is March 20-23, 2003 (Th-Su). This is a great chance to socialize with many of next year’s new students and talk about your research.

Suggestions for activities, social events, information to share with candidates are welcome. Is there anything special about the CS Dept, UNC or Chapel Hill that you discovered after coming to UNC? From experience with Candidates’ Day events at other universities, are there events we can have at UNC?

Volunteers are needed for the student panel, guided campus tour, and accompanying candidates to lunch and dinner. The underlying tone is to convince candidates to attend UNC. The panel session is titled “Why I'm Still Glad I Came to UNC”. The campus tour will be relevant to graduate students. Volunteers should represent the various research groups and different years (1-5+).

Finally, it goes without saying that the goal of Candidate's Day is to encourage these people to choose UNC.  So, in answering questions, always be honest . . . but if your answer is going to make the department or UNC look bad, it may be best to keep it to yourself (i.e., try to share positive perspectives and experiences).

Please email cssa@cs.unc.edu to volunteer for helping with Candidates’ Day.

Final schedule

Thanks for agreeing to participate in the Student Panel for this year's Candidate's Weekend.  The Student Panel will start at 3:30pm on Friday in SN 011.  At the latest, the panel will end at 5pm (and may end earlier).

Pizza is provided for the candidates and faculty at 5pm.  Feel free to stick around after the panel to enjoy some pizza and interact with some of the candidates.

To my knowledge, none of you have participated in Student Panels of years past.  So, I will try to give you an idea of what to expect.  It is very casual, so there is no need to prepare anything.  But, do expect to give a very brief (about one minute) introduction of yourself, including how long you've been in the department, your research interests, what you were doing before entering the department (from undergrad, a job, etc.), and maybe what your non-CS interests are.

We will start with everyone on the panel introducing themselves, and then we'll open it up to questions from the candidates.  Hopefully, the
candidates will have lots of questions and will not need any coaxing. But, if not, I can suggest some topics and anyone from the panel can jump in to discuss them.

Typical questions pertain to . . .

Living in Chapel Hill:

• where to live
• how much does it cost
• are the buses good
• how easy is it to bike/walk to campus
• what are fun things to do in Chapel Hill
• etc.

Taking classes:

• are they hard/stressful
• how big are class sizes
• are professors approachable
• how many classes should one take in a semester
• how easy is it to take classes outside of the CS department
• etc.

Doing research (and being an RA)

• how hard is it
• are there opportunities for publication
• are there opportunities (and is there money) for conferences
• what if one doesn't like their research group or advisor
• etc.

Being a TA

• what sort of classes use graduate students as TAs
• etc.

UNC campus

• how safe is campus
• what sort of UNC facilities can graduate students use
• is the gym good
• how are the libraries
• etc.

Of course, there are other possible topics.  The idea of the panel is to give the candidates a chance to get the perspective of current students. And possibly, to give them a chance to ask the questions they do not feel comfortable asking faculty (most faculty will leave during the panel).

So, when you are answering questions, simply give your perspective or experiences.  Don't worry about giving specific facts (e.g., the cost of living in Chapel Hill is X dollars a year).  If you don't know the answer to a particular question, or don't feel comfortable sharing your answer, simply defer to other students on the panel.
 

Campus tour notes

Duties

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Computer Science, Sitterson Hall Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175 USA

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