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No, paying top dollar for a high-quality education at a US university on- campus, only to be receiving a far more diminished experience, in one’s own home country isn’t “a great thing”.Being told you are about to be kicked out of a country for which you legally acquired a visa and stuck to your obligations as a student, due to a pandemic is not “a great thing”.What it is, is fraud.Let’s say I show you a lovely, spanking new Volkswagen with some super cool ad-on features, a pleasing color and an overall awesome driving experience that you really would love to have.When you came into the dealership, you told me you needed a good ride to replace your old one- something reliable, a good brand, a good driving experience.And once I take your check from you, I walk you to the back of the building and hand you the keys of a Honda Accord and try to convince you that despite paying for something completely different and far superior, that the Honda Accord is just as good.Perhaps I then tell you, that your anger is unreasonable, because all you asked for was a reliable ride, with a good brand and a good driving experience- all of which the Accord certainly offers.You would be well within your rights to be pretty freakin’ mad and promptly call the cops on me, to haul my cheating ass to jail, where it rightly belongs.International students pay more for their degrees than pretty much anyone in the university campus. They then pay for visas and for the move to a totally new country.All this, because of the expectation that they are investing in an experience that will matter.I recently listened to an interview of the President of the University of Arizona and he corrected the interviewer who asked him if international students pay “higher fees”.He said, they pay “premium fees”.This premium fees is paid, for the experience of studying at a US university, in the United States, not just for the contents of the faculty’s classroom teaching.An on-campus experience offers many things-Opportunities to gain exposure to an international cohort of students and faculty and networking possibilities.Practical training and work opportunities like internships, co-op programs, on-campus work, tutoring, assistantships, research work in labs etc.Access to various student resources- Gyms, libraries, sports, events, recreational centers, group activities and student organizations etc.During normal, non-Covid times, international students are required to be enrolled in courses with in-person instruction during their programs of study and may not take all their courses online, to meet the conditions of their student visa status.This is perfectly sensible, completely appropriate and a condition that is well known and followed.Needless to say, this is not a normal time and pandemics aren’t the responsibility of international students, they tend to cause smaller problems than worldwide illness that infects millions.Students attending online classes ensure not just their own safety, but that of other classmates, faculty, staff, maintenance workers and indeed, the larger community.To take a pandemic-induced restriction and make it grounds to kick paying international students out of the country, is a move so brazen it is low even by the terrible standards of this administration.It accomplishes nothing other than needless cruelty inflicted upon a deeply vulnerable set of international people in the US, with little power to advocate for themselves.In addition to the already diminished experience due to the inevitable restrictions of Covid-19, the move to not extend the temporary exemptions that were in place for international students is a dick move for many reasons.Not every international students comes from a country where technology supports online learning.Time zones happen to exist in the world and unless you’re suggesting that students attend classes at 3 AM, online learning isn’t practical across time-zones for all international students.By being forced to leave, international students are being compelled to undertake the huge risk of international travel and contracting Covid.By being forced to leave, international students are being compelled to pony up the money for flight tickets at a time when diminished flight service internationally, has led to often crazy prices.They are denying international students the opportunity to work in the US, which is a privilege as part of their student visas, which again they PAID for.Kicking international students out, benefits no one. Not ONE American benefits from international students leaving. If anything, Universities and the local economy lose money by kicking these students out.If you wouldn’t accept a Honda Accord, when you paid for and expected the experience of a new Volkswagen, please don’t justify International students being defrauded by this absolutely unjustified assault on their education.

This sucks. But if a company let you spend 2 weeks staring at Eclipse while making no progress, you didn’t fail the internship — the intern program failed you.A lot of companies suck at hiring and utilizing interns. Senior management thinks,“Oh, all the big tech companies have interns! I’ve heard they’re great for recruiting! Let’s get a big old batch of interns this summer so we can be a young hip tech company!”But you can’t just hire interns and let-er-rip. Interns aren’t senior developers. Interns aren’t even junior developers. They are half-trained college students, looking for an opportunity to learn, and if everything goes well, contribute, and maybe even come back for a full-time position. They are not going to hit the ground running* as A+ 10x code mojo rockstars*.If the engineering organization doesn’t actually set up interns to succeed, it’s absolutely critical to set up a real intern program:Every intern has a mentor. The intern is, for the summer, the mentor’s #1 priority. Mentoring cannot be an afterthought.A proper on-boarding pipeline. Get the laptops set up, day 1. Get the codebase checked out. Get credentials and permissions figured out ahead of time.Regular, deep check-ins from mentor to mentee. Honestly, this should happen every day. At worst, once a week.Save up intern projects three months in advance. Teams should spend months batching up “good intern projects”, to hand off to interns once they arrive.More often, companies will half-ass the intern program, and when an intern arrives, they’ll:Spend a week getting a laptop, and setting up the development environment.Spend a week locked out of internal systems, because they don’t have permission to check out code, or log into JIRAGet punted onto a project which is either (1) waaaaaaaay more internal and complicated than an intern can realistically execute on, or (2) completely pointless, but unimportant, so it’s not really a big deal when it fails.Have a half-assed 15-minute check-in with a mentor once a week, just to make sure the intern is still getting paid, and knows where the beer fridge is.You should not have spent 2 weeks staring at an IDE without making progress. After day 1 of no-progress (a day is fine — problems can take time), your mentor should have checked in with you, given you pointers, and if all else failed, pair-programmed through it with you.Letting an intern stare at a screen for two weeks was a waste of two weeks, for both the intern and the company.The feeling of failure is healthy, and natural — it’s right to want to own failure, and it doesn’t feel good to make excuses. But in this case, you had one small, completely understandable failure (not being an intern who is also an incognito ninja senior engineer), and your company made one massive failure — letting you wallow in confusion for two weeks.tl,dr: Live, learn, and cut yourself some slack. At least this time.*well, every so often, they are, but you can’t bet the farm on it.

I am an Educational Counselor for MIT, which means that I interview high school seniors who are applying to MIT. Whether you are applying as a citizen or permanent resident (green card), or are applying as a foreign citizen, the first step is to apply and get an offer of admission. Then, if you believe you will need financial assistance, you apply for it. MIT can take advantage of various US government programs to help students who are US citizens. MIT must use its own funds to help foreign citizens. Of course, foreign students should check into what aid, if any, their own government might offer. No matter whether you are an American citizen or not, the overall approach is the same. MIT guarantees to meet all demonstrated need. If they admit you, and if you apply for aid, they will see to it that you can get an MIT education.Note that the aid will not necessarily be scholarship or a loan; it can also include a part-time student job.Many MIT students receive some form of aid. I was one of them. I'm grateful for the help and I've tried to help today's students get the same opportunity that I had by donating to the school. Good luck to you.